MSIDT 535: Instructional Strategies and Universal Design Issues in Learning Environments

Hello!

The other course in my third semester of my CSUF MSIDT program (Summer 2015) was MSIDT 535, Instructional Strategies and Universal Design Issues in Learning Environments. The university website says that this course will: “Provide students with training in instructional strategies for Pre-K through adulthood” and that there will be “Emphasis on current research on instructional strategies and assistive technologies in a variety of instructional contexts.”

The course objective are listed as:

- The ability to effectively select the instructional strategy that meets the instructional needs of the learner.

- The understanding and effective use of the concepts of learning styles in a variety of instructional contexts.

and

- The assessment and utilization of appropriate technology with a variety of instructional strategies to meet the needs of the learner.

These seem reasonable for a student who wants to learn about instructional design, and the course met these objectives! Students in cohort 13 accomplished these by developing a comparative instructional strategies chart, writing an annotated bibliography, constructing a lesson plan (which was then evaluated by other students), and writing an essay on the learning theory book of our choice. There were also a weekly forum discussion, but there were no tests or quizzes for this course.

Supporting the course were two main texts - the APA manual has already reviewed, and the other will be reviewed here soon:

-- American Psychological Association (2010). Publication manual of the american psychological association (6th ed.). Washington, DC.

-- Joyce, B., Weil, M., & Calhoun, E. (2014). Models of Teaching (9th Ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

There was a nice variety of coursework for IDT 535, as the projects were different than what we had experienced in previous courses. I approached the learning theory book essay, annotated bibliography, and the instructional strategies chart from the viewpoint that I was building them so that I could use portions of them for the final project for the program. In the end, I think that I came away with a much better handle on learning theories and their applications, so this was a very worthwhile course.

Thanks for checking out my IDT blog, and next we will take a look at one of the texts we used for this course.

Mahalo!