Practical Principles of Instructional Design: Interwoven with Essential Skills and Techniques to Effectively Instruct Adults

A common problem in post-secondary education/training is that post-secondary educators are hired for their content expertise. They often have little or no training in the profession of teaching. This interactive book aims to solve that problem by providing you with a complete set of skills in both designing educational materials and teaching effectively. This textbook is intended for those who are instructing or will instruct adult students. This includes professors, instructors, trainers, teachers, facilitators, and instructional designers who: would like to improve their instructional skills when teaching face-to-face and/or online need ideas on how to engage learners in traditional and/or online settings want to create educational material for a course, workshop, or lesson are taking a course on designing effective educational material need to enhance their instructional design skills need information on how to support international learners would like to fully support learners with challenges need strategies for positively influencing learner behavior want to select media that are effective for the skill needing to be taught are or will be working on an instructional development team have developed lessons with little or no training or created mediocre lessons want to do it right the first time would like a practical reference need practical guidelines for creating computer-managed presentations need to learn when and where they want This book provides practical principles of instructional design, which is a key to designing content that teaches effectively. Principles are also provided for creating both face-to-face and online lessons. There is also an emphasis on creating content that will engage students (e.g., 51 interactive techniques that you can apply in your classroom) and using media effectively. These principles are highly relevant to anyone who teaches. In other words, secondary and primary school teachers can also enhance their skills with the concepts presented. In the book, you will find details on how to instruct effectively. Like instructional design skills, teaching skills are also essential. You will not be a good instructor if you create fantastic lessons but cannot deliver them in a way that students can comfortably learn from. Similarly, if you have fabulous teaching skills but cannot design lessons well, your students will be compromised. This book will teach you how to design and deliver high-quality lessons. This book will not make you an expert in designing lessons. Expertise comes through years of experience and continual learning, such as through further training (e.g., participating in an Instructional Skills Workshop) and self-reflection. However, this book will provide you with the foundations for creating professional, instructionally-effective products. This is critical because people notice quality. This book, with its numerous practical hints, will help you do it right. This book models a powerful interactive teaching technique. Rather than presenting questions at the end of each chapter, this book presents you with questions and feedback within the content so that you can actively engage in the material as you learn it. In the Systematic Instructional Design chapter, you will be guided to create a lesson as you work through the content. There are also suggestions for exploration. This book provides you with links to digital files of studying tips you can download, adapt, and share with your students and lesson plan templates. There are also to internet resources, such as a website where you can search for free photographs. This book includes alternate text for each image to support those with a loss of vision. The principles presented in this book are independent of any technology you use to deliver the material.