Hi there, this is my second post since turning this blog into a portfolio to support my career change in eLearning/Instructional Design. In this post we're going to look at a PowerPoint presentation I made for Year 8 students. During this process I am going to start by explaining to you my design philosophy. I am then going show you how this lesson achieved them.
This exciting, let's get started :)
Design philosophy
I have four simple but core beliefs in designing PowerPoints for learners.
Before I even start planning and creating the resources, I ask myself "What do I need the learner to know at the end of the lesson?" Once I have this figured out I can start planning towards that end target.
Regularly reviewing content as this will build confidence in the learner as it displays their own progress to them and enables what they have learnt to move from working to long-term memory.
Consistent design approach, no one wants to go from one design on a slide to a totally different design as this would be too jarring for the learner.
Segmentation, this is because learners are overwhelmed by too many new elements and need to be introduced in a chunked/bite-sized parts.
Example
What caused Britain to become involved in the Transatlantic Slave Trade?
This lesson was the third lesson from a scheme of lessons on the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The first design principle I used for this lesson was the understanding that I wanted to the learners to understand the different factors involved in Britain entering the Slave Trade. I was able to plan the lesson backwards from this target. I felt like this was achieved by the activity that showed the three causes of Britain entering the Slave Trade and the students would then highlight the causes, explain the cause, and then reach a judgement on why Britain entered the Slave Trade. Later in the lesson the learner has to come to an overall judgement on which factor caused Britain to enter the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
The second design principle was the regular reviewing of content. This is done so that the learner can build confidence in the content. The lesson starts with a "Do Now" task, I have previously written two blog posts on these. You can see I have used a breadth of different questions in order to build confidence: A true or false, a multiple choice and a cold call question. These activities are designed to build confidence, so they are focused on core knowledge to support the learning. The questions are also colour coded to show students when they learnt about this in order to reduce intrinsic load and allow them to successfully access their long-term memory.
A consistent design approach to the lesson is the third design principle. This lesson and the lessons I have attached to the end of these blog post will all have the same design principles. The consistency is shown at the start by having a review in order to build confidence. This is then followed by having the lesson inquiry to the top of the lesson so that the learner knows what the purpose of the lesson is. All tasks which must be completed are in yellow box as this allows the learner to understand when they need to complete a task in order to progress. Key information is in bold as the learner can see it and know that this is important and finally, I always embedded videos as if the learner has to click on a hyperlink to YouTube this can cause a lack of focus to develop. All resources needed should be within the lesson.
The fourth design principle is the segmentation of new knowledge and concepts. Not doing this in my experience will lead to learners becoming cognitively overwhelmed and unable to make progress. This is what we as eLearning creators and Instructional Designers want to minimise. I base my approach off this on experience but also on Oliver Lovell's "Cognitive Load Theory in Action". Where on page 44 he states that in order to reduce the feeling of becoming overwhelmed and stop intrinsic cognitive load it is best to segmentate the knowledge into bite sized chunks. I do this by having every new concept on a slide by itself where it is the focus of the learner’s attention. This can be seen on slides 4 where learners are introduced to the first factors causing Britain to becoming involved in the Transatlantic Slave Trade with the next activity shown to the learners on slide 5 and displayed to them on slide 6.
Thank you for taking the time to read this blog post where I have explained the design principles behind the learning resources i have created using PowerPoint.
Other examples of lessons that reach this design principle:
1. How was the Spanish Empire able to dominate the world by the 16th century?
2. What was life like in a Victorian town?