A four-week course offered through ALA Publishing eLearning Solutions, Instructional Design for Online Teaching and Learning, taught by Diane Kovacs, focused on using seven steps to optimize impact in teaching and learning situations.  These could be courses, tutorials, workshops, etc. The course began with an overview of learning perspectives and learning styles.  Ms. Bennett’s biggest takeaway from that portion is no learner learns in just one way. It behooves us as teachers to offer information and materials in a variety of ways, to benefit many.  The seven steps are as follows:

1. Develop a needs assessment and imagine instruction goals
2. Detail instruction analysis
3. Discover and refine entry behavior and learner characteristics
4. Extract and describe learner outcomes
5. Pre-Instruction activities
   1. Instructional presentation
   2. Learner participation
   3. Testing and assessment
   4. Motivation and marketing
6. Choose teaching and learning tools (learning objects)
7. Plan formative and summative evaluation  

Weekly activities included selected readings, videos, discussion boards, and creating our own instructional design plan for a project we plan to pursue.  Ms. Bennett noted, “Personally, I enjoyed having feedback after completing each of the steps, to make sure I am including the correct information. Crafting learner outcomes is tricky to do well, but when clear and specific, makes it much easier to assess learning.”