Philip DiSalvio, EdD, Dean, College of Advancing and Professional Studies (CAPS)

At the College of Advancing and Professional Studies, we are delighted to be celebrating the Instructional Design program’s long and distinguished history at UMass Boston. Because of its innovative and interdisciplinary nature and its academic reputation, the Instructional Design program is considered the flagship program of the College.  Our instructional design students and faculty continue to craft ground-breaking learning experiences that seamlessly integrate emerging technologies. We take great pride that the program played a key role in helping the Center for Innovation and Excellence in E-learning create the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in the University of Massachusetts system.

As instructional design professionals, you are the architects of learning, you develop the learning blueprint, you know how people learn. You see how your skills and insights make a difference in people’s lives. You enhance the effectiveness of those who teach and those who learn. I congratulate the faculty, staff, students, and alumni on 30 years of academic excellence and creating change in their communities and workplace through education and training.  Imagine the length of your reach— here and around the world—and know that you make a difference.

Dennis Maxey, PhD, Associate Dean, College of Advancing Professional Studies (CAPS)

As the former Program Director, how have you seen the program evolve and change over the years?

The program’s prestige has grown due to the involvement of many of its graduates in the university’s online educational offerings.  Everywhere you look on campus, an ID graduate can be found advocating for better instruction through intentional design.

The second change is in how technology permeates the entire field.  When I was the director, we still taught folks how to turn the page of a flip chart.  Now not only do we teach how to create an online course but every course may be taken online!

Do you have any anecdotes from your time as director that you would like to share?

I still tell the story of one of the first summers on Nantucket Island.  We had two students who had started a relationship via email before they had even enrolled in the program.  During their first summer after matriculation they met face-to-face for the first time at the Nantucket field station…I sure hope that they are still together…or at least they continue to write learning objectives together.

Are there any words of advice or well wishes you have for current students in the program?

Instructional Design deals, at its core, with one of the most important questions of our time:  How do we learn?

The field has tried to build a science around that question but every decade or so, that science changes drastically.  So how do we embrace a discipline, a field of study that can change from behaviorism to constructivism to connectivism and back again and still find a grounded core?  Are the “take-aways” from the program still relevant with all of the changes?  Former Program Director Canice McGarry believed that the essence of learning rested not in a theory, but in human relationships.  I still think that her idea is the perfect grounding for any educator.

Prof. Steven Schatz is the latest addition to our ID program team. Starting as full time faculty in September 2012, he teaches courses covering analysis and evaluation. In addition, he is a capstone advisor and serves as one of our academic advisors for ID students. Last year, Steve developed a new course for our program, Project Management in Instructional Design.

Over the past 25 years, Steve has studied and applied useful technologies at the progressive edge of learning. His work focuses on change initiatives in organizations, specializing in communication, sharing knowledge, and effectively using the organization’s knowledge pool to create learning events and enhance performance.

For the past three years, he has been developing and testing an integrated model of design for online and blended courses, focusing on continuous feedback and evaluation to both increase effectiveness and provide clear measures for success. His new model, the Change Design Process is the evolution of design and organizational learning, integrating evaluation and analysis with practical application of theory, experience, and practice.

Dr. Schatz earned his Masters at San Francisco State and his PhD at Indiana University. He was an assistant professor at the University of Hartford before joining UMass Boston. He has consulted with corporate, military, government, and higher ed on effective design of learning events, breaking the isolation of online learning, and Goal Packages of interventions for improving performance. He is also president of PowerStart.com, offering online instructional design courses using a hi-flex model.

He has published numerous articles in trade publications and academic journals including Performance Improvement Quarterly, Journal of Interactive Learning Research, and Educational Technology Research and Development. Prof. Schatz has led workshops throughout the country and spoken at corporate and academic conferences (including ASTD, ISPI, and AERA).

For some girls in Kenya traveling to school and tutoring on a regular basis is unrealistic; girls are more likely to be kept back from school to assist with household duties. Additionally, girls sometimes face safety threats when traveling alone and are prohibited from going to school when menstruating and while pregnant.

For girls who cannot make it to the classroom, Ronda Zelezny-Green, a 2013 graduate of the Instructional Design Program and US Fulbright Scholar, is currently working with the Kenyan government to increase young girls’ access to education through mobile learning. Mobile learning, or mLearning, facilitates access to educational information through devices such as handheld computers, MP3 players, mobile phones and tablets.  Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, mobile learning can respond to the specific needs of individual students and the hand-held devices they have access to.

“There is a misconception that real learning only happens in the classroom and mobile learning by contrast is inconsequential,” Ronda says. “We are able to become a part of the girls’ learning continuum by showing them how they can access and use mobile-based educational tools to learn outside of the classroom or school.”

During her studies, Ronda focused on designing for mobile learning platforms, and as part of her capstone project she created a mobile learning app to be used for tourism-employee training in Tanzania. “I was a teacher by training, so was used to designing instruction through lesson plans,” she says. “The Instructional Design Program helped me translate these skills to an electronic format. I am now able to bridge the gap between instructional design for information communications technology (ICT) devices and teaching.”

Today, Ronda is a PhD candidate in Human Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London.  She is accepting unlocked used mobile phones and chargers for her program in Kenya.  Please visit www.rondazg.com to learn more about Ronda’s pioneering work and to help further the education continuum of young girls in Africa by making a mobile phone donation!

Can children intervene when they see someone being bullied?  Can bullies learn to behave differently?  Alumna, Janice Houlihan, cofounder of the nonprofit Inner Explorer (IE), answers these questions with a resounding “Yes!” “Mindfulness practices help the bully, victim, and any witnesses involved develop a deeper awareness of themselves, resilience, compassion, and a greater ability to regulate their emotional responses.”

In an experiential type of learning Janice calls “learning from the inside out,” students are taught to learn about topics such as kindness by feeling the emotion and then translating that feeling into acts of kindness. IE audio-guided mindfulness meditations allow K–12 students and teachers to easily engage in mindfulness practices for 10 minutes each day.  These guided meditations are based on the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program created by Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society, initiated at the UMass Medical School.

Early results of a randomized controlled trial of kindergarten through fifth-grade classrooms that implemented Inner Explorer’s mindfulness programs showed an estimated 50 percent reduction in reactive behavior and bullying incidents during the 2012–2013 school year. Quarterly grade point averages (GPAs) improved by 7–15 percent. Currently, there are 111 preschool and elementary classrooms in 12 schools in California, Illinois, Ohio, Massachusetts, and New York taking part in the program.

Janice graduated with her MEd in Instructional Design in 2005. “I relied upon the needs analysis skills I learned in the program to focus on what we wanted students and teachers to be able to do after the learning intervention and how best to get there,” she says. She has continued to keep in touch with the instructional design program since graduation, “I have tremendous faith in the talent of the students at UMass Boston and have collaborated with a few ID graduate students in an internship capacity to create our online training programs for teachers.” Visit www.innerexplorer.org to learn more about the Inner Explorer.

Angela Jimenez moved to Massachusetts from Colombia in 2007 when her husband was offered a job at a software company.  She enrolled in English as a Second Language (ESL) courses at UMass Boston to improve her English skills.  Shortly after passing the TOEFL exam, she decided to continue with her graduate studies at UMass Boston. “I found instructional design to be the best program to meet my expectations,” recalls Angela, “and it fit very well with my professional background in economics and project management from the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Colombia.”

While Angela enjoyed the program tremendously, she admits that returning to school wasn’t always the easiest road to travel. “Being an international student and learning not just a new language, but also a new culture, was challenging,” she says. “I also became a mom while in school and had a new baby to care for.” Angela remembers both her family and the program administration were very supportive during her experience. She was determined to get her diploma and pursue her passion for teaching and education, and still be fully committed to her role as a new mother. “Thanks to the flexibility of the online classes and the support of the faculty, administrators and other students, I was able to meet my goals,” she says.

Angela Jimenez graduated with a MEd in instructional design in December 2012 and currently works as an instructional designer at Fidelity Investments where she believes her degree was a decisive factor in landing the position.  She enjoys life with husband Juan and her beautiful daughter, Lucianna, who became three in March.