What do instructional Designers Do in Higher Education? A Written Symposium

Part: I:
What do instructional Designers Do in Higher Education? A Written Symposiu
The chapter starts to present the similarities and differences between USA and Australia in Higher education system. The five writers focused on the role of the instructional designers in higher education as their lives are similar to other faculty and professional staff members in higher education. The difference is their training and areas of professional concentration. Instructional designers working in support areas such as distance education or faculty development are practitioners. As the use of technologies increases in higher education, these individuals are becoming more critical to success of an organization. Instructional designer’s roles are to facilitate the development of learning and teaching strategies and introduce to faculty to distance learning production processes. This role needs sound knowledge of ID theory. Instructional designers should have sufficient skills to perform all tasks assigned to them. The role of instructional designers has changed from working with individual course leaders to group approach to meet the needs of changing educational initiatives to help build an online interaction among the students, and between students and instructor. Instructor designers might keep up to date with ID literature and educational theory and practice (e.g., constructivism, online pedagogy blended learning and so forth). The chapter also presents the basic components of instructional design such as what is need for educational program, goals, objectives, learners, contents, teaching methods technology (media) and how learners will be assessed and the course evaluated.
The chapter concludes the discussion of five professors to assure the role of instructional designer as a faculty developer, facilitator of the development of learning and teaching strategies, or developing of distance learning materials and community member.

Pat: II: Community of Practice
The role of an online instructor is to create and prepare a curriculum that fits teaching online and allows integration of different technologies. Instructor also prepares an online instructional environment setting that ties students to interact and collaborate in groups work. I use different communication tools to help students communicate with instructor and each other, such as blogging, group work and emails. Students have access to instructor email for any assistance and clarification related to course syllabus and assignment. I was able to build up an online virtual community to engage and tie my students in different activities through virtual asynchronous communication, using a discussion board or an email. Thus helps students individually to complete their assignments and display their inputs in discussion board, and every student at least receives one response from his peers. I, as an instructor of an online course insert my comments on student’s inputs and opinions related to the topic under discussion. Students will be assigned to read a chapter from the required textbook and make a reflection of one page. There are external links, recommended textbook, and an online book for extra reading on the topic. These resources help students to gather additional information about the required assignment. Students also will work on collaborative groups for multimedia presentation project; each group of three students is assigned to work on one topic and come together to share their findings in groups’ asynchronous presentation. Finally, students will asked to lodge their assessment & comments on each group work for rating, according to the rubric designed by the instructor on criteria: content, relevance, participation, organization, creativity and presentation.