Before setting off to write the tutorial, it's a good idea to start by spending some time reflecting on the nature of the people you're hoping to reach. It would be a shame for you to put all that time and effort into the creation of your tutorial only to find out that so few people are really interested in it. As a result, time spent reflecting on this is time well spent.
Many consider this the most important part in realising a successful "online design" project. It can be the most challenging too. It often means confronting assumptions that we're making about our learners. For example, who are our target learners? Everyone? It might be easy to think that they all speak English as their first language - but is that true? This often leads to still more questions. For example, what will we need to do to create a tutorial that appeals to both native and non-native English speakers?
Classic questions to ask yourself
- What skills or knowledge does my target audience already have (or doesn't have)?
- What is the age of my target audience? (Yes, age matters when it comes to instructional design.)
- Are there any cultural barriers to consider?
- How do they like to learn?
Many of these question you really cannot know the answers to now ... so you will knowingly be stepping forward to design the tutorial based on your assumptions about them. The fact that you don't know means that you should plan to include opportunities to get feedback from your students so that you can get answers to these questions, have your assumptions challenged and eventually use those answers to "improve" your tutorial (more on that later)
Examples of still more questions that we would love to have answers to but cannot include
- the characteristics of our target audience?
- level of IT competence? we do not know
- if we don't know ..
- perhaps we need to think about
- what are minimum requirements
- what tools or skills they may need first in order to do the tutorial .. are these realistic to assume?
- if they don't have these skills or requirements, is there a strategy that we can suggest so that these skills can be learned
- nature of their instructional environment ? we do not know
- we will not know the availabilty of technology
- for the instructor or for the students
- it could be
- language lab (limited access)
- one to one laptops program
- one to one BYODs (bring your own devices)
- it could be
- few, some or all students have mobile devices
- cultural factors to consider? we do not know
- we will not know school policies
- restrictions on the use of tech, type of activities that are deemed appropriate etc.
- for example
- design of activities / use of tools that may invite dialogue between students of differing genders
- language proficiency of students / of teachers? we do not know
- we will make some basic assumptions that in order to teach English our "students" will have a good understanding of English
What we can more safely assume is that most of our learners are EFL instructors living and working in the MENA region (Arabian region = Middle East and North Africa). While we may be pleasantly surprised to learn that our work will appeal to others outside of that region, we should aim to focus on this target audience in an effort to address their needs .. in their context. To not do so is to attempt to "be all things to all people" - a perilous pursuit with less chance of measuring the success of our work.
So for now .. I would suggest that you draw on your own experience about the learners you have worked with. That experience will be "invaluable" to you .. but also expect it to be tested.
But you need not feel you are completely in the dark here. There are some basic assumptions that you can make about your learners. They will all be adult learners thus you can borrow from the work of noted adult education researcher and theorist Malcolm Knowles (Smith, 2002). There are six principles Knowles identified that are considered fundamental to designing instruction for adult learners.
They are
- Adults are internally motivated and self-directed
- Adults bring life experiences and knowledge to learning experiences
- Adults are goal oriented
- Adults are relevancy oriented
- Adults are practical
- Adult learners like to be respected
The tutorial framework is designed to directly address the three highlighted areas. For example, note the section entitled "Why would I want to use (name of app or strategy)?" This is designed to immediately address the three principles highlighted above. Your students are bound to want to know quite quickly WIIFM (what's in it for me?) before making a commitment to pursuing the tutorial. It will be up to you to quickly outline here that "value". You will need to demonstrate that you have carefully thought about not only how they will "obtaining" the skill / strategy but why it's important to "them" to learn it. Your choice of content and challenge activities help address the other three principles.
To learn more about teaching adult learners .. check out this short list of resources. All of them tend to reinforce these same principles. The last resource on the list provides a more comprehensive analysis of Malcolm Knowles contribution to the field of "androgogy" (adult learning).
Live Titanpad document for sharing notes on matters to think about when preparing our tutorials..
Live Titanpad document for sharing notes on matters to think about when preparing our tutorials..
References
Malamed, C. (2009, September). Characteristics of Adult Learners. Retrieved from http://theelearningcoach.com/learning/characteristics-of-adult-learners/
Pappas, C. (2013, May 8). 8 Important Characteristics Of Adult Learners. eLearning Industry. Retrieved from http://elearningindustry.com/8-important-characteristics-of-adult-learners
Queensland Occupational Therapy Fieldwork Collaborative. (2005). Student Supervisors Toolkit Basic Principles of Adult Learning. Retrieved from http://www.qotfc.edu.au/resource/documents/reference_document_3_1.pdf
Queensland Occupational Therapy Fieldwork Collaborative. (2007, July 10). Become familiar with Adult Learning Theory and the six principles of adult learning. QOTFC - The Clinical Educator's Resource Kit. Retrieved from http://www.qotfc.edu.au/resource/?page=65375
Smith, M. (2002). Malcolm Knowles, informal adult education, self-direction and andragogy. infed.org. Retrieved from http://infed.org/mobi/malcolm-knowles-informal-adult-education-self-direction-and-andragogy/
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