I quite dislike blogging out of context and blogging about
stuff I know nothing about. However, I thought this would be a good discussion
as it aroused my curiosity.
I was attending a workshop on instructional design by David
Murphy (http://opob.edublogs.org/) the
other day (who actually knows a thing or two about instructional design) when
we got into a debate about making instructions for ODL more intuitive. The
example which was thrown out was the iPod and how it doesn’t have (or how no
one bothers to read) an instructional manual on how to operate it. However, the
design of the device is so intuitive, almost all of us, ranging from toddlers
to retirees, can quickly figure out how best to use it.
Thus the question…
Can ODL course material be written in such an intuitive way
that students won’t need instructions to figure out how best to learn from
them?
This certainly sparked some interest in me as an academic
and also as a techi who never reads the instructions of anything. It would certainly
be quite fantastic to come up with an ODL material which has no instructions
but is as easy to figure out as an iPod. I just might give this a go over the
next couple of years…
