Investigating Instructional Design Skill Development During The Project Based Multimedia Development Process

Abstract

While instructional design is a fast growing, changing and improving field, instructional designer training requires multi-faceted, real life-like, process oriented and contemporary educational understanding. In this case study, the learning outcomes obtained by the junior students who study at Computer Education and Instructional Technology and took a multimedia development course consisting an intense design process were investigated. During a semester, strategy of creating a team, nature of the projects and facilitators were changed for each project in the design course consisting two projects. While the actual participants of the study were 47 students (novice instructional designers), 16 graduates and 10 previous year students were interviewed to triangulate the results. To measure learning outcomes of current students, a survey was implemented as a pre and posttest. Project team and individual interviews were analyzed through content analysis. According to survey results, current students showed a significant improvement in skills on knowledge of instructional technologies, conducting instructional design processes, development of storyboards, using multimedia development programs, assessing instructional materials, using technological resources for instruction effectively, conducting and reporting research, editing audio/video, working collaboratively in teamwork and hardware knowledge. Regarding the entire data gathered from the all participants of the study, apart from survey results, they stated that they got a real life experience and learn how to communicate with target learners. The results imply that students are able to get many skills accepted as instructional designer skills in instructional design field via a multimedia design course. However, during the course, students had some problems such as lack of setting a connection between instructional design phases because of time limitations, challenging to contact with a real target group and having negative influences in processes and end products because of instructor-led random assignment of the first project teams. The results of the study will offer a resources for the future courses in terms of elaborating the outcomes brought by multimedia design process as well as the issues influencing the outcomes.