Report 1: DE Office Visit

What have you learned from the guest speaker?

Paragraphs of Lecture;

1.      Instructional Designers Tasks:

This team receives instructional design tasks for distance learning classes in terms of:

·         Organize the learners, analyze learners.

·         Organize the educational consulting.

·         Develop programs strategies that often provided in F-2-F  to the distance learning programs.

·         Develop of per course components such as videos, pictures, and links .. Etc., Which often students used them to achieve to their success.

·         Develop and improve the employees or teachers performance, in terms of encourage them to create their own icons, and to have good control components in their course Home page away from the department’s assistance.

2.      Develop Administration;

The department director talked about the department management tasks in a detailed way about her employees and how they are hired, what are the penalties and incentives, help them and their families, improve the performance of staff.

She also talked about the difference between Indiana State University and the rest of the universities in terms of hiring distance teachers where the rest of universities may employ teachers and do not interest about their own affairs or their performance as what the Indiana State University is do.

She also talked about partnerships- OIT, Media Services, QM consortium.

She also talked about the policy that has been created for this department, between students and teachers, for example, if you had to take an online test where you can take the test? And how it is? What are the requirements? Financial expenses. The hardest part if they will planning for a new policy for a new course which requires calling the Professor to configure this policy or guidelines by himself, that will be the highest cost, time and effort.

She explained how that most companies and educational institutions do not contain their own instructional designers who has distinctive learning such as Indiana State University. One of the functions of this section is to provide financial, furniture, school requirements. Communication with the dean of the university between what should be and what should not be in distance learning courses. Attend educational conferences and meetings throughout the year. Ability to work on distance learning programs for High Schools

3.      Video Distance;

Video distance team are work to programming computers for distance learning for students or teachers, they have designed program under name (Tegrity), it was designed specifically to improve the learning performance during the professor lectures, where he can recording his complete lecture video and audio or audio-only, and then he can shift the material to the students who can either watch it later or to take advantage of that any time outside the class time. There are some classrooms at the university where this feature is available.

Preparation and equip the class rooms for educational meetings (such as the classroom that we are where) where face-to-face students can participation and interaction with the professor and with distance learning students at the same time.

4.      Instructional tools support section.

Functions of this section is to: help students and staff in technological matters, provide instructions and tutorials to resolve and identify technical problems, work with the system at the student website (blackboard) closely to know the potential technical problems and what actually occurred.

Then we moved to the Heart Event, a tour of the smart classrooms that broadcast distance learning programs and courses, or combines among face-to-face students and distance learning students in learning activities, broadcast lectures, interaction with the professor.

Smart classrooms contain:

Equipment for face-to-face students, such as: removable and amendment tables to facilitate the formation of the classroom based on required by program or what professor planning instead of just lecture style, revolving comfortable chairs, air-conditioned, removable curtains which able to opening and closing, Desktop PCs, smart board, whiteboard.

Equipment for distance learning students such as: cameras that fitted with a remotely tracking to follow professor’s movements inside the classroom, sensitive microphones to capture any sound accurately, cameras linked to a high speed internet, the blackboard, and speakers to can interact with the students who present in the classroom or with the professor.

Special equipment for the Professor such as: earphones associated with sound recording program and broadcast it, a personal computer on the table, control of the varying lighting levels and it location, control camera focusing location and corners.

ü Which part of this activity benefited you most? Why?

The most part that I have benefited from it during this visit is to see smart learning classes, and how they formed, and techniques that they contain. Because I was (before) thinking a lot about how to create such a smart classrooms in my country in an exceptional and distinctive shape, now, I have many available smart classrooms in my country but not as the techniques level that I have found it here, as well as the innovative idea of  the mobile furnitures, because each professor likes to organize the classroom in his own style which makes him more comfortably in teaching and interacting with students.

ü What did the activity benefit you regarding toward becoming a professional in the field of instructional design and technology?

I aspire to create my special teaching classes which I can reconstitute and arranged them by using my educational planning and instructions that I want. I have benefited from this trip much as it is a required section in every successful educational institution, it can holds the biggest burden in planning and educational development processes for the distance learning students.

I have learned that planning processes to create university programs for distance learning is an extremely difficult task, and it requires a lot of time, effort,  and money, it requires the availability of a high efficiency and expertise team in instructional design, because all the educational theories that we previously had studied in CIMT 640 course are the same that may used in designing process of these courses.

I have learned that technological tools are not always serve the educational and teaching process if I do not used them well, properly, timely, and the right place. Not everything that is displayed in the markets of new technologies can be beneficial to me to use it in the classroom or even for my distance learning students, the educational designer should study what fits his own program, as well as the learning capacity of his students and their needs (as Lisa said) because analysis you learners before you start your course planning is the half of your course-success.