Merrill's First Principles of Instruction

If you're not familiar with David Merrill's First Principles of Instruction, I suggest that you check out this classic post from Dr. Joel Gardner. In this post you will find links to two great research articles on applying the First Principles of Instruction.

Joel has been involved with teaching and learning for over a decade, and is currently Program Chair of the Instructional Design and Performance Technology Program at Franklin University. I had the pleasure of working with Dr. Gardner at the Faculty Assistance Center for Teaching (FACT) for a few years, and he co-authored the original article on the OAR model with Tae Jeon and myself.

PDF Syllabus Builder is Need-to-Know News

Thanks to Debbie Morrison at the online learning insights blog for featuring the PDF Syllabus Builder in today's post: Need-to-Know News: The Making of a MOOC, College Scorecard and Syllabus Builder Tool.

Presentation on the OAR model at Utah State University

On Thursday I presented to the Instructional Technology Student Association (ITSA) from the Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences (ITLS) department at Utah State University. I was speaking to graduate students and gave them an overview of the Objectives-Resources-Activities (OAR) model, explored the FACT Instructor Guidebook for online course development and answered their questions about Instructional Design.

Here's the video.

Course Activity Maps

I've posted a new video to YouTube that shows a Course Activity Map featuring the new Acquisition Activity and Application Activity icons from the OAR model. This CAM also incorporates Activity Layers and Activity Increments.

oarmodel.com

In September I was dismayed to learn that a Wikipedia Administrator decided to delete the OAR Model article. This article had been up for two years, is still (as of this post) linked to from the Instructional Design article on Wikipedia, and about six months after its creation was the top result on Google. I haven't decided if/when I will appeal the decision.

So, I bought the domain www.oarmodel.com today. Right now it just has a picture of the OAR model, but more to come....

FACT Instructor Guidebook 3

The FACT Instructor Guidebook uses the OAR model as a framework for online course development. It guides them through the process of identifying their basic pedagogy, creating a Course Statement, and exploring some acquisition and application activities.

Here's a "how to" video.

The latest version of the FACT Instructor Guidebook is available at the Faculty Resources page.

 

Interview with Blackboard's Dr. C

On March 17 I sat down with Kevin Reeve to give a brief overview of the OAR model.

Here's the link.

Course Activity Map

A Course Activity Map (CAM) is an Instructional Design tool that facilitates communication between Instructional Designers, Course Facililtators and other members of an online course design team. CAMs use symbols based on the OAR model to plot the connections between goals, content and activities in Blackboard. CAMs represent the ratio between Acquisition Activities (opportunities for students to gain knowledge and skills) and Application Activities (opportunities for students to demonstrate knowledge and skills).

Online Course Syllabus Template Tool

At FACT we have developed the Online Syllabus Template Tool (OSTT) to provide instructors developing online courses for higher education with:

- a context-specific syllabus structure consistent with the OAR model
- a sample syllabus that models best practices
- an easy-to-modify Microsoft Word template

The OSTT is an Adobe .pdf file that can be opened in the free Adobe Reader program. Users can navigate in the tool just as they would in a web page by mousing over buttons and clicking. Users can use "show info"/"hide info" buttons to toogle between a pageview that shows the sample language and or a pageview that shows descriptive information.

A download of the OSTT is available here.

OAR model page on Wikipedia

I have created a page on Wikipedia describing the OAR model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OAR_model

I would appreciate feedback from interested parties!

OAR model

The OAR model is an Instructional Design model created for a specific context: distance education courses delivered through a LMS (Learning Management System) in higher education.

This is an excerpt from a chapter which my colleagues and I have in publication:

"The OAR model is a visual tool which represents the components of SME-F (Subject-Matter Expert facilitated) online courses in higher education, and their relationship to each other. The OAR model was developed to meet four criteria: a) maintain a strict focus on our particular learning system context, b) create a simple graphic-based aid which facilitates communication among design stakeholders, c) remain inclusive by avoiding the use of jargon, and d) represent the basic order of operations in our ID (Instructional Design) process. The OAR model has proven effective in meeting these criteria by organizing the components of SME-F online courses in higher education into three domains: Resources, Objectives and Activities.

The OAR model defines resources as the physical, electronic and intellectual assets with which a course can be created. These resources are determined by an analysis of the learners, SME/F (Subject Matter Expert/facilitator), ID (Instructional Designer), learning and performing environments, available instructional technology, and other relevant contextual factors associated with a course. IDs and SME/Fs use the results of this analysis to identify real-world problems and tasks to inform the design of objectives.

The objectives domain contains the learning and performance goals that are designed to guide the course. Objectives determine which resources will be delivered to influence learner behavior under specified conditions to meet defined criteria. Opportunities for learners to accomplish the objectives are created through activities that are as closely aligned with real-world problems and tasks as the available resources will allow.

Activities are the actual events that learners engage in to acquire and develop new knowledge and skills. At a minimum, these events involve an agent (most often the learner, but at times the facilitator) following an objective to engage with a resource. Activities are primarily delivered by a LMS and are facilitated and assessed by the SME/F."

Reference:

Joeckel III, G.L.; Jeon, T.; Gardner, J. (2009). Instructional Challenges in Higher Education Online Courses Delivered Through A Learning Management System By Subject Matter Experts. In H. Song (Ed.), Distance Learning Technology, Current Instruction, and the Future of Education: Applications of Today, Practices of Tomorrow, Idea Group Publishing, New York. Chapter accepted for publication.

Hello World

If you are interested in context-specific instructional design for online courses in higher education, check out my presentation from TTIX 09:

Context-specific Instructional Design in Higher Education - Part 1

Context-specific Instructional Design in Higher Education - Part 2