Module 1 Reflection: Instructional Design

This article has made me think about my role as an instructional designer differently than I did before. I have been an educator for 18 years and have generally thought of lesson plans as a guide of how I would carry out a lesson, which was generally focused on what I would do as the teacher. Although student learning has always been my ultimate objective, my plans seem to focus on the activities that I would lead to facilitate that learning. Reading this article has made me rethink that idea.

I can see now that my teaching has been geared toward a teacher/classroom-centered instructional design. I have focused on activities and what we would be doing together in class. My planning basically addresses my time with the students. However, student/learning-centered instructional design focuses on the kinds of thinking students do and what the students will take away from the classroom experience. This planning focuses on long term outcomes.

I believe that one of the reasons my plans have shifted into this process is the pressure from administration and other stakeholders to perform well on standardized tests. I think that teachers don’t feel that they have a lot of freedom to teach the way they really want to teach. In lesson plans, administrators have specific aspects of a lesson plan that they are looking for which are the activities that the teacher will be doing with the class. I believe these expectations tend to stifle creativity in teaching.

In contrast, a lesson plan should not be a schedule of activities for the teacher to follow, but it should be a plan for student learning. It should focus on what the student will learn, how deep the learning will be, how this learning will be acquired, and how they will exhibit this learning. By focusing my lessons more on student learning, I believe that learning will be more meaningful and complete.