Evolution of Instructional Materials Design

Evolution of Instructional Materials Design

Reaction Paper 

By 

Licda. Guiselle Weelkly W.

graceb2you@hotmail.com 

Publishers attempt to develop instructional materials that meet the standards set for formal statewide adoption, creating prototypes with feedback from teachers about:

The EPIE (The Educational Products Information Exchange) helps school districs align their textbooks to their objectives more efficiently along with the publishers that continually refine and reshape their products through their contacts with teachers and schools with activities such as focus groups, teacher pilot proyects, presentations during evaluation procedures, and inservice training to support teachers in using their materials. 

Effective materials usually include the following features along with some others such as (teacher's manual, test items or resources, a study guide, and activity guide or cd in some cases).

The following are a list of features that instructional materials include:

• Intructional goals with adaptability to course requirements.
• Accurate,  relevant, and relatively up-to date information.
• Well-organized, coherent, and unified flow of information.
• Appropiate reading  level and vocabulary.
• Effective layout, visual presentation, and physical features.
• Absence of stereotypes and biases.
• Multidisciplinary content with multiple rather than single perspective.
• Small concepts taught as variations on larger themes.
• Development of insight and thinking skills rather than just memorization of isolated or unrelated facts.
• Real-world applications of informational skills.
• Inclusion of supplemental and references materials for teaching.   

Format of Instructional materials 

The National Association of State TextbookAdministrators (NASTA) provides a network of support for publishers, given guidelines about specialized formats needed to comply with accessibility legislation that must be delivered before print instructional material arrived a the schools. These formats include: Braille, Audio, Digital Text, and Large print. Publishers must meet technical specifications in preparing and delivering instructional materials for review and adoption.

Textbook Dominance

They are the most frequently used instructional material for students and teachers at all grade levels beyond primary grades. The amount of classroom time that students spend using textbooks is stimated at 75 to 90 percent.

The Teacher's  Manual 

It contains instructional resources to support instructional strategies and activities, and its organization affects how well it can be adapted and used in the classroom. These are some features that these manuals should carry:

• Practicality
• Alignment
• Coverage
• readability
• Methods
• Assessment
• Management.

Technology Changes

Changes in technology over the last seven decades have made visual presentation almost as important as content. With the expansion of technology,  even more specialization features, such as graphic design, photography, and typefaces, have emerged and they have increasingly become very important.

Visual Presentation

It is important to remember that people will quickly recall upon what they see more than what they listen to. In the last three decades of computers, electronic typesetting, and laser technology have offered an abundance of new typefaces, which many publishers have used for attention or aesthetic appeal without regard to impact on learning.

On the other hand, any of the materials presented in varios media will be more effective when they are organized systematically with a deliberate structure and sequence.

Challanges in Reviewing Content

These challenges are numerous including evaluating content that is controversial,  innacurate,  or without scholarship; written by annonymous authors; or misleading.

Contraversies

Contraversies arrive sometimes because of different beliefs about how best to approach a specific subject area. There have been historical contraversies concerning issues such as: teaching methods include whether to teach basic or higer-order-skills, the process of a discipline, facts, laws amids others.

 

 Innacurate Content

It is simply when the material published continue to contain factual errors or present concepts that have been disproven.  Sometimes, publishers also make mistakes in respect to alignment to standards.

Misleading Content Analysis

Publishers must show a correlation between their materials and the curricular requirements.

It must also satisfy the requirement for comprehensive content that targets higher learning objectives.

Always give citations with their correct and proper order( straitgh key words).

Priority Area: Presentation

Presentation features for attractiveness and durability are not generally among the flaws of instructional materials. Research gives important guidance on how to judge other features of presentation, such as elements that make instructional materials " readable" for students.

Visuals also play a role in readability. Too many visuals can distract learners from their learning process. Whenever it is integrated in a proporcional way  and covering the same territory in the text to read, it will support readability.

Comprehensiveness of Students and Teacher Resources 

Resources must be complete enough to address the targeted learning outcomes without requiring the teacher to prepare additional teaching materials for the course. These include:

• students resources and
• teachers resources.

 Students Resources

When the materials provide oversimplified tidbits of information without integration of subject matter, students consider them as dull reading or sometimes unattractive. Also the textbook or other sources we used for the learning developement should not carry so much attractive features with highlighting.

Reference aids are important in effective instructional materials( e.g., index, glossary, maps, and more) Items that guide students through materials might include clearly labeled materials,  directions and explanations, assignments with menus of choices, enrichment and remediation activities, additional resources,  and tests and assessment tools either in the students materials or in the teacher's  guide or edition.

Teacher Resources

These resourcer often include a massive teacher's manual that includes the annotated students text, lesson plans, enrichment activities, questioning strategies,  instructions on how to use the book, bibliographies, copies, worksheets, tests, diagrams and more.

They should have components such as: 

• Materials that are easy to use.
• Materials to support lesson planning,teaching, and learning.
• Suggestions for adapting instruction for varying needs.
• Guidelines and resources on how to implement and evaluate instruction.
• Resources to use in classroom activities.
• Resources for building relationships with families.

All components of an instructional package must be integrated and interdependent and must correspond with each other.

Alignment of Instructional Components

The components mus t align with each other, as well as with the curriculum. These must refer:

• within students and with the teacher's  materials.

  Alignment within Students Materials

There should be alignment of content.  learning activities, tests, goals, and objectives improves learning. Each will contribute to the development of higer-order thinking skills.

Alignment within Teacher's  Materials

The teacher's manual must have co-relation with students'activities of the content,  sequence, pacing, and procedures for teachers and at the same time,  advocated for the manuals to shift more responsibilities over to the teachers.  Materials must match in content and progression of instructional activities.

Organization of Instructional  Materials

Clear organization of instructional materials supports: 

1. Access to content( providing a table of content)
2. Visible structure and format.

• Font style and treatment talk about the type of content.
• Symbols, mumbering or other ways to showcase headings.
• Subheading, summaries, overviews, outlines and section.
• Color Hightlighting to add emphasis, attractiveness, show types of information.
• Margin comments, textboxes, tables and charts.
• Layout organizes content with sensible groupings and consistent structure.
• Objectives can aid content organization.
• Chunking.

Logical Organization

Students need organized knowledge structures to learn new information. Poor organization is detrimental to learning,  while an explicit and teachable content structure can double the amount remembered.

Unified

Introductions play a major role when they include anchoring ideas, key points, schemes, summaries and others. The statement of a clear purpose with content organized aound main ideas, principles, concepts, and logical relationships supports the unity and flow of information.

Consistent

The pattern of organization of the content should be consistent and logical for the type of subject or topic. Structure with logical sequencing improves learning.

 

Readability of instructional Materials

In order for students to be engage in listening and reading activities, the narrative and visual elements should be clear and presentable. This will give them the proper understanding of the content at an appropiate level.

Language Style

The texts must be written in a way that it does not interfere with students comprehension of the material. Also it will be good to include the teen's point of view, because they will understand better the vocabulary, let it contains larger print, style more like a  magazine, and questions between smaller chunks of text. Some features that will interfere with readability are:

• Fragmented content
• Choopy sentences
• Incoherent visuals.

These are some typographical features that support readability:

1. Font style forms and emphasizes words and ideas.
2. Text spacing separates and group words, sentences, paragraphs, and sections.
3. Simplicity avoids extraneous and redundant information and focuses attention.
4. High, but not shorp, contrast supports separation of letters, words, and sections.
5. Text and visuals focus information and concepts.

 Choosing a Textbook and Other Printed Materials

Choosing a textbook is one of the most important tasks for the foreign language teacher at any level. it is extremely difficult to maintain a well articulated local curriculum over a long period  of time without reference to a professionally developed text series.  So as foreign language programs continues to grow, publishers are producing textbook materials to add to the small number of contemporary text series developed for the American market.

In cases like Middle School Level, the common practice is to choose the materials design for high school students and " slow them down" covering the necessarily subjects according to the curriculum and students major needs.

What are the criterias used to evaluate Textbooks and other Printed Material? 

Teacher usually use materials develop in other districts for evaluating textbook and their meaningful uses.

Some considerations that can be taken into account are:

• The Goals of the program or authors.
• Identify if communication rather than grammar is the focus.
• Identify if authentical culture integration is inmmerse in the textbook.
• There should be provision for teaching appropiate subject content according to the grade and in the target language, always presenting some sourt of suggestions for Interdisciplinary content and activities.
• Illustrations mus  be free of racial, gender and cultural bias.
• Materials must contain flexibility and options for variety of students.
• It should provide physical characteristics.
• Always provide a teachers' manual with abundant suggestions for the teacher.
• Materials must be affordable.