Design reviews

The design review process should begin in the early stage of the instructional design, so that the instructional designer could self-evaluate and verify the design against its requirements and identify issues early before the curriculum is fully developed (Tessmer, 1993; Smith & Ragan, 2005). After the instructional analysis, the problems and challenges were identified and consolidated in to the problem rectification checklist (see Table 18). The design of the DST-integrated curriculum unit was checked against the checklist to determine if the identified problems had been rectified. Majority of the inadequacies had been tackled, leaving the issues on accessibility of information and communication technology (ICT) resources and curriculum time not totally resolved at the design stage. The following paragraphs elaborated on the reasons for the unresolved problems and suggested possible resolutions which could aid to rectify the problems at a later stage.

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As an attempt to minimise the time constraint issue, the field test was planned to be carried out in the first school semester when the teachers had less pressure with their core subject syllabus, and thus less likely to require the CME lessons for the core subjects teaching.

However, as Hofer and Swan (2006), Lowenthal (2009) and the DST workshop expert D01 had adverted, digital story-making is a time-consuming process, and since the students had no prior experience in DST, they might require more than the stipulated time to complete organised tasks. Hence, the time issue might not be totally rectified at the design stage.

Depending on the actual instructional situation, further adjustments to the time allocation and number of activities could be made. There was also a need to negotiate with the teacher of the participating class to arrange for a block of three CME lesson periods, and this negotiation could not be made till the participating class was identified at the later stage.

Though it was found that the participating school had a relatively sound and updated ICT infrastructure with the necessary ICT resources required for the curriculum unit in this research, permission from the participating school was required to gain access to the required

Table 18

1. The transition between units may not be carried out smoothly.

2. Lesson plans are not written in the format that teachers may follow accordingly.

3. Limited instructional resources are provided.

4. Assessment methods may not accurately measure the learners’

learning outcomes.

1. There is a lack of opportunities for students to practise their ICT skills.

2. Students’ expression of thoughts is restricted by their language proficiency level.

3. Students are weak in their critical thinking skills.

4. Students tend to be self-centred and unaware of their less respectful attitudes.

1. The ICT resources may not be accessible.

2. The teaching strategies used may not be able to effectively maintain students’ attention span.

3. The teaching strategies used are limited.

4. There is time constraint issue.

－

＋

＋

－ Note. “＋” represents problem has been rectified and “－” represents problem has not been rectified.

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resources. This permission came in the forms of reservation of the computer lab, biometric card to scan-open the computer lab doors, passwords to log in to the school computer systems, and authorised borrowing of the school cameras. During the design stage, the researcher could design the curriculum unit with the knowledge of the types of the ICT resources available in the participating school, but to gain access to the real ICT resources, help from the teacher of the participating class would need to be enlisted during the field test.

The overall design of the curriculum unit was also reviewed against the design review checklist to check if the design criteria have been fulfilled. The curriculum design was evaluated from the aspects of learners’ needs, instructional goal, instructional procedure and instructional media. Table 19 shows that all of the requirements had been met, except the criterion on the understanding of learners’ capabilities of which the reason would be further explained in the following paragraph.

1. There is adequate understanding of the learners’ prior knowledge and skills.

2. There is adequate understanding of the learners’ learning needs.

－

＋ Instructional

goal

1. The goals meet the real instructional needs.

2. The goals are in alignment with the MOE and school goals.

3. The learning objectives are clearly written to include the cognitive, affective and behavioural aspects of the moral life.

＋

＋

＋

Instructional procedure

1. The learning activities and assessments are congruent to the instructional objectives.

2. The teaching strategies scaffold the learners through the DST steps and achieve moral development at the same time.

3. The assessment process is constant and multi-dimensional.

＋

1. The ICT resources needed for the instruction are available.

2. The selected ICT applications are economical to carry out the DST process.

3. There is adequate understanding of the learning environment.

＋

＋

＋ Note. “＋” represents criterion has been fulfilled and “－” represents criterion has not been fulfilled.

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The capabilities of the student participants would affect the management of the instructional materials and activities. Though the interviews with the school teachers had provided an understanding of the general batch of students, the capabilities of the student participants remained unclear as the researcher had yet to come into contact with the student participants to verify their capabilities. For example, as according to the school ICT plan, the students had been trained to operate slideshow when they were in primary three, but they might remember vaguely of the application when they reached primary 5. Thus, a quick analysis on the student participants’ prior knowledge and skills needed to be done before the start of the lesson, and time should be allocated for a quick revision on the operation of the application.

In sum, results from the design review process revealed that the design of the DST-integrated CME curriculum had addressed most of the identified problems and had fulfilled the intended design requirements. Nevertheless, there were certain aspects (time management, accessibility of ICT resources and understanding of the student participants’ capabilities) which had yet to be fully resolved or achieved at the initial stage of instructional design.