Final Project
Winter 2008

This assignment is the culmination of your learning, assignments, discoveries and discussions throughout this course. You are assigned to work in groups to encourage and support each other, but you will each submit your own individual paper at the end of the term. This assignment is worth 25% of your total grade for this course.

As a group you will agree on a single topic for your instructional unit. You will all design your unit on that topic. Your audience is college students and the instruction should last at least three hours; in most cases longer.

You will be submitting parts of the assignment throughout the term for validation and support from the instructor. These assignments may be submitted as a group and may be included in your final project as they are created by the group, or you individually may modify them to meet your expectations. You are expected to share ideas in your group, but you are not expected to share every written detail. Each final project paper is to be a product of the individual.

There are several specific expectations for the final project but you may modify these expectations as you discover an instructional design model that works best for you.

Title
Your paper will include a cover page with your name, date and the title of your project.

Your instructional unit will include a title. Titles are typically short and catchy. They should identify the topic but should also motivate the potential student to join the class.

Analyze your Task
Your instructional unit will have a goal, a purpose. You will write a clear explanation why you are teaching this unit.

Here are some questions to consider. Were you asked to teach this unit by your superior? What do they expect you to do? Is there a problem that this instruction will help solve? Is this simply something that will help the learners in life? Is this an important skill or knowledge that will be useful? Is your goal to offer something just because you think others would be interested?

"What is the problem you are trying to solve?"

Now that you understand the problem, here are more questions to consider in choosing your goal. What skills and information are necessary to meet the needs or problem? What do you as a instructor need to do in the instructing? As you analyze your goal, how are you going to organize your activities? How much detail will you include in your instruction? All this leads to the question: How much time do you need for your instruction? Will you do it all in one session, two sessions or more? Why? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each plan?

Analyze your Audience
I have assigned you your audience. Your audience are college aged students, perhaps at a graduate level of study. You will, in writing, analyze your audience by describing characteristics of these learners. What skills do they bring to the presentation, class or seminar? What background will they bring with them? How will their culture, language skills, economic status, age, family status, physical abilities and disabilities affect your instructional design? What interests the learners? I expect this analysis to be thorough.

Objectives
You will list the objectives of your instruction. The objectives themselves may be bulleted and short phrases. Objectives will use appropriate action words, such as those listed on page 111 in the textbook. However, you will also include an explanation how each objective matches with the learning domains and the taxonomy of each. You will identify how these objectives relate to the goal and how they match with the audience and the characteristics of the audience.

Objectives which are designed by your group will be submitted to the instructor for review and comments early in the term (approximately Week 6).

Instructional Strategies
While the objectives give us direction for designing the instruction, one still need to refine the details with specific activities, tasks and materials.

How will you sequence your instruction to meet your goal, your objectives and match your audience? Explain in your writing why you chose the sequence of events.

You will need to gather your resources which may be objects that you bring into the classroom: handouts for the audience, powerpoint or other multimedia presentations, posters, books and other readings or just your notes to keep your orgainized. Explain what materials you will gather and how you will use them.

Development of the Instruction
Now you will write in some detail how you expect the presentation, class or seminar to actually occur. You will list each activity or task, what the instructor will do, what the learners will do, what materials you will use, and how long it will take. This is when you are visualizing the actual event and running it through your mind.

This may best formatted with a different section in your writing for each activity or task. In each section you will include all the information about that activity or task.

If you are doing any formative assessment, either formal or informal, explain how you will do the assessment and how the assessment will affect the future activities. You may or may not have a rubric or scoring guide at this time.

Evaluation of Learners' Progress
You will develop and include in your final project a rubric for this instructional unit. The tasks or skills in the rubric may be casually observed by the instructor, or they may be a part of the written examination or paper, or they may be observed as a part of a formal presentation and activity. The rubric may be scored at the end of the instruction, or it may be scored throughout the instruction. If you choose a form of written examination, design and include the examination. If you choose a paper or presentation, include directions for that assignment.

Evaluation of the Instruction
You will write a section on how you will evaluate your instruction after you have finished giving the instruction. What you do perceive as possible difficulties, and what would you do to reduce the difficulties and how you may adjust your instruction in the future to mitigate those difficulties?

Rubric for Final Project
Click here for the Final Project Rubric.