RDobrzelewski EDT 5410 Class Blog

by Renee Dobrzelewski EDT 5410 Week 4 Podcast Assignment Listen to my podcast, Ed Tech Talks, where I explore the tools, ideas, and challenges shaping teaching and learning with technology. In the first episode, Why is there no perfect LMS , we discuss what institutions are looking for in a learning management system. Click the logo to be taken to the podcast

  by Renee Dobrzelewski EDT 5410 Week 4 Reflection My first thought when reading Wilson’s essay on guerrilla design was that not all change is appropriate simply for the sake of change. Instructional design, like so many systems, follows a systematic approach to educating learners through principles, theories, models, and practice. The “sacred cows” Wilson speaks against were developed over time to provide some consistency among designers and instructors, so I do not think they should automatically be discarded simply because they are traditional. That is not to say there is no merit in what Wilson proposes—designing with the intention of disrupting the status quo. He says one goal of guerrilla design is to contribute knowledge and understanding to the profession, and I can appreciate his argument that we should not do research only in areas considered “journal-worthy” while ignoring challenges educators encounter every day. Advocating for a wider variety of pedagogies to address t...

Let us begin with a nice cup of coffee. You can find one at the OG Water Street Coffee location, which I visited during my WMU undergrad years. Here's where you can find the coffee shop on a map: We'll finish up by looking at one of the world's best coffee baristas "pulling a shot" of espresso:

The first couple of chapters in the book gave me a lot of food for thought because I had not really considered instructional design in relation to other design disciplines. My previous experience with instructional design has focused more on needs analysis, learning objectives, assessment, and choosing appropriate instructional strategies. I had not thought much about how instructional design compares with fields such as architecture, art, or science.   After reading Parrish’s view on instructional design, I can appreciate the “out of the box” thinking while disagreeing with some of his comparisons. For example, he writes that artists and instructional designers both create experiences that can change perceptions, raise curiosity, and generate emotional responses. I can see curiosity as an important part of learning, especially when trying to get learners interested in a topic. However, I am not sure that changing perceptions or generating an emotional response is always a goal of ...

Not Your Average Cone: Computer Imagining the Cone of Experience   by Renee Dobrzelewski EDT 5410 Week 2 Reflective Entry I am not new to blogs, as I have created a few basic websites in the past and some of them included a blog feature. I enjoy working in a digital environment, so I immediately began customizing my Blogger site. I also enjoy writing, and my style tends to be more casual than formal research or white-paper writing, so a blog feels like a good fit for my skills and interests. I had not worked with Socrative before this week, but I found it very easy to get started without any prior training on the program. I was able to create a five-question knowledge check fairly quickly. Full disclosure: I used the AI question-generation tool because I was curious to see what kinds of questions it would produce and how accurate the answers would be. As is often the case when working with AI, I needed to make a few tweaks, but overall I was pleased with the results. I did not even...

To Tech or Not to Tech, That is the Question by Renee Dobrzelewski EDT 5410 Week 1 Reflective Blog Entry As an Instructional Technology Specialist, one might assume that I am all for technology in the classroom, particularly since I personally love tech of all kinds. Having worked as a soft-skills trainer early in my career and fulfilled roles in K-12 settings more recently, however, I’ll admit I am a bit torn about the overall use of technology to support and transform learning. I believe technology has tremendous potential in education, but its usefulness depends on whether it addresses an actual learning need. I completed the Instructional Design course here at Western, and one of the things that was stressed is that identifying a need doesn’t always mean “add training,” and even less so training of the technical variety. Yet, there are areas of learning that mesh particularly well with technology. Beyond Technology Integration touches on several, including computer-based trai...