Using Q methodology, thirteen online instructors shared subjective opinions about the instructional design of an online professional development module intended to provide teachers with basic information for supporting English language learners academically.
The researcher selected a set of thirty-six sort items comprised of screen shots taken from the online module. Participants sorted items on a continuum according to their perceptions of the tasks’ cognitive demand, scaffolding, and relevance to their work. Through factor analysis, the researcher compared participants’ views of the instructional design of the module. Two factor groups emerged from each of the three sorting activities. Multimedia features such as videos or electronic activities and assessments with feedback scaffolded learning for some learners; others, however, considered didactic instructional techniques such as on-screen text, downloadable handouts and video commentaries to be more effective scaffolding.
Although all participants were involved with K-12 education, none ranked designing instructional modifications for an ELL case study as relevant to her work.
Implications of the study are that cognitive demand can be perceived as being required to carry out complex tasks such as applying or analyzing information and high cognitive demand may be viewed as being told new content. Varied learning preferences also need to be considered in the design of how to provide scaffolding in online learning experiences, particularly in planning how to transmit new information. Instructional designers need to achieve a balance between active knowledge construction and didactic techniques when developing online professional development modules. Also, they need to design instruction so as to help learners make clear connections between specific module tasks and the solution to these tasks.
Recommendations for further research include investigating how online tasks can be designed for different learning styles and how scaffolding can be provided for new content in ways that benefit different types of learners. Researchers might investigate how to evaluate online learning to determine how learners benefit from modules such as the one in this study. They might also investigate results of having more classroom teachers in the p-set and how educators believe new information should be presented in online learning environments.