Motivational Instructional Design

Motivational Instructional Design

Zuheir Khlaif

Syracuse University, School of Education

Instructional Design, Development, and Evaluation

IDE 736 – Motivation in Instructional DesignRob Pusch, PhD

2012

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Motivational Instructional Design

Abstract

This paper outlines the redesign of an instructional product to include motivational strategies. The instructional product is an online self-study material available on the following link: http://alaws2006.com/selft/1/start.html

Table of Contents

Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 2

Introduction......................................................................................................................... 3

Audience Analysis .............................................................................................................. 3

Motivational Objects and Assessment Plan......................................................................... 5

Motivational Strategies ....................................................................................................... 7

Final Design Strategies ....................................................................................................... 8

Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 11

References......................................................................................................................... 12

Prototype of Self- Study Material ..................................................................................... 13

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Introduction

I have been working with a non-profit organization, The Palestinian Society for E-Learning; my job is designing online training material on specific software in order to train teachers on designing online activities for their students. We created an interactive websites for teachers to upload their files. Throughout this time various attempts have been made to offer help pages and tutorials for how to design effective online instruction on using several software like Adobe Flash, Adobe Captivate, and Course Lab. Actually, I have not been satisfied with these materials and they are not widely used by teachers, though nothing else exists to assist them. I designed and developed new instruction titled Using Course Lab Software in designing E- Content; this course is online self- training. For the purpose of this paper, I will evaluate and re-design portions of the site, incorporating motivational strategies.

Audience Analysis

The audience of the online self-study material consists of teachers, novice, and intermediate designers, college students in the field of educational technology. Instruction is basically divided into two (2) distinct parts. The target audience will be provided by the link of the self-study material in order to access the. The first part serves as a guideline of the course; it contains general information about the course, its objectives, prerequisites, and duration length. The online self-study material is accessible by anyone at anytime. The second part is related to the instruction of the course: tasks, activities, and evaluation of the course. The primary source for information concerning this audience is derived from the experience and perceptions of a novice designer. I was not able to conduct much of a front-end analysis. I worked surveying the audience on this track when I come back to my country; actually, I felt that would prove fruitless and wanted more immediate results in terms of an tangible instructional product to improve teachers performance before beginning the new academic year 2012-2013.

For the purpose of this paper, I take another look at the audience from a motivational perspective. For this analysis, I refer to John Keller’s ARCS model of instructional design (1987) in which motivation is concerned with the users in regards to Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction. Effective instructional design depend deeply on audience's expectations. A questionnaire was developed and respondents were asked to rate their level of expectation for each item. The target audience expect that instructional designer should detail the prerequisite of the self-study material to complete the course. However, in this section, I organized their expectations from the highest to the lowest as follows

Provide the material with guideline to accomplish it. Course outline and learning outcomes. Design effective online material for their students Navigation during the course is easy. Clear objectives. Opportunities to practice skills that are being acquired. Helpful feedback by using several ways from the instructor. Communication with instructor by using email, online chat, and face-to-face

discussion. Quick response to technical problems.

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Easy access to technical assistance. Provide additional resources. Interface should not overload learners. Interact with the instructor and colleagues in the course.

A large number of audience have little or no experience with Course Lab Software and varying experience with e-content design. Some of them do not know the importance of e-content in e-learning paradigm. This needs to be considered in terms of relevance, confidence, and satisfaction elements. It also brings up some possible issues surrounding gaining the audience's attention. In regards to relevance, the target audience have come to the workshop with a need for new skills, new knowledge about designing online instruction for their classes. The information they want, gives relevance to their attention of new paradigm to be used in practices, however, separate attention needs to be addressed to the relevance of their attitudes toward using Course Lab in designing e-content.

The essential challenge to address in the new instruction is to provide the target audience with effective guideline to lessen the obstacles they confront through using the online version of the self-training material. This is one type of issues that needed to be addressed by the guideline. In designing and developing the guideline, I had to acknowledge that this was a great deal of information, and it was just plain complicated to attain and therefore, seemingly just as complicated to explain to the audience the content of instruction. The guideline uploaded on the website and linked with the slide in the course.

The following chart presents a summary of a motivational analysis of the target audience, in terms of the elements of the ARCS model (Keller, 1987). Basically, the target audience analysis presents a real challenge for creating effective instructional materials.

Audience Motivation AnalysisAttention Interest for the content of the online self-study course is high. The

directions of using the course are easy to follow. Learning how to design effective online courses is desired but due to lack of skills and experience will cause them to be frustrated. Audience wants to work quick and easy to see their products by using the software.

Relevance Relevance of the self-study content is high. This course fulfills their needs to acquire new skills in designing online versions.

Confidence Confidence is varied due to audience variant levels of using computer and their awareness of e-content in e-learning paradigm. Audience who has low skill in using computer their confidence can be very law in terms of designing effective instruction.

Satisfaction Satisfaction is gained in obtaining the desired skills and knowledge. In addition, producing suitable projects for their students. Using the instructional materials to learn how to use Course Lab Software will promote their satisfaction.

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Motivational Objects PlanInitially, I decided on three objectives for the online self-training material. The first

part related to designing the guideline material to facilitate audience's task. The target audience will get the direction of completing the tasks in the course, its prerequisite, description of the consequence of the activities, and evaluation form of the course. The second part related to the navigation option in the course. I provide the target audience with three options to navigate through the content of the course: Tab content, pop-up menu, and next, previous buttons on the lower part of the screen. Finally, designing the activities based on the motivational strategies design to engage the target audience in the content of the course. At the beginning , I want to discuss the instructional design objectives as they apply to motivation. In Figure two, I present the sub-categories of the ARCS model of instructional design (Keller, 1987) with corresponding motivational objectives and measures.

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Figure 2 Motivational objectives and assessments for the instructional design of Online Self- Training, Study, material

AttentionSubcategories Motivational Objectives Motivational MeasuresA1: Perceptual arousal- capture interest

Audience will demonstrate an interest in reading firstly the guidelines to follow the direction to complete the tasks and to determine the requirements of the course and its prerequisite. This will be beneficial to achieve the desired outcomes.

Self reflection, implement the activities.A2: Inquiry Arousal-- stimulate

attitude for inquiryA3: Variability-- maintain attention

RelevanceSubcategories Motivational Objectives Motivational MeasuresR1: Goal - Orientation- meet learners needs

Audience will demonstrate a desire to learn how acquire new skills and new knowledge to design effective instruction to be used in their classes.

Writing reflection, produce their own projects, and use checklist to create effective instruction.R2: Motive matching- provide

appropriate choices, responsibilities, and influences.R3: Familiarity- tie instruction to learner's experience

ConfidenceSubcategories Motivational Objectives Motivational MeasuresC1: Learners requirements- build positive expectation of success

Audience will express a higher degree of confidence in their ability to explore the online material, acquire new skills through practice on the software, and navigate the instruction to determine the basic skills and information for each task.

Create effective instruction, publish their project, in addition use checklist to produce their projects.C2: Success opportunities-

strengthen beliefs in competenceC3: Personal Control- learners see success as based on own efforts and abilities.

SatisfactionSubcategories Motivational Objectives Motivational MeasuresS1: Natural Consequences- provide for use of acquired skill/knowledge

Audience will indicate that the self-training material was effective in helping them to design effective instruction to be used in online versions.

Create effective instruction, publish their project, in addition use checklist to produce their projects.S2: Positive Consequences-

reinforcement of successS3: Equity- anchoring a positive feeling about accomplishments

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Motivational StrategiesIn Figure 3, I present the potential motivational strategies that could be used to

accomplish the instructional design objectives for the self-study course using Keller’s ARCS model of design (1987). These strategies can be employed throughout the entire content in order to encourage learner's motivation.

Figure 3 Motivational Strategies of Instructional Design of the Self-Study Course

AttentionSubcategories Motivational Strategies

A1: Perceptual arousal- capture interest

Visual effects: use suitable colors, fonts in Text, graphics on each slide. Using alignment and proximity of the content on each slide of the course, absence of distraction, chunk instruction, consistent screen format.

A2: Inquiry Arousal-- stimulate attitude for inquiryA3: Variability-- maintain attention

RelevanceSubcategories Motivational Strategies

R1: Goal - Orientation- meet learners needs

Objectives/ goals of the instruction are stated clearly, graphic illustrations, use real-life examples.

R2: Motive matching- provide appropriate choices, responsibilities, and influences.R3: Familiarity- tie instruction to learner's experience

ConfidenceSubcategories Motivational StrategiesC1: Learners requirements- build positive expectation of success

Objectives/ goals of the instruction are stated clearly, graphic illustrations, use real-life examples, mention prerequisite skills/ knowledge/attitudes; these are necessary for success. Match learning requirement to prerequisite skills, knowledge, and attitudes, provide audience control to navigate the consequences of the instruction.

C2: Success opportunities- strengthen beliefs in competenceC3: Personal Control- learners see success as based on own efforts and abilities.

SatisfactionSubcategories Motivational StrategiesS1: Natural Consequences- provide for use of acquired skill/knowledge

Structure and consistency of content. Transfer the acquired skills and knowledge into creating and publishing projects.

S2: Positive Consequences- reinforcement of successS3: Equity- anchoring a positive feeling about accomplishments

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Final Design strategies

Figure 4 shows the original self-study material. This material was available as Power Points slides. The objectives of the course were not stated in the file; there were lack of graphics to illustrate the basic skills of the course. In addition, many slides were crowded with text.

Figure 4 A Sample from the original self-Study Material: Using Course Lab in Designing E-Content

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In Figure 5, I present the storyboard to design the new self-study material. It was noted that the background image created a distraction; the text did not stand out enough or was hard to read, some wording needed to be revised, and it was hard to focus one’s attention on the relevant information. The one unanimous comment was the effectiveness of a one page document for ease of use.

Figure 5 the initial storyboard of the draft of the online self-study course

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In Figure 6 presents the first page in the self-study course; you can access the page from:

http://alaws2006.com/selft/1/start.html

The previous link is the entry point for the online self-study material. The first slide contains the directions (guidelines) to complete the course. From this page, learners will navigate through the content of the course.

The second slide contains the goals and objectives of the course.

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The essential feature of using Course Lab Software is that what you see is what you get. This means that audience can print out the content of each slide or can convert it into PDF file for reference. Additionally, the guidelines should perhaps list the prerequisites skills, knowledge, and attitudes required. This gives the user a starting point to use Course Lab Software in designing online course or self-study material. The skills and information provided in the instruction may help the perceptions of the audience in ease of use of the course and how important the directions slide may be to their success in navigating the content. Success is hard to determine in this situation without the use of some sort of self training. It is highly suggested that an evaluation plan be implemented to survey and / or interview a select teachers to determine the beneficial of this course and the modes to improve it. This can be achieved also by direct feedback via email from the target audience.

Now, at the end of my program, I consider myself that I have the road map to design effective online courses based on the motivational strategies design and using Keller's model for motivation. I still need more practice to integrate different parts of Keller's model with different instruction system design models.

Conclusion

Motivational elements are essential to include in instructional design of materials. It is also beneficial to use these elements to analyze existing materials and focus on areas that may have been overlooked.

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References

Keller, John M. (1987). Development and Use of the ARCS Model of Instructional Design.Journal of Instructional Development, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2-10.

Pintrich, Paul R. and Schunk, Dale H. (2002). Motivation in Education. Theory, Research, and Applications. 2nd ed. Upper Sadle River, New Jersey: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Motivational Instructional Design

Blue Print of The Design Self- Study Material