I have finally reached what is probably the most critical part of the instructional design, the implementation phase. Last June 1, 2022, I delivered the instructional material for the topic The ALS Student as an Ethical Digital Citizen under the Learning Strand 6: Digital Citizenship of the ALS learners from Imus, Cavite.
A few days before delivering the self-learning modules, I sent the Teacher's Guide (See Appendix E) to my gatekeeper to prepare her for the lesson. It was a quick and friendly discussion on the schedule, how the materials will be delivered, how we will address questions of the studemts, and how the live group session will flow.
I created a group chat on June 1, 2022 (Day 1), made of 43 ALS students, the gatekeeper, and I to deliver the materials. Everyone was encouraged to answer Day 1 of the learning material (See Appendix D), Day 2 on the next day, and so on. For some learners, the 3-day activity on the self-learning module was finished in one night. They submitted the self-learning modules in the Google Drive folder I made a few hours after I delivered them.
I am not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Does that mean the learners experienced efficient learning with the materials I developed? Or was the lesson too easy that they didn't have to go through every page? Is this really how some of them answer modules? These were the questions I had, which I wish to answer on the evaluation phase.
Day 4 of the implementation, June 4, was meant to be the live learning session. My gatekeeper led the instruction, and everything went very smoothly. I advised not to make any changes with how they normally conduct these Google Meet sessions during the Needs Analysis phase since I believed that the problem lies in the self-learning modules and not in these sessions.
Mrs. Marilou Merino followed everything on the teacher's guide and even came up with a few other rich discussions on digital ethics. I am amazed by her natural speaking skills. She shared, asked, and taught a few more things about digital ethics but did not stray away from the intended learning outcomes. At the end of the live session, she discussed my initiative to create a learning material for learners that resembles "the teacher's presence" to make them more independent and self-directed adult learners. She asked their thoughts on the material, and all the students thought it was well-made and easy to understand.
One highlight of the group learning session was when my gatekeeper mentioned I am the first to develop an instructional material for ALS learners in Imus, Cavite as all their resources are given by DepEd. This inspired me to continue raising awareness regarding the need for reforms in non-formal education. The involvement of the private sector in the Alternative Learning System, when done in a fairly and equitably, can make the students' quality of learning much better, giving them more opportunities outside education.
I shall post the entire group learning session soon.
There are three things that didn't go as planned during the implementation phase. First, despite the 40+ ALS students under my gatekeeper, only 12 were able to finish the instruction. The rest were unresponsive, even during actual ALS classes. But there were 16 participants in the live group session. I am currently trying to find answers as to how this will affect the analysis of my results
The teacher was also not able to pair the students for one of the activities on Day 2 because many students finished all the tasks during Day 1. Collaborative activities are an essential element of distance learning activities to promote social presence among learners (Garrison, et al., 2000), and it's unfortunate that I wasn't able to put that principle into practice.
Lastly, there was a slight mistake on the instructional material since I forgot to include a link to one of the video resources.
After the evaluation phase, I will re-develop the final instructional material that can be tested in future studies. My instructional design project embraces an iterative approach. And I believe the implementation phase could have faced bigger issues if I didn't conduct mini-evaluations in between designing and developing.
Reference:
Garrison, R., Anderson, T., Archer, W. (2000). Critical Inquiry in a Text-Based Environment: Computer Conferencing Higher Education.
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