Implementation and Evaluation: A dream or a blueprint

The final phases of ADDIE are often our "ultimate goal" when trying to incorporate an innovation into our teaching and learning practice. I would like to suggest that we rather look at the IE as our blueprint. A blueprint for what the next cycle of ADDIE should be in this particular scenario.

Instructional design should be, and almost always is, an iterative process. Just because you have completed one cycle of ADDIE, does not mean that you have now successfully implemented an innovative prototype and can move on. We should be using the implementation phase to document EVERYTHING that happens when we are able to put our plan from the first 3 phases into action. With the evaluation phase, everything that has come before, especially your notes from the implementation phase, is very important. Here you take time to reflect on where you have come from, what the initial problem and assumptions were, how you expected the change to be accepted and adopted, and what has actually happened. Once this is done, you are more than likely to come up with new questions for analysis, and so the cycle begins again.

As a reflection of this, and guideline, here is the completed diagram for this module:

Hopefully, this completed diagram is one that you are able to plot your assignment on. If not, that is OKAY! Context is important, theory is important, and as a result, your assignment should be different from that in another institution, department or module. The important thing is for you to be able to philosophically discuss why yours is different and why it should remain that way.

Congratulations on completing your first cycle, or at least a part of it, with ADDIE. From here we can only move forward, and back, and forward again :)

Development and prototypes......are you ready?

In the development phase of the ADDIE process, you are expected to apply what you have now established about your context, i.e. your students' needs and abilities, the shortcomings in the curriculum, the possibilities of the tools. This application needs to use the information from the analysis phase as well as the design phase.
One of the aspects I find comforting about this type of approach, is the fact that each phase encourages you to ensure that you have enough information and have done enough to move on. If for some reason you reach the development phase and are not sure of the exact steps you should be taking now in order to deliver the teaching and learning activity in full, then it means you have missed out on something and need to go back to the design or analysis phase. And this for me, is very encouraging.

By now you should all be at  a space where you have a clear idea of the problem, a decent plan to address the problem, and the tool you need to do so. The development phase is the fun part!

But what are you developing? Why are you developing? The answers may seem simple. Your assignment instructions tell you that we expect a prototype at the end of the module. Your programme tells you that everything you do is to facilitate learning.
So what is a prototype? Michael Allen, in the book "Leaving ADDIE for SAM," defines a prototype  as follows:
"A prototype is, by definition, rough and incomplete. A prototype is not a fully functioning instructional component......" 
In a HPE context, I would liken a protoype to a skeleton with a few muscles, and the epidermis attached. It gives me the basic idea of my work (a body with soft tissue attachments and a protective covering), but doesn't truly give me the ability to learn about the human body in its' entirety. Your protoype for this module may be one with ALL the muscles, but it will still take time, feedback and testing to decide if you have included all the layers of the skin and the internal organs.

I hope this makes sense and possibly eases the tension a bit regarding what is expected of you. Again, I will remind you that this protoype and the assignment you leave this module with is the beginning of an innovation in your teaching practice and will be very rewarding in the end.

Our weekly diagram is expanding and with this addition today, we also reach the end of the cycle with regard to what is reasonably expected of you to complete for the module. You can see now how the design and development phase could almost be seen as one activity. The next two phases are not always possible to complete in the short time you  are engaging with the module, but are important and should still be completed in good time.

Design and Develop: Partners in crime

For the next two weeks you will be expected to work through, and reflect on, the design and development phases of your innovation in lEarning. For this post, let us focus on the Design phase, with a hint toward the Development phase of the ADDIE model.

Generally, the design phase is one in which you will create a solid plan for the prototype, set objectives for the teaching and learning activity/module, decide on assessment methods and make final decisions regarding the tool or media that you will be using. It is also imperative that you receive feedback on these ideas as you are formulating them; from colleagues, students, or fellow MPhil colleagues!

So, as illustrated below:

•Determine objectives or outcomes for the learning activity

•Determine the teaching approach or method aka classroom/online activities

•Determine the assessment activities linked to these objective and learning activities

•Confirm the tool or media used

•Put everything on paper

•Create a rough version of the prototype

As with any other teaching and learning intervention, remember that this lEarning process is one which should be theoretically grounded. As an example, please see the following articles (also loaded in your SUNLearn Reading folders). These authors remind us of the importance of a theoretical basis for our work, specifically drawing on learning theories. Flynn et al The second article uses the ADDIE process in their intervention and may therefore apply to what you are doing now, especially as an example of how the ADDIE can be used. Gedik et al

One of the important outcomes of the design phase, once a good theoretical background is laid, is for a rough idea of the prototype to be selected and developed. Examples of these could be using a wiki for gathering information in a group assignment (e.g. wikispaces.com), using tools such as clickers or audience response systems (socrative.com) for in-class questions/games/interaction, creating interactive teaching and assessment online classrooms via a learning management system or Google (blendspace.com), perhaps you would like to create short videos/podcasts (screencast-o-matic.com), or encouraging critical thinking and analysis/scaffolding of information to understand the connections between concepts (cmaptools.com). The possibilities are endless. The important thing to remember is not to be carried away by the excitement of the tools, but rather to refer back to the theoretical basis for the change and the guidance from your analysis phase.

So there you go.....Analysis done! Actually not, remember, the value of any design-based process is that you constantly review/analyse/evaluate what you are doing in each phase and apply this to your design.
You have found a problem and thought of possible solutions in your Analysis phase. Now you will start designing your intervention and analyse the feasibility of your idea as you go through feedback from those around you. When you reach the next phase, analysis of what you are developing will help you to go back and refine your design, and finally, your evaluation of the entire process may end up in a new needs analysis or highlight gaps in your initial analysis. We grow as we learn and we learn as we change the landscape of our teaching environment.

Happy designing!

Solving a problem.....what problem?

This module, along with others in the programme, makes the assumption that you are using a theoretically-grounded method or methods to solve a problem in order to facilitate learning for your students or for fellow colleagues in the case of faculty development initiatives. The question for this week is, what is the problem? How are we to know what the problem is that we need to solve?
This is where the ADDIE process begins. Analysis of the audience and the environment, or the curriculum, will guide you in understanding what it is you need to address and potentially guide you in deciding how to address the problem.

ADDIE, and other instructional design processes, is an iterative process. It requires the educator to begin with Analysis and then move through the process which will ultimately end with the process being another form of analysis through Evaluation.

Throughout this module, I will build on a graphical representation of suggestions and guidelines for how you will be able to frame your lEarning prototype or intervention within the ADDIE model.

Analysis could include identifying the module or programme and analysing it to determine where extra work could be done to facilitate learning based on feedback from students or academic outcome. It could include conducting a needs analysis with students through a survey or questionnaire, a focus group discussion, or analysis of module feedback comments. Once you determine whether or not your assumptions of the problem are supported by the afore-mentioned analysis, you can investigate potential solutions and analyse their ability to address the problem.

An example: 
An introduction to clinical practice module requires students to understand the value and importance of the patient interview. In the past, you have experienced students struggling with the patient interview in more senior phases of your course and make the assumption that if their introductory module were improved, their subsequent clinical practice modules would demonstrate this improvement through effective patient interviews.
Analysis for this scenario would include evaluation of the current teaching approach in the introduction to clinical practice module; a needs analysis investigating the need for a change or improvement in the  module executed by conducting focus group interviews with junior (currently in the Intro module) and senior students. 
Lets' assume that the students highlight a lack of preparation for real clinical practice and communication skills but shows that the theory of clinical interviews is strongly emphasized in the module.
The next step in analysis would include researching methods that could improve communication skills, methods that could facilitate application of theory, etc. You find that application of theory could be supported through the use of a flipped classroom, or assignments providing evidence of competence. The research should then go further to determine which would be most suitable for your environment and may then include a survey needs analysis where you determine whether or not students have access to technology that will enable them to engage with course material prior to class time (for a flipped classroom) or possibly record and submit electronic assignments demonstrating competence in interview skills.

As you can see from the scenario above, analysis before embarking on a solution to an assumed problem is essential. If I assumed that the way students are taught are incorrect and blindly went in to change the module structure, I would have no evidence to support it and may in fact have changed something that didn't need to be changed.

With this, I encourage you to begin your analysis process for your module/course. Comments are welcome should you have any questions, better yet, comment on each others' posts!

And so it begins....The boring admin part :)

Welcome to the FINAL module of your MPhil HPE coursework! I trust that you are approaching this with great excitement and not trepidation. As the final module, it is expected to be one that is complex and fitting for that of a "seasoned" and "critical thinking" Health Professional Educationalist.

Don't worry though, this module is far from boring. It is one in which, as promised, you will hopefully get to flex your HPE muscles that you have built up over the past two years using technology to facilitate the teaching and learning process. Though technology is a focus, I hope to engage with you in a discussion where we will start to change the way in which we approach these teaching and learning interventions, shifting from an E-learning to a lEarning approach. An approach in which learning is the focus and the electronic/technology component is just one of the tools used, along with content, teaching style, interactive group activities, assessment, etc.

In saying this, I would like to remind you that the approach that is used in this module is one of experiential learning. This means that you will be working on designing a new intervention/prototype, but at the same time use technology in a way that you could replicate in future as a teaching and learning tool through the blogs.

For each week of the module, you will have one aspect to focus on. The purpose of doing it in this way is for you to be able to focus your thinking and reading (and definitely writing) in a structured manner. As discussed at the beginning of the year, and in the module outline, we will be using one of the many instructional design approaches out there. ADDIE is a very basic, but useful method to use when embarking on the design of a new intervention. There are obviously many other design-based methods out there, however, for the purposes of this module, we will be focusing on this one.

I will be engaging with all of you on your blog as well as on this central one. It is also required of you to engage with your colleagues participating in this module on their blogs in order to learn through discussion and possibly collaboration. Please be sure to re-read the assessment structure for this module in the module outline and ask any questions you may have regarding this via the blog or the SUNLearn module forum.

I will be posting something specific to the focus of the week on each Monday of the module (don't worry, this post isn't it for the week) in order to begin the thinking and planning for your assignment. Remember, the finished product of this module is not to have completed the full ADDIE cycle, as the time given for the module is not sufficient. Instead, you are expected to at least complete the first three phases of the process Analysis, Design and Development; and then if it is not possible to complete the process with Implementation and Evaluation, to theoretically conduct these in a discussion in the assignment.

I look forward to this Exciting and Engaging
lEarning modulE!

*SUNLearn Forum message*

Dear Colleagues

I am happy to welcome you to the e-Learning elective. Please remember that we will be working exclusively via the blogger platform. The Central Blog healthElearning ( http://mphilhse.blogspot.co.za/ ) will be used to post discussion topics and share suggestions and guidelines for the focus of each week. The interactivity from your side via the blogger platform is compulsory and contributes to the mark for this module. This will require you to blog at least once a week on your personal blog that you created as well as comment on your fellow MPhil colleagues' blogs during the module. Though we will not use the regular academic platform, it is still an academic exercise and I would like to encourage you to search for, and share, as many articles as it applies to the work you will be doing in preparation for your assignment at the end of the module. 

A suggestion is to use the terms Blended Learning, when searching for articles, as this is the more common/acceptable term used these days. Some of the more useful databases, apart from Google scholar, are Wiley Online, Springer and Ebscohost. These can be found on the library website.

As a reminder for you, these are your colleagues that you will be working with for the next 4 weeks on this module:

Humphries	Petro	http://barebonesanatomy.blogspot.com
Masava	Beloved	http://belovednet.blogspot.com
Muniru	Ayishetu	http://simulationsatsmd.blogspot.com
Rambiritch	Vanitha	http://vanitharam.blogspot.com
Tin Maung Maung	Yamin	http://pomeyamin.blogspot.com

Please visit their blog to share your constructive ideas and feedback on their posts as the module progresses.

 I will post this forum announcement on the blog as well for those who may not check to see them here

Another year, another....

Today marks the eve of the e-learning module contact session with the MPhil HPE Class of 2015. I find myself wondering.... Is this another year with more of the same? Another year of angst and exhaustion following a tough contact week and even more nerve-wrecking proposal presentations this morning? Is this just another year of trying to come up with a witty theme and style for the module blog that half the participants aren't going to remember how to find in September when the module is about to begin?

Well, do not fear. I'm not some despondent, tired-to-be-teaching-the-same-module-again, type of facilitator. No, in fact I know that no matter how prepared or unprepared I may feel for our session in the morning, I am going to be excited when 8h00 arrives. Here's why...

At the end of this exhausting, angst-filled week that has marked the beginning of your final year, I get the chance to inspire an idea in at least one of you. I don't know if it'll be more than one or all, who will choose to take this elective at the end of the year (I will be happy with at least one though :) :) ). What I do know, is that every year, including the year that I sat exactly where you are right now, there is at least one person who finds this module liberating, a melting pot of ideas that consists of all the assessment, theories of learning, methodology, leadership, etc. that has been company in the early hours of the morning. In fact, I found this module so liberating that I branched out into a new career path while still using my passion for HPE as my true north.

And so, as I end of this part of the post, I would like to complete the sentence that I started in the title by saying: Another year, another opportunity to generate interest in the use of technology for enhancing teaching and learning.


Now for the " hard" part:

You will have signed up for blogger and started your own first blog (for many of you) by now. This blog post that you have written will remain text written in invisible ink unless you let us know where you are in the cyber-universe.

1. In the comments below, type your name and your blog address ONLY. 
2. Visit one of your classmates blogs (using the address you found in the comment section here).
3. Read what your classmate has written and respond to them in the comment section under their post.
4. Write your blog address and password down somewhere where you will remember it! (If you have a google/gmail account you use regularly, you will not need to do this as it is the same as that password)

And that is it!

You have completed your contact session for one of your 2nd year electives. Now I will say goodbye...and hopefully, hello to some (or all) of you later in the year again.