We will be talking about I Did It My Way, a case study by Michael Power.

The information presented includes case characteristics, with the primary focus being the developments of each session.

For this particular case the professor was well into his career and had considerable time available for work on the design process. In addition, unlike most of the others, he had previously taught at a distance. Although he was an experienced professor who, throughout his career, had developed a significant number of courses for institutions around the world, he had never developed a course in conjunction with an ID, nor in coordination with a technical support team (Powers, 2010, p.121). The professor image can be found online at http://www.edudemic.com/wp-

content/uploads/2012/04/college-professor.jpg

Session one was the first working session which was conducted between the professor and the Instructional Development Coordinator. With much time spent elaborating on technical aspects and production technologies, the conversation was brought back to discuss the instructional approach being proposed and the fundamental differences between classroom-based courses and distant education courses. At the conclusion of their meeting, they agreed to meet later in the week to carry out a global analysis of his course and locate its position with respect to the other courses in the program to be developed for distant education.

Powers believes the first task in ID is to perform a diachronic analysis. That is, to ensure the course objectives clear and are distict in relation to other courses in the program (Powers, 2010, p.127). The time commitment required to adequately complete ID within the confines of the Dick/Carey model is not realistic in the University setting (Powers, 2010, p. 128). As a result of the full control over their courses, professors arent completely on board with the systematic, rigerous ID process. As such, Powers continues to tread carefully over sensative topics, like objectives, during the second session. The socratic method is the professors preferred method of instruction during lectures. This enables him to cover the familiar course content in an off the cuff classroom experience which allowed him to tailor each class to the students. Powers is tasked with moving this interactive experince to the virtual classroom. Course delivery inevitibly was mentioned and the conversation turned to the technical aspects of the synchronous platform that was recommended. At that, the session had clearly been concluded by the professor. The video conferencing image can be found online at

http://yorktown.lohudblogs.com/files/2012/01/GHANA1.jpg

By the third session the instructional support team had tested the synchronous platform that was going to be used. They encountered serious technical constraints on the recipient end. Some of the issues were bandwidth limitation resulting in limiting logins to one user at a time. It also caused concerns with the virtual classroom as the number of students participating would be less than the minimum twenty-five they wanted to participate. Following the difficulties encountered from the testing Powers and the professor began looking at other delivery options for the material. Powers suggested that the professor create both individual and group exercises for didactic materials. This was something the professor had never designed but would attempt. The professor would also start try out the discussion forum. Error message image can be found at http://thomasstephens.info/images/misc/RDC-error.png

This session began with the intent of writing an individual assignment (IA) and a team assignment (TA). They went through the professors first text together highlighting the important points for students to know. This strategy allowed for the opportunity to begin writing closed-ended questions for the IA as well as identify true course objectives (Powers, 2010, p.133). With the close-ended individual questions as a starting point, they began writing more open-ended questions intended for the team assignment. At the conclusion of this laborious process, the professor realized that, if he wanted his students to truly understand the texts he asked them to read, he would have to eliminate some of them (Powers, 2010, p.124).
The objectives image can be found online at

https://learn.test.dau.mil/CourseWare/801882_4/objectives.jpg

Team assignments and individual assigments are the topic of choice for this work session. At Powers suggestion, the professor began to rewrite the quesitons to make them more challenging and requiring a personal response, which would eliminate the tendency to exchange answers. For example in your own words or drawing on your own experience (Powers, 2010, p. 134). Also, Powers asked for clarification on several of the TA questions as they were long, complex questions lack clarity (Powers, 2010, p. 134). At this point the Professor confesses that working with Powers is a source of inspiration and insecurity; this confirms Powers overall view that IDs walk a fine line with the Professors they work with. Powers concludes the 5th session with a recommendatoin to include a schematization diagram. This, in conjunction with the course readings, allows the students to form a mental model of the concepts they are learning. The ID model image can be found online at

http://www.sru.edu/academics/CETET/PublishingImages/web-designer1-thumbe1311263450703.jpeg

The professor and Powers continued revising the questions, in the end they had developed exercises both agreed upon. At this point the future plans for work sessions were established. The professor and Powers would call each other about the exercises and email any feedback. Powers asked that the professor focus on identifying and improving areas where students struggled the most. The professor would consider this request before making any changes.

Struggling student image can be found online at http://www.learningrx.com/chanhassen/images/chanhassen-help-for-strugglingstudents.jpg

During the following sessions the professor and Powers continued working on exercises, TAs, and IAs. It was at this point that they discovered many of the online resources from the instructors field were in English, the students in this case study are French speaking and not necessarily English/French bilingual. Due to the host countries limited technology, a real-time synchronous experience was not possible. The professors role had changed from a knowledge leader, motivating students, to a knowledge provider, just another source of information. Powers and the professor formed an appropriate weekly plan to adapt to the change in delivery. Each week the professor would post an overview and provide the readings and IAs. The students would submit IA online and work to complete TAs prior to class (one member of group submitting). The professor would provide feedback asynchronously on both IAs and TAs. During the synchronous session the professor will summarize that weeks assignments and introduce the next weeks concepts and put them into context with the field of study, motivating the students to complete the assignments for the following week.

In conclusion, a major theme in this case study was the redesign of individual and team assignments to allow transfer from a typical classroom setting to a distance learning course. Another major theme was the technological challenges of delivering a distance course. As the professor was more interested in the delivery method, Powers had to continually redirect his attention to the course content, mainly the IAs, TAs, and objectives. Designing for a specific delivery method too early in the ID process is not ideal because the delivery method is subject to change, as demonstrated in this case study. The professors experience shaped many aspects of the design process. His use of the Socratic method and implementing that style into a distance learning course was demonstrated with the redesign of the IAs, TAs, and objectives. In spite of the technological problems that occurred, the Instructional Design process was successful. At the conclusion of the course the professor received a contract in Europe due to the systematic method Powers and the Professor used for this specific course.

These are the references we used in creating our presentation.