scholarly journals The Story is in the Structure: A Multi-Case Study of Instructional Design Teams

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Drysdale
Keyword(s):  
Online Learning ◽  
Instructional Design ◽  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Instructional Designers ◽  
Technology Support ◽  
Design Teams ◽  
Ability To Act ◽  
High Level

Although instructional designers are experienced and positioned to be leaders in online learning (Shaw, 2012), it was not previously known how organizational structures influenced their ability to act as leaders in their institutions. This problem warranted a deep exploration of the organizational structures for instructional design teams in higher education. This qualitative, multi-case study consisted of 3 individual universities each with a different organizational structure profile. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and document analysis with participants in 3 key roles at each institution: dedicated instructional designer, online faculty member, and online learning administrator. The research culminated in within-case analyses of each institution and a comparative case analysis of all 3 studied institutions. The results of the study revealed that the organizational structure that most positively influenced instructional design leadership was a centralized instructional design team with academic reporting lines. The results also showed that decentralized instructional designers experienced significant disempowerment, role misperception, and challenges in advocacy and leadership, while instructional designers with administrative reporting lines experienced a high level of role misperception specifically related to technology support. Positional parity between dedicated instructional designers and faculty, in conjunction with implementation of the recommended organizational structure, was found to be critical to empowering designers to be partners and leaders. 

Does Online Learning Meet the Expectation? A Case Study of Short Semester General English Class

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Asih Santihastuti
Keyword(s):  
Online Learning ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Online Teaching ◽  
English Class ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Teaching Learning ◽  
High Level ◽  
Giving Feedback

<p>The fact that today’s students are mostly equipped with high level of digital literacy encourages English teachers to use the Internet as one of the teaching learning media. Moreover,, the abundance of online materials for EFL students which are easily accessible makes the teachers’ job much easier. However, these advantages do not come alone without any drawbacks that challenge the teachers in implementing effective online teaching-learning activities for the class and get the most of it. This paper highlights the challenges that the teachers face in implementing online learning for general English class during the short semester program and reveals students’ perceptions on it as part of the reflection on the teaching-learning process. The unique characteristic of this program which is run only for one month requires the teacher creatively seeking effective activities for the class in order to meet the program requirement. The class shows that the students’ performance during the online learning is better compared to the offline class. The students become more active as well as enthusiastically involved in posting thread and giving feedback to their classmates’ thread. Although during the process the students show interest in joining the online discussion, the teacher still have difficulty in finding the strategy to measure the effectiveness of this mode of learning. The reflective writing written by the students identify some issues which mostly deal with their impressions in joining the online learning as well as their difficulties in performing during the teaching learning process. Some students even give suggestions for better improvement in the next application of online learning.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Keywords: </strong><em>online learning, teacher’s reflection, students’ perception, students’ performance.</em></p>

scholarly journals Integrating design thinking into instructional design: The #OpenTeach case study

2021 ◽  
pp. 33-52
Author(s):  
Caitríona Ní Shé ◽  
Orna Farrell ◽  
James Brunton ◽  
Eamon Costello
Keyword(s):  
Instructional Design ◽  
Online Education ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Potential Method ◽  
Online Course ◽  
Instructional Designers ◽  
Course Materials ◽  
Thinking Process ◽  
Is Design

Online education is becoming the norm in higher education. Effective instructional design methods are required to ensure that “ever-connected” students’ needs are being met. One potential method is design thinking: an agile methodology that stresses the importance of empathy with the student. The #OpenTeach fully online course was designed using design thinking principles and delivered in Spring 2020. This article reports on a case study which focused on the use of design thinking to design and develop the #OpenTeach course. The five iterative stages of design thinking (empathy, define, ideate, prototype and test) were integrated into the design and development of the course materials. The findings of this study indicate that the use of the design thinking process may be used by instructional designers to achieve empathy with their learners, which will ensure learners successfully engage and achieve the learning objectives of the course. Implications for practice or policy: A rich case study of the successful integration of design thinking within the instructional design methodology of an online teacher education project is valuable to educationalists who wish to follow a user-cntred empathetic approach. Instructional designers should focus on empathising with their student cohort to successfully engage students in the content that has been designed, and developed, as part of an online course.

Evaluating Socio-Technical Coordination in Open-Source Communities: A Cluster-Based Approach

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inna Rytsareva ◽  
Qize Le ◽  
Emma Conner ◽  
Ananth Kalyanaraman ◽  
Jitesh H. Panchal
Keyword(s):  
Product Development ◽  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Joint Project ◽  
Communication Structures ◽  
Development Organizations ◽  
Open Source Communities

In complex product development, coordination is the act of managing dependencies between artifacts. Socio-technical coordination is the achievement of coordination through the alignment of organizational structures and product structures. Socio-technical coordination is achieved in hierarchical product development organizations by aligning the organizational structure with the system architecture. However, within virtual community-based product development such as open source development, the organizational structure is not designed by a central authority. In contrast, the community evolves as a result of participation of individuals and their communication with other individuals working on the project. Hence, understanding and quantifying socio-technical coordination is particularly important in open-source communities. Existing approaches to measuring socio-technical coordination are based on the congruence between ideal communication and the actual communication structures within communities. The primary limitation of existing approaches is that they only account for explicit communication between individuals. Existing measures do not account for the indirect communication between individuals and the shared knowledge that individuals working on a joint project possess. Due to these limitations, the socio-technical coordination values have been observed to be very low in the existing literature. We propose two alternate approaches to measuring socio-technical coordination based on clustering techniques. We illustrate the approaches using a case study from an open source software development community. The proposed approaches present a broader and more encompassing view of coordination within open source communities.

Constructivist Instructional Design

2010 ◽  
pp. 24-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos R. Morales
Keyword(s):  
Online Learning ◽  
Instructional Design ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Positive Influence ◽  
Learning Technologies ◽  
Learning Theories ◽  
Instructional Designers ◽  
Learning Needs ◽  
Design Of Learning Environments

With the continuous growth of online learning in higher education, the need to design course materials that capitalize and leverage on the richness of the Internet and learning technologies has taken on new dimensions. Constructivist theory paired with instructional design models is believed to have a positive influence on the design of learning environments that apply content to real-life situations. Constructivist instructional design for online learning challenges instructional designers regarding the philosophy and methodology to be used, while it provides the conditions for learner-centered instruction. Instructional design and learning theories have been separated into their own arenas. Developing online learning environments using constructivist instructional design addresses and serves the learning needs of students by providing opportunities for increased knowledge construction and participation.

A Case Study of Online MBA Courses

2014 ◽  
pp. 200-232
Author(s):  
Richard J. Magjuka ◽  
Xiaojing Liu
Keyword(s):  
Online Learning ◽  
Learning Facilitation ◽  
Virtual Teamwork ◽  
Mba Program ◽  
Level Of Satisfaction ◽  
Case Based Learning ◽  
Online Business ◽  
High Level ◽  
To Receive

This chapter presents a case study that examines the perceptions of online students and instructors regarding their their experiences in a reputable online MBA program. The findings indicate that both the instructors and students exhibited a high level of satisfaction with their online experiences in the program and positive attitude toward online learning in general. This study also explores the in-depth views of the online participants on several key components of online business education, including online learning facilitation and interaction, virtual teamwork, and Case-Based Learning (CBL). The issues and challenges identified in the study indicate a need for the instructors and students to receive more guidance and support, technologically and pedagogically, in order to create a more engaging and fruitful online learning environment.

scholarly journals Target organizational structure and human potential

2021 ◽  
Vol 101 ◽  
pp. 02009
Author(s):  
Marianna Santalova ◽  
Irina Soklakova ◽  
Dariko Balakhanova ◽  
Elvira Lesnikova ◽  
Elena Chudakova
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Performance Management ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Human Potential ◽  
Job Descriptions ◽  
Job Responsibilities ◽  
Management Structure ◽  
Line Manager ◽  
High Level

The article examines the success of companies depending on the quality of human resources and the organizational structure of their management. Based on the structure of human potential, the work highlights the processes that reduce it; the values of work of employees of the studied companies are ranked: work as a means of subsistence, communication with colleagues, confidence in the future, the installation "work as the main value in life", the possibility of creative growth. Problems in the field of personnel management are identified in two areas: composition of employees; performance management of staff. To improve the work of managers in the studied companies, it is proposed to implement a comprehensive program. It should include the following areas: changing the management structure, where job responsibilities are clearly reallocated; reviewing job descriptions in order to regulate employee responsibilities, support the most effective technology; and building organizational commitment of staff. The organizational structure of the studied trading firms should be made problem-oriented. Changing the structure will allow to: create additional links that deal with strategic planning; organize production and sales, improve quality, and develop production; the line manager will be able to delegate authority on certain issues and tasks.The proposed problem-oriented management structure, which has the advantages of all organizational structures, has no obvious disadvantages. It provides a high level of specialization of employees, performing a specific function; it is combined with the structure of the management system, is easy to form and operate, and is adaptive to changes. We suggest evaluating the effectiveness of human resource management when changing the organizational structure of management by the level of management decisions of organizations.

scholarly journals Determining the potential of organizational structures models of a high-tech cluster

2021 ◽  
Vol 116 ◽  
pp. 00018
Author(s):  
Elena Lobova ◽  
Vladimir Postnikov ◽  
Stanislav Rybin ◽  
Irina Reshetnikova
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structure ◽  
System Analysis ◽  
Synergistic Effects ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Strong Impact ◽  
New Institutions ◽  
High Level ◽  
Political Economic

As a rule, during the choice of the most viable organizational structure of a cluster, traditional methods of the assessment of economic efficiency are used, taking into account the influence of financial, production and technological risks. The high level of the fluctuations of social, political, economic and technological impacts of the intercountry level has a strong impact on the result of their production activities. The peculiarities of this influence include the emergence of new institutions of interaction between the subjects of a cluster, the growth of uncertainty within the system and a change in the level of specificity of the assets of its participants. The task to find new tools for the assessment of the potential of economic security of a cluster is becoming urgent. It is necessary to find such tools which would take into account the ability to adapt to technological and geopolitical challenges in the future. Within the framework of this study, the authors developed an algorithm for the assessment of the potential of alternative models of the organizational structure of a high-tech cluster. The important methodological aspect of the process of forecasting the level of adaptability of alternative cluster structures to external changes is the condition for the availability of institutional support to promising areas of technical development. The developed algorithm presupposes the further development of the methods of system analysis and the formation of Institutional Atlases for the parameters of the assessment of the opportunistic behavior risks of subjects or synergistic effects. The use of this algorithm allowed drawing some important intermediate conclusions about the unequal composition and the influence of dominant institutional factors in modeling different organizational structures of a high-tech cluster.

scholarly journals A case study of work-based learning through the design of edX MOOCs for Latin America and the Caribbean

Open Praxis ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 383
Author(s):  
Fabian Freire
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Study Finding ◽  
Organizational Factors ◽  
Organizational Structures ◽  
Instructional Designers ◽  
Design Cycle ◽  
Administrative Assistants ◽  
Latin America And Caribbean ◽  
Five Phases

This exploratory case study analyzed the reported learning experiences among the multidisciplinary practitioners employed in the development of edX courses for a pioneering MOOC program targeted at Latin America and Caribbean. It applied work-based learning theory and activity theory to answer the question of whether and how a group of 20 participants—including subject matter experts, instructional designers, administrative assistants, platform technicians, and media producers—experienced work-based learning through their collaboration during the MOOC program’s initial professionalization period. Using qualitative research methods via interviews, observation, and document analysis, it illuminated the practical, pedagogical, and organizational factors that participants identified as critical for succeeding in their jobs. The principal study finding indicated that the entirety of participants experienced work-based learning in response to systemic tensions related to one or more of the five phases of the MOOC design cycle. The secondary findings concluded that participants encountered significant pressures and opportunities for learning as a result of: developing educational resources or learning activities (80%), the need for improving organizational processes (85%), and facing constant technological upgrades (75%). Finally, the study recommends that MOOC design teams (a) rethink the role of the instructor vis-à-vis the techno-pedagogical affordances of the MOOC platform, and (b) design adaptive organizational structures that support a plurality of sociomaterial workflows.

scholarly journals Problem based learning in the design of a multimedia project

2001 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain McAlpine ◽  
Rex Clements
Keyword(s):  
Instructional Design ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Interactive Multimedia ◽  
Problem Based Learning ◽  
Approach To Learning ◽  
Course Materials ◽  
Problem Presentation ◽  
Ideal Approach ◽  
High Level

This article examines problem based learning (PBL) as a basis for the design of interactive multimedia. To be effective, interactive multimedia should be stimulating and challenging, while providing students with a learning environment in which they can carry out investigations and have access to resources and tools for finding and manipulating data. PBL is an ideal approach to instructional design for multimedia, as it provides a scenario of problem presentation, investigation, resolution and presentation that can form the basis for the multimedia activities. Carried out effectively, this approach can enable high level learning, as the students are required to use the higher order mental processes of analysis, comparison and contrast, hypothesis and synthesis in order to propose a solution to the problem. Students need to take an active rather than a passive approach to learning when using this method. The theoretical basis for this approach is discussed. A case study of higher education course materials in grazing management is used to illustrate the way the PBL approach is used in the instructional design of the materials. Evaluation data from trials with students is included to illustrate the effectiveness of the materials for teaching and learning.

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