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First Design Project LTEC 5220

This week in class we created our first instructional design project. We were asked only to explain our topic with text and hypertext without images or videos. I picked my topic of backing bread because I took a pastry baking class last summer.  On one hand, the assignment was easy, because cooks have been reading text based recipes. The instructions given came completely from the book Professional Baking by Wayne Gisslen.  And creating the assignment was easy to translate into more text.  Working on this project has given me a lot to think about.

Using words and hypertext does have advantages. It is quick to create and it requires very little computer memory. Anybody with a word processor and access to the internet may use it. For lower level students, it forces them to read more. Many professions out there such as law or academia require reading. For hundreds of years, text has been one of the only ways to teach something to someone without an instructor nearby.  And if the electricity ever stops, and electronic technology ever fails, paper and writing will survive. Admittedly hypertext will not. 

That being said, text and hypertext only instructions have its drawbacks.  Text does not engage the multiple learning styles that people have.  Text only instructions does not do well for audio learners, nor does it have kinesthetic learners.  Reading engages the visual sense in a very limited sense. Research has shown that people learn best when they have multiple senses involved.

As an educator, I see that many people struggle to read at all. English language learners certainly struggle with reading text.  The STAAR test continues to be a struggle for these types of students. Then you have the dyslexic populations that struggle with reading even though they are fluent in English. As mentioned in the advantages paragraph, it is still important for students to learn to read.  As the multimedia, rich environment of the internet continues to grow, text based learning prompts will become less and less effective.

Moreover, somethings are better communicated with images and video than they are with words. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. The English language is sometimes inadequate for explaining things.  Moreover language can be unclear. Take for example the sentence “Look the dog with one eye” (Ambiguous Sentences, 2017). Does that mean, you should close one eye while looking at the dog. Or does it mean that you should look for a dog that is missing an eye.

As a high school instructor, I have actually done a pretty effective job of adding videos and pictures to my lessons. I have added the fancy games and have thought of clever ways to teach my class. As the paragraphs above state, multimedia has many advantages. However, text will continue to be a major part of our world.  While text, by itself probably would be more effective with videos and images, It is important to not just teach the content but to teach literacy.  While this assignment was not my preferred way to teach, I am glad I had the opportunity to do so.


Ambiguous Sentences. (2017). Retrieved June 11, 2017, from Byrdseed: http://www.byrdseed.com/ambiguous-sentences/

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