[Sigia-l] learnings from instructional design

[Mary MacDonald]

On the ia-academic list, the topics of IA research, publications, and
practice within the university setting have been discussed.  I have recently
had a few conversations with people responsible for instructional design at
a couple of Boston based colleges, and would like to invite a discussion
here that looks at the relationship of these 2 fields.  Please respond to:
ia-academic at asis.org 

Suggested topics for conversation:

1.  A short history of ID for IAs
Ideally, we might have people subscribing to this list who could provide a
short list of ID backgrounder books, articles that would be especially
helpful for IA education - on the level of IA as practitioner/researcher.
These resources might help illumine questions such as: How do people learn?
How does ID facilitate learning?  What ID practices, methods would be
helpful to me in my work as an IA (how do the methods change if I am asked
to develop an online learning application, an informational website, a
commercial website, a corporate intranet or extranet?)

2.  Explicit/Implicit learning opportunities presented by web pages
Whether we are developing web pages for online courses, e-commerce sites, or
employee benefits, there are multiple nuances of learning present that we at
a minimum might reflect upon.  Explicit learning opportunities might be
defined as being present in web pages whose content is instructional in
nature (i.e. online courseware, or commercial quizzes - Are you ready for
retirement?
http://personal.fidelity.com/misc/buffers/smartquiz/smartquiz.shtml?refhp=cp
or general informational pages - about us...)  Implicit learning
opportunities might be defined as all other pages and page design elements
whose function may not have been designed as instructional but simply as a
result of existing, provide an opportunity for cognitive processing and
assimilation.  I make the distinction here between explicit and implicit
because I believe there is a value in understanding the intentions of our
designs and how those intentions impact the end user.  If we are able to
identify and name explicit/implicit learning opportunities within our
designs, I would expect that would foster our development as educators -
again, whether we are educating students for their attainment of greater
knowledge or educating customers with the intention of selling a product.


If these topics have been previously covered on the SIG-IA list, please
respond to ia-academic at asis.org with any relevant archive urls.

Thank you-
Mary

-------------------------
Mary MacDonald
http://www.marymacdonald.us