The great majority of my professional life has been dedicated to the creation of instructional products for adults in the corporate training context. However, during my graduate studies, I expanded by abilities by creating an entire drawing workshop designed for preteens, in alignment with the challenge “Identify instructional strategies that align with instructional goals and anticipated learning outcomes.” The document above is the entire final Design Document, so that the goals and anticipated outcomes are readily viewable, but the learning strategies are outlined in pink on pages 26 – 35. Those pages break down the entire workshop into clusters and detail how the content will be taught, which activities will be performed, what materials are needed, and what media will be needed.

Each instructional product’s target audience, content package, learning goals, performance context, learning context, etc. are different and it is for these reasons that the instructional strategies may differ for each instructional product. For the preteen audience population, the target audience analysis findings were carefully considered in relation to the overall goal of the learners showing an improvement in realistic pencil drawing. The target audience’s focus on and high level of importance placed on social interactions was taken very seriously. As a result, inquiry teaching and discussions (both of which align with a constructivist approach) were used when presenting information. This gave the learners a chance to interact with each other freely and under the guidance of the instructor. Additionally, cognitive modeling was used (both by the instructor as well as from short instructional videos from a professional artist). To incorporate their existing knowledge (which varied due to interest, age, and other factors), expository advance organizers were created and distributed in the form of participant guides. These advance organizers served numerous purposes: they gave the learners a place to record new information that was relevant to them, and the guide was able to be taken home at the conclusion of the workshop as a reinforcement aid.

Although this was the first time I had created an instructional product for learners of this age group, I have experience in an informal way. I am a creative, artistic person who enjoys drawing, as does one of my children. I have been able to spend many hours with him, using many of the same strategies, particularly modeling and inquiry teaching, to help him grow in his artistic skills and pursuits. Most of my professional projects have started with the creation of a design document; however, the design documents created for this drawing workshop represent a more in-depth approach and intentional and focused chunking and strategy alignment. While my projects have historically been judged to be instructionally sound, approaching the strategies with such a planned focus brought a renewed sense of cohesive purpose to my instructional design practice.

The design documents I created for a preteen drawing workshop show my competency in numerous challenges, including identifying instructional strategies that align with instructional goals and anticipated learning outcomes. As I move forward in my career, I plan to utilize the strengthened alignment skills I obtained throughout this project. Design documents may have been a consistent part of my professional process, but this project allowed me to more deeply explore the chunking and strategy alignment aspects of the design documents.