Check out my course design, or Jump to my projects

	f you don't know where you're going, how're you going to know when you get there?
		It could be an interesting trip, but you run the risk of finding you're not where you wanted to be... That's why I enthusiastically embrace instructional design (ID) as a framework for helping organizations solve problems and achieve goals.
	ut it's just common sense!
		That's just it! ID does make good sense. Particularly if you think of it as a tool kit (no lock-step application of models for me), from which you can draw methods and strategies as needed, to help define needs and goals, design and develop solutions, and evaluate the outcomes.
	ow do I know?
		I've had the good fortune to be an instructional designer and project manager for the last 19 years. And I've gotten to teach these skills for the last 14. I'm a professor of instructional technology, and I've helped a lot of neat folks learn ID, and I've managed scads of great teams and projects.
	ant to find out more?
		If you're curious about the classes I've designed and delivered, read on. Or jump down the page to check out some of the interactive instructional products I've designed. (I'm up till all hours on neat projects just like you are!)

	Challenging & Worth It! My Graduate Courses
	They say that nothing worthwhile comes easily. Whoever "they" are, they're been around the track a few times. Here's the scoop: My classes are among the most challenging students have ever taken. They also prove to be among the most worthwhile. That doesn't mean it's not fun, because we have some great times. It just means that hard work is, well, hard.
	Introductory & Advanced Instructional Design
	Definitely core courses. Students learn (by doing) the value of needs assessment, design, development and evaluation. We explore both behavioral (important outcomes are specified in advance) and constructivist (learners construct their own version of knowledge as a result of their experiences) approaches. You guessed it, there's a time and place for each. But one does not design in a vacuum. You've got to learn to work with and rely on the contributions of others. So, students work in teams and learn how to capitalize on the strengths of each member. They get to talk about the tough interpersonal stuff that sometimes gets in the way and learn good ways of dealing with it. Designers don't always have the luxury of content expertise, so outside content experts are consulted. And students develop their consulting skills by working with actual clients. You mean, it's not enough that I know the best approach? That's right, you've got to be able to communicate this effectively to others in face-to-face communications and via your products. So, we focus on developing confidence in oral presentation, and documentation and products that are both pleasing and professional. That's not all. We actively explore emerging instructional delivery methods and modes (Web-based Learning, Project and Change Management Strategies, Just-in-Time Learning). Finally, since we have time to complete only a few design projects, we use instructional cases to explore other professional practice situations and problems (scroll or jump down to find out about the really cool ID cases we've developed).

	Interactive Technologies I & II
	Because students already have ID and computer tools on their mylar/coolmax toolbelts when they enroll in these classes, we get to do the advanced stuff here. We capture and do interesting things with media (still images, video, audio, animation). We select the most promising of the current development tools and learn how to use them. But that's only a start... How can interactive media be used to most effectively communicate a message or provide an experience? To find this out, students propose and undertake the design and development of informational or instructional products. Since we are not the first ones creating wheels here, we learn from the successes of others by reviewing and discussing outstanding interactive work. Through many or my own project design and research experiences, and informed by the R&D work of others, I've developed a list of user interface design guidelines. (Special thanks to Marti Julian for her contributions here.)
	Research with Instructional Technologies
	We are also scholars here, and research can make important contributions to what we know about using technologies to communicate and help others learn. Students already know quantitative and qualitative research methods when they enroll. However (can you hear the refrain?), "It's not enough to know the tools, you have to know what to do with them." Without the pressures of this research being "the dissertation," students get to propose and carry out a research project with lots of guidance in the process. That's good, but that's not half of it. Students also contribute to the research of their colleagues, in weekly discussions of project challenges and solutions. Because we want to relate our thoughts and findings to those of others in the field, we select landmark readings and spend time chewing on them as a group. (A few are kind of tough, but altogether it's very nutritious.)
	Workshops
	Not everyone can afford to take three graduate courses before they can learn interactive media tools and techniques (the pre-req's for the Interactive Technologies courses, above). So, I offer a 3-week intensive summer workshop for any graduate student, Intro to Digital Media Creation. Same tools, same techniques, but no project and no time to review the work of others. I used to offer a similar workshop for K-12 teachers (Interactive Computer Graphics) with colleague Glen Bull. It was fun, but we got too busy to continue with it.
	I've also taught Video Production (I & II) and BASIC Programming for Instruction. Ask me about these sometime. Return to the top of this page.

	Cool Stuff, and Effective, Too Instructional Products I've Designed and Developed
	It's not just students that are learning neat stuff, I get to dive in and have fun too. On most of these projects, I've worked with teams of advanced graduate students--some really wonderful people!
	Multimedia Cases
	How can you expose students to a wide range of professional practice situations and problems when class time is tight? How can you encourage students to begin thinking and problem-solving as professionals? Use cases! Through case analysis, students learn to: (1) identify issues, (2) take on different perspectives, (3) apply professional knowledge, (4) develop action plans, (5) and hypothesize as to potential outcomes. We love the Web for delivery of cases because we can simulate real-world complexities (with multiple media to enhance realism), because the hypertext features make it easy to navigate a body of evidence, and because it's a snap to distribute the cases to our users, regardless of computer platform. Check out some of our papers on this topic. Try out these compelling multimedia cases: · Zero Tolerance in Layne County   (Issues of Politics and Education for School Administrators)   teach.virginia.edu/go/ZT · Chronicles of RocketBoy   (Performance support for digital animators.)   teach.virginia.edu/go/ITcases/Chronicles · Prescription: Instructional Design   (Needs assessment and robotics in a hospital setting)   teach.virginia.edu/go/ITcases/RxDesign · Harvesting Cooperation   (Instructional technology and children of migrant farm workers)   teach.virginia.edu/go/ITcases/Harvest · The Trials of Terry Kirkland   (A novice designer works with some entrenched teachers)   teach.virginia.edu/go/ITcases/Terry Who gets to use these cases? Not just my students. We've had teams of student case analysts from across the country, as part of an annual Instructional Design Team Case Competition (teach.virginia.edu/go/ITcases). The combination of cases with the Web is so powerful, we built an entire course around it. Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning is an undergraduate Teacher Education course which has been used by instructors and students at 11 colleges and universities across the U.S. and Canada.

	Health Evaluation and Education
	The Web is encouraging lots of changes, and one of them is enabling people to be more involved in their own health care. Health Heritage is a web site we * designed to guide patients through the creation of their family tree and recording of their health history. History is collected with selectively delivered questions based upon a disease tree--More detailed questions about a condition are delivered only if previous answers suggested the presence of a condition for a family member. The health history information is then evaluated with an algorithm based on epidemiology and expert opinion, yielding risk assessments and health care recommendations for over 90 health conditions. These risks and recommendations are designed to be used by the primary care physician as part of a regular health care program. So cool, eh? We hope that, as a by-product of the experience, people will begin to take ownership not only of their health records, but of their health! (We've already presented a few papers on this project.) Additional benefits provided by the site include: Creation of a print-able family tree and social history with occupations, hobbies, and stories for each family member; and E-mail Family Event Reminders, based on birthdates already collected as part of the family tree, or on other important dates that the patient enters. A way for primary care providers to learn about issues related to genetics and health, in the context of their health care practice. * Who is the "we"? This project brought together a great interdisciplinary team made up of medical specialists, genetics counselors, instructional designers (we did the needs assessment, interface design, and rapid prototyping), health evaluation specialists, and programmers, among others. The project was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

	Pippin: Patient Self Care Living with diabetes is a big deal. (Ask anyone who has it.) Add to this the difficulties associated with a low income and living in a rural area, and it becomes a challenge indeed. We (crack team of health-care providers, instructional designers, and a brilliant programmer) designed the Pippin Project (based on WebTV, so requring only a TV set and phone line) to assist these folks as they learned to manage their diabetes through meeting personal goals for medication adherence, diet, and exercise. Linking participants with a diabetes educator through periodic phone consultation, and review of participant progress with the educator and physician provided the encouragement that cinched the deal. Our pilot test (completed in April of 2002) suggests this will be a highly effective tool. Thanks to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for funding the product development. We hope to run field trials soon.

	The Healthy Touch I thought everyone knew about the potential dangers of alcohol consumption during pregnancy. Wrong. Our focus groups suggested that, among the rural poor, there are many misconceptions (some pretty surprising). Health-care providers in public health clinics were already struggling to meet the demands of patient treatment, and printed information proved an ineffective medium of communication (our target population had, on average, 4th-grade reading skills). In response, I worked with a team of health-care providers and instructional designers to produce The Healthy Touch. This was back in the days of HyperCard, but we were still able to use illustrations, photographs, animations, narration, and music to provide what we hoped was a culturally relevant guide to the effects of alcohol on fetal development, fetal nutrition, and strategies to help avoid alcohol consumption. We found the program to be very effective in changing women's intentions to consume alcohol.

	Interactive Instruction
	Net-Frog There are lots of reasons not to like frog dissection (including ethical, educational, and economic reasons). We wondered, "Can we create an effective instructional alternative?" and "Can we create something that would better prepare students for the dissection experience, so that it becomes a true educational exploration (rather than what some high school teachers have called a 'hack and slash' experience)?" Our first response was to get to work on the videodisc-based "Interactive Frog Dissection." It proved to be both an effective substitute and useful supplement to dissection. (We did research so we know.) After we finished jumping up and down with excitement over the emergence of the Web, we set to work porting the frog materials over. The result is Net-Frog. Go on, try it--you may finally learn about frog anatomy (lots of pictures and movies and even interactive practice). This site has held up pretty well, considering it was developed in 1994. (I hope we get to Net-Frog II this year.) Even so, it continues to be very popular. We've tracked 1.5 million users from our server alone (between two and three thousand separate uses each week) and have received over 35 "best of web" awards and notices.

	The Shopping Simulation No, this isn't therapy for compulsive spenders... Instead, it's designed to teach grocery shopping skills to high school students with moderate to severe learning disabilities. Using this videodisc-based program, students select different items to shop for and different stores to shop in (because the raisins are sometimes next to the yogurt and sometimes by the canned peaches). Students practice finding the items (and of course paying for them!). This simulation supplements the actual shopping experience students get when they can go into community stores for practice. It was developed with Cheryl Wissick (now on the faculty at the University of South Carolina). Cheryl, I hope you'll get this on the Web soon...

	Native Peoples of the Southwest If kids don't appreciate their own cultures, how can they hope to respect the cultures of others? This is a question we asked ourselves when beginning to design a K-6 curriculum on Native Americans for The Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. We (myself, Maria Harper-Marinick and Project Director Susan Shaffer) decided that we had to tackle both at once. Here's an example: The activities encourage students to find out about their own cultural backgrounds, to use their backgrounds to create meaningful icons and symbols, and to use these icons and symbols in art work. At the same time, students experience Native American culture through slide/tape programs (full of music, poetry, and imagery), by handling reproduction artifacts (a Hopi rattle, for instance), and even by cooking Native American foods. The curriculum won two national design awards. You can order the materials from The Heard Museum Bookstore.

	Other work... Working with great colleagues, I've designed and produced lots of other products, including: Explorable multimedia database on Boyle's Law, with problem-based challenges. Interactive kiosk providing visitor information for the Curry School of Education Interactive product simulator for storyboarding and prototyping Middle school science tutorial, Solar Energy: Promise From The Sun Interactive videodiscs for grant-sponsored R&D:   - A demonstration of interactive product potential   - An interactive videodisc costing model Loads of instructional and informational videotapes and slide/tape   programs.
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