As I reflect on my experience in this class, I can’t help but to think about how COVID-19 affected my role in my career. As a middle school teacher, I’ve always used my online course page as an aid for students to remediate and practice on as they choose. However, due to the closing of schools and businesses, I was kind of forced into the role of an actual Instructional Designer as I no longer had the pleasure of teaching face-to-face anymore. I had to migrate my instruction to solely be online. I was a bit nervous in the beginning, because the expectation of normal online classes are for the teachers to be prepared. However, that wasn’t the case for us K-12 teachers. By the end of the second week, I managed to become fluent at creating my own videos of my lessons, creating widgets on make my page easier to access for students, collaborating with teachers across different content area for assessment strategies using different online tools. I am utilizing things I’ve learned in this class about assessments, evaluations, and setting instructional goals and objectives for students to achieve at home. Also as a Math Department Lead, I have also been designing the approach to the last units and the final exams.

One of the resources from this class that I found helpful was the Developing Assessments video that explained how to assess students effectively and create assessment items for your performance objectives. Assessments should be learner-centered and their criteria need to match up with the performance objective. This involves designers really focusing in on the knowledge or skill that we want students to adopt. I think it’s important for a design that incorporate three to four of the different types of tests to assess prior knowledge, allow students to practice, and see whether objectives have been met. Without assessments, there is no measure of growth.

Another meaningful resource I appreciated was Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction Model info graphic. When I first reviewed the info graphic, I instantly thought about an assessment I use with my students at the beginning of my school year to see what type of learners to I have in my class (such as visual, auditory, kinesthetic, etc.). This helps me engage them best, but in this model each step of instruction will progressively engage students more and more. In order to support the learning process, this model entails different forms of communication which in the end helps students retain the skill/ information.

This class has helped me put into perspective the overall picture of carefully planning instruction and implementing strategies to enhance the learning process. Being an Instructional Designers requires consideration into preparation in ensuring the instruction and practice is thorough and learner-centered. As instructors, the feedback we provide has to be constructive and meaningful referring to the objectives. Lastly the assessments we use have to focus on determining whether the objectives have been achieved.