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Reba Wissner
EDUC 767
Course Reflection

This course was much more challenging than I initially thought it would be. To put this in

perspective, I have a bachelors, masters, PhD, and graduate certificate, and this is my third class

in the instructional design certificate. By far, this is the hardest class that I have ever taken.

While I have used Articulate Rise in instructional settings (why I chose to use it for this CBT

project) and have taught for 14 years in higher education and published on pedagogy, applying

this experience to the practices of storyboarding and prototyping were challenging for me. I am

not used to taking those steps prior to creating a lesson so it was difficult for me to align those

aspects with each other and the final project. One of the biggest challenges was narrowing the

scope of the project to create a Reusable Learning Object (RLO) that lasted only 20 minutes

since Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is such a big topic with many components. My

original idea for the RLO was too large and narrowing it down even further helped me to better

see how in depth I could go with the material without making it too vague or too overwhelming

for the learner. However, since I envisioned this project to be a CBT from my first course in the

certificate, it was very important for me to learn these skills and best practices to successfully

execute it.

Since my CBT was targeted toward college faculty, I decided to make my examples

appropriate to that audience. I also used a syllabus as the assessment for two reasons. First, it

allows faculty to see UDL “in action” with a document of the kind that they generate at least

twice per year. Second, it helps them to see the mistakes they may make in their own syllabus by

looking at someone else’s. Likewise, examples such as the good/bad use of white space also

were taken from syllabi to help faculty see how common clauses might be modified to be UDL
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adherent. It was also important for me to set an accessibility example in the CBT, so I added

captions and descriptions for important images and explained when URLs would open in another

page.

Articulate Rise has some design limitations, which makes certain decisions easy but can

also be frustrating from a design perspective. I decided to use black font on a white background

for the best color contrast. I used the default 17-point font for the body text as it is easy to read.

However, I could not change the default font style or the default spacing between lines to adhere

to UDL guidelines. I used ample white space to not make the layout crowded or overwhelm the

learner with too much text. At the same time, I also did not want to overwhelm the learner with

too many videos or image examples, which is why there are so few of those in the CBT. For this

reason, I used short written descriptions where I felt they would suffice.

I decided to have three types of assessment in the training: a multiple-choice knowledge

check, a sorting activity pre-assessment, and a multiple response assessment. This allowed me to

vary the assessment types within the capabilities of Articulate Rise and gauge the learner’s

knowledge in a variety of ways. I chose to use multiple-choice for the knowledge check because

this would allow me to gauge how well the learner understands basic UDL principles. From

there, they move to a sorting activity for the pre-assessment where they must show they

understand what items must be used in different file types to make a text document accessible.

Ideally, I would have had a fifth category in my sorting activity—PowerPoint, Word, and Excel

Files—but Articulate Rise limits the use of categories to only four. Finally, the assessment asks

the learner to look at a syllabus and identify what is accessible using a multiple-response

checklist. After all of these items are successfully completed, the summary of the lesson includes

a downloadable link to a job aid checklist that learners can use in the future to make their text
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documents UDL adherent, referring to some items specifically such as syllabi. This draws on

Knowles’s (1984) theory of andragogy, which states that adult learners are more likely to

remember or want to learn material if they can apply it to their own lives and experiences.

Before having my prototype RLO usability tested by my class partner, I had a friend who

teaches on the college level who is interested in UDL usability test it with the usability test

document that I created. For me, this was invaluable because this is someone who does not know

much about UDL and for whom the training is targeted. Her comments allowed me to make

further changes and time the RLO appropriately before my partner saw it, making it a much

more refined and user-informed training. Because of this, I had to make some unanticipated

changes in the design, especially of the pre-assessment. Initially, the pre-assessment was meant

to be a sorting activity but the limitations of Articulate Rise made my initial design clunky and

not user friendly. As a result, I had to switch the categories in my sorting activity to make it more

intuitive. The tester also determined that more examples could be added to specific items to

make them clearer. Once I changed these items, I then had the tester re-test it before sending it to

my partner.

The results of my usability test from my partner were as expected given the changes I

made before sending it to her, though there were not many changes required. I think this may

have been a result of having the prototype tested twice and changed before sending it to my

partner. As a result, I made the suggested changes, which were as follows: small editorial

changes such as underlining instead of italics, small typos including discrepancies in section

titles. Though my partner suggested that I add points of reflection throughout the training, it was

already 20 minutes so it was difficult to do so.

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In this course, I was able to put into practice my knowledge about chunking, the

reusability aspect of the RLO, and best practices for storyboarding and prototyping. I

strategically planned the lesson as chunks within the module so learners could, if they needed to,

return to review a section easily or pick up where they left off if they could not finish the training

in one session. Thinking about the training as a RLO helped me to achieve the right level of

specificity for the training. I plan to also use the bit of discussion about project management and

its best practices in the next course, which is dedicated to project management for instructional

designers. While training or experience in pedagogy and online teaching is not an essential

competency for instructional designers, after completing this course, I believe that it is important,

regardless of whether the ID is also the SME. Without training in pedagogy and online teaching,

it may become difficult for the ID to execute the material in a pedagogically sound way in a

CBT.

At some point, I plan to generate the rest of the CBT for the entire course and hopefully it

will find a home. While I am comfortable with Articulate Rise (and, to a certain extent, Udutu), I

now need to become more well-versed in other CBT programs such as Adobe Captivate. I still

need to better learn how to prototype and storyboard as I am not yet entirely comfortable with

the process. I also have to work on making my prototype, storyboard, and final RLO better align

with one another, which was one of the greatest struggles for me in this course.