How important is understanding the brain as an Instructional Designer
While
learning about the brain and how it processes, stores, and retrieves
information for learning I discovered a few articles to help answer some of my
questions. My instructor this week posted
a question about the importance of Instructional designers understanding how
the brain works to teach your learners
effectively. My initial response was I didn’t feel like it was relevant
to my job of creating and developing curriculum to know how the brain works; however,
I am starting to rethink that initial thought.
In
the article and webinar presented by eLearning
Brothers and their host was Carmen Simon, a
cognitive scientist who discussed how people pay attention, remember content,
and ultimately act on it. The webinar is “The
Neuroscience of memorable messages” I would recommend taking the time and
watch the webinar. For me as an Instructional Designer having a better
understanding of the brain and what functions
lead to memory formation and ultimately learning would help me be able
to create training programs that would be more effective. I would also be able to choose
the exact authoring tools and delivery
methods for each training. That said, I don’t believe that training material
needs to be created specific to each learner but
needs to be written in a way that allows for the objectives to be achieved. In
my organization, our training material is designed to be task oriented. We use
all methods of blended learning to meet our objectives.
I am curious what about your thoughts. Please leave me a
comment below if you think it's important for an Instructional Design to know
how the brain functions to be a good Instructional Designer. Thanks for reading
and until next week Happy Designing.
Gerri
Hi there Gerri,
ReplyDeleteYour Instructional Designer in Progress Blog is amazing! I thought your blog posts Great Bloggers to Help Boost Your Instructional Designing and How Important is Understanding the Brain as an Instructional Designer are very informative to instructional designers and teachers, thank you for sharing these helpful blog posts!
I wanted to contribute original thinking and knowledge to your blog by sharing with you information on a fun and new topic that has not been discussed in your blog yet, the topic of gamification. Brain research evidences that gamification can significantly improve learning and because of this more and more instructional designers are integrating gamification in their e-learning design.
Integrating gamification in e-earning is the process of taking something that already exists – a e-learning website, an online learning community – and integrating game mechanics into it to motivate participation, engagement, and loyalty. I recently completed a google search of “gamification and instructional design” and there is an abundance of articles that evidence more and more instructional designers are integrating gamification in their instructional e-learning design. Integrating gamification with e-learning design significantly improves learning because gamification can significantly increase motivation and engagement in learning. Gamification can also help students learning problem solving skills. According to the Innovative Instructor Blog written by Macie Hall, “Gamification is the application of typical elements of game playing (rules of play, point scoring, competition with others) to other areas of activity, specifically to engage users in problem solving.” (Hall, n.d.)
I wanted to share this very helpful 7 step guide that makes it easy for instructional designers to integrate gamification in e-learing: https://elearningindustry.com/step-instructional-design-guide-elearning-gamification (Sharma, 2018)
I am interested in knowing the thoughts of instructional designers and teachers and if they believe gamification will help improve the e-learning and problem skills of their students. Thank you!
Amy
Teacher and Instructional Designer in Process
References
Hall, M. (n.d.). The Innovative Instructor Blog.
Retrieved from https://ii.library.jhu.edu/2014/05/13/what-is-gamification-and-why-use-it-in-teaching/
Sharma, N. (2018, February 05). A 7-Step Instructional Design Guide For
eLearning Gamification.
Retrieved from https://elearningindustry.com/step-instructional-design-guide-elearning-gamification