LESSON WRITING: INNOVATIONS IN PROBLEM DESIGNING

Abstract

Educators at all levels have embraced online technology as a teaching tool in today’s era. It is irrelevant to speak of the effects of ‘Web’ without understanding how it is entwined with instructional design. Lesson writing now has shifted from the traditional way to an online setting taking into consideration communication, human interaction and learning paradigms. Lesson Writing Web-based instruction is mainly dependent upon content expandability, content adaptability and visual layouts. Design thinking as an innovation is a methodology for practical and creative resolution of problems. Multimedia Documents and Multimedia On-Line Services represent an evolution of documents as they deliver several audio-visual electronically organized media. Information and Communication Technologies are breaking down traditional distinctions between Public, Academic, National and Special libraries as far as media handling and access is concerned. A growing number of media collections is available via internet as Digital Libraries, Digital Library Federation, Directory of Digitized Collections and Open Archives Initiative. Instructional designers design learning content with media elements like text, images, videos and audio clips etc. Animations and learning environments are designed with the components as interactive learning content, quizzes, activities and discussion forums etc. It is difficult to design online learning material for distance learners but it is the instructional designer’s responsibility to design learning components and learning contexts with appropriate media elements to facilitate learning. Higher education is currently undergoing in its most significant change from ‘Distance Education to Distributed Learning Surviving and Thriving’. Today distributed learning is serving on-campus as well as the off-campus students traditionally served by distance education. Distributed learning combines the most advanced forms of distance learning technologies with aspects of conventional and campus based education. A distributed learning environment is a learner-centered approach to education. The model is based on blending a choice of appropriate technologies with aspects of campus-based delivery, open learning systems and distance education. Digitizing as an innovation in lesson writing represents the object, image, sound, document or a signal by a discrete set of its points or samples. Old slides can be digitized at home by photographing their projections using a slide projector, tripod and digital camera. Recent innovations of telecommunication technologies such as compressed interactive video systems etc. have lowered equipment and transmission costs, making two-way video feasible for small colleges, businesses, classrooms, libraries and even homes. Interactive Video (IV) is an effective method of delivering information to remote distance educational settings. Video and audio media are normally provided on a checkout basis with packets of printed materials and work assignments. They constitute over 3/4th of the recent and current innovative approaches. ‘Internet’ as an interactive instructional delivery and communication system redefines some aspects of distance learning. Video Model is most popular distance learning approach. ‘Wrap-Around’ is the term used to describe what is done with a pre-produced educational video in distance education. Managing electronic course materials, student participation, student achievement, and course evaluations have already become part of the revision exercises formulation. Thus Design Thinking as an innovation in lesson writing refers to the methods and processes for investigating ill-defined problems, acquiring information, analyzing knowledge and positing solutions in the design and planning fields.