Instructional Design
Preparatory Course for Simultaneous Interpretation
Role: Instructional Designer, Multimedia Designer
LMS Platform: Canvas
Tools: Articulate 360, Office 360, YouTube, Camtasia, Adobe Creative Suite, Kahoot
Stakeholder: American College of Education
Year: 2021
Overview:
The levels of interaction expected for the online Preparatory Course for Simultaneous Interpretation (PCSI) training range between formal and informal regarding the encouraging, guiding, corrective, and informative aspects of Blignaut and Trollip communication categories to promote authentic learning. Depending on the communication categories appropriate for the context, the levels of interaction may vary from highly formal to personal.
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Since the PCSI training is designed with the Brain-based Learning theory, learners are encouraged to interact with other learners for every intended engagement where the orchestrated immersion is the basis for the activities. Tying with Merrill’s First Principle, real-world scenarios are incorporated as narratives to engage learner-to-learner interactions. i.e., participating in a role-playing game in a synchronous session to understand different roles involved in a process, collaborating to allocate the workload to divide and conquer within a group, teaching each other how to troubleshoot AV equipment issues, etc. Instructing the learners to include feedback to other students that are encouraging, guiding, corrective, and informative, learner-to-learner interactions will be filled with authentic learning opportunities.
For learner-to-instructor interactions, prompt feedback from the instructor is essential for keeping the students engaged with the content and the instructor. Thus, the role of the instructor is not only subject to facilitate the learning but also to mentor and guide the students through challenging times to prepare them to transition from the trainee status to the Level 1 Simultaneous Interpreter role. The instructor may choose to incorporate formal and informal feedback depending on the appropriateness of the context and learners’ needs.
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When it comes to learner-to-interface interactions, the Canvas LMS selected for the PCSI training has a built-in help feature, which enables the students to take a tour of how to use the LMS. How to find help is explained in the announcement. Regarding navigating the Rise course, the instruction is indicated on the page, i.e., Module 4: The First Day Simulation Game. The type of the connections is formal since the style of the communication is informative.
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The reflective practice aspect of the learner-to-self interactions is strategically placed throughout the course, mostly in group discussions to allow learners to learn from other students. Module 1 is where the self-reflection is first introduced so that the reflective practice becomes part of the norm during learning. Module 4 recaps everything the students learned in the PCSI training, and the course ends with reflection. At its core, reflective practice allows the learners to process their own experiences. Hence, it is a personal and informal connection.
Throughout the PCSI training, the dynamic features of the Canvas and the Rise are implemented. For instance, the discussion board enables the learners to type in their responses in a rich text format to customize how they wish to submit. Scenario and simulation developed using the Rise course exported as HTML5 instantly displays content dynamically. Even the quiz feature of the Canvas provides quick feedback to the students when it comes to the correct or wrong answer after submission. The assignment feature of the Canvas, which allows the learners to submit multimedia output to the Canvas server, is quite outstanding. Last but not least, Kahoot, which enables the learners to have fun while testing their knowledge, helps increase learner engagement. These materials and interactivity encourage formal and informal connections, which I can see myself incorporating more in my future courses.
​Challenges:
When it comes to Web 2.0 tools, one of the tools that I initially used in the PCSI training is YouTube simply because the closed captioning feature of the Canvas did not function. I have created videos with closed captions already embedded using TechSmith Camtasia, output them as HTML caused the infinite loop on loading the videos on the Canvas. I enabled the closed caption feature in the Canvas and imported the script to the video did not work either.
Results:
I attached the transcripts of the videos in pdf and added the link to YouTube, which featured closed captioning perfectly. However, I have decided to take out the links to YouTube for learner safety reasons. Since YouTube displays advertisements and promoted video links on the page, which I have no control over, the site is considered not secure and appropriate for a corporate environment. Depending on the IT clearance, some employees may not have access to YouTube.
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Reflection:
The thought process required to develop the course map by aligning the theory and methodology cascading down to goals, objectives, tasks, and intended engagements was mind-bending. I believe I could not have done it without really understanding the needs of learners, similarly, for developing the storyboard. I was also very proud of figuring out how to embed the Rise course to the Canvas without uploading the SCORM files. It was not easy to do so since I found no instructions on the web. I had to rely on my experience as a web designer and creative problem-solving skills.
Other Samples of Instructional Design Artifacts
Quiz
While designing a course map, I decide which tool is appropriate for creating the quiz. I used the Articulate Quizmaker 360 for the Rise 360 course in this example.
