Reflection

The two themes I focused on during my time in the IDD program were analysis and evaluation. Before I was accepted into the IDD program at UGA I had no experience with instructional design. I applied to this program because I wanted to gain the skills and knowledge needed to help improve distance education and instruction in the Marine Corps. I had less than stellar experiences with distance education and I knew that I wanted to help improve the issues I was able to identify. Being accepted to the UGA IDD program was the first step to getting me on my way.  Over the last two years I have seen myself grow as an instructional designer.  I have gained even more motivation to continue my efforts of improving instruction within the commands I serve with.  I am still growing as an instructional designer and I have the desire to seek self-improvement so I can deliver quality instruction to my Marines and Sailors.

After learning what the ADDIE model is and why it exists, I chose to focus on analysis and evaluation. I chose these two as my focal points because I felt like these were the concepts that potentially cause the most issues with distance learning in the Marine Corps. Regarding analysis, I wanted to focus on this concept because understanding who the target audience is, what the learning objectives are, what the technical requirements are as well as constraints must be known before designing the instruction. As a reserve liaison officer, I was responsible for ensuring that reserve Marines were trained and ready just as active duty Marines are. When I began designing Articulate Storyline courses and videos to deliver instruction I made sure that I really understood the concepts that fall under the analysis phase of the ADDIE model. It’s very easy to forget that we are different types of people and learners as Marines. Because of the nature of military life, we are so unified in our ways of thinking that I personally believe it sometimes negatively affects how instruction is designed. I had reservists who live all over the United States with different jobs from different backgrounds. Each time I designed instruction I wanted to really focus on analysis and I think it reflects in my instructional videos and courses that I designed for individual and team projects.

I also focused on the evaluation phase of ADDIE because I wanted to improve my evaluation experience and skills. Whether conducting formative or summative evaluation, I felt from the beginning of the program that this would be my favorite part of designing instruction. As stated earlier, I’ve felt that the Marine Corps should improve certain pieces of instruction that we receive. Evaluating instruction is so critical to ensuring that knowledge retention is occurring. For our team projects in the IDD program, I volunteered to be the lead evaluator as much as possible because I wanted to improve my skills and knowledge of how to conduct evaluation properly. I made mistakes in the way I completed the evaluation process at times along the way, but I am confident that I can now serve as a lead evaluator on a project at any educational level whether in education or the workforce. Learning to create effective Likert scales and assessments was not only fun, it was really eye opening to the importance of this phase of designing or improving instruction. During these last few semesters I was able to assist with improving instruction within my command and in the workforce. I reached my goal of gaining the knowledge to help improve education and training in the Marine Corps, and I have the tools to resources to continue to grow as an instructional designer.