My internship with DOT Lebanon was very beneficial; especially that it gave me hands-on

experience and it put me in a real-world setting where I had the chance to demonstrate my

capabilities and show the skills that I developed during my MA Program.

Some of the challenges that I faced during my internship are as follows:

During the Planning phase:

 Lack of knowledge about the audience

The course I was creating wasn’t assigned for a specific group of students, thus there wasn’t

a detailed needs analysis. I only knew who will be the audience, but I didn’t have any idea

about their background or their previous knowledge about the topic. I was challenging to

create a course outline without having enough information about the audience. As well, I

faced some confusion because I didn’t know the technology level of the audience especially

that the topic was related to technology.

To solve this issue, I created a first draft of the outline, I discussed it with the instructional

designer that I was working with and we talked about all my concerns about the ideas and

details. Then, the outline was checked by 2 other instructional designers who added some

sections that I didn’t think about.

I benefited from their experience and point of views, and I learned how to think and collect

ideas when I don’t have detailed information about the audience.

 Acting as the subject matter expert

Creating the outline was challenging because I acted as the subject matter expert and I had to

conduct extensive research about the topic that was assigned to me. I had to make choices
about what content to include and how much details to mention. The subject matter expert is

usually someone other than the instructional designer. IN this task, I had to wear two hats.

This issue was solved but it took some time to conduct deep research about the topic in

order to understand and have a minimum knowledge about every section in my outline.

 Writing objectives:

While creating the study guides, I had to create clear objectives for every module. These

objectives must tackle higher order thinking skills.

In order to be able to write good objectives, I refreshed my memory about how to write

clear and measurable and I used Bloom’s taxonomy verbs.

Content development phase

 Creating the learning activities:

DOT Lebanon uses Moodle as platform for creating courses. All learning activities are

created using H5P. H5P supports many types of content such as text, video, interactive

video, image, hotspot image… The challenge was to create as much as interactive and

creative content with the limited types available in H5P.

It was hard to overcome this issue since I was limited to using H5P. I tried to create

content that is varied to fit all learning styles. Creating activities was also related to the

resources I could find; sometimes I had to create videos or info-graphics for a text

resource in order to create varied content.

In my opinion, the best way to overcome this problem is to use external tools and

applications.
In conclusion, my internship was challenging yet very valuable, I learned how to overcome the

problems I face either by refreshing my memory and using the skills I got from my MA, or by

seeking the help of experienced instructional designers.