Module 10 My reflections on Web 2.0.

ID, and Community of Inquiry The reason I started the Masters program was to learn about the process of education. After 15 years of practice, I realized that I like to teach but had no formal training. In my opinion, instructional design is a lot like taking care of patients. First, you gather information about the student (the patient). Next, you try to find out the students needs (the diagnosis). Lastly, you try to figure out the instructional remedy (the treatment plan). Each step of the way you continually assess how the student is doing, the same way you follow patients. I like the ward mantra "see one, do one, teach one". The ideas and methods of instructional design helped craft the content clay into a useful object. The organization and planning through instructional design methods give the detail to support the educational activities of the hospital wards and clinics. Web 2.0 tools have given educators many more choices to plan and organize content. The cognitive load theory supports the notion that visual and verbal input together to promote learning. The reading of the book to my children is a great example. For medical students, the task of acquiring the amount and complexity of learning content is a challenge. Web 2.0 tools are a welcome addition to the instructional design armamentarium. Multimedia capabilities that add images, video, and audio give beginning learners lots of opportunity to practice. The community of inquiry allows collaboration and feedback that is essential to reflective learning. I have utilized the cognitive load theory prior to this program, but now with an understanding the underlying principles I hope to improve my use of these techniques. Scaffolding is extremely important with medical students because they lack clinical experience, and I will endeavor to reflect on my dialogues with students to improve how I facilitate their learning. Second year students beginning their introduction into physical diagnosis benefit from all the support that Web 2.0 tools have for making learning content more accessible. For example, I have found cardiac MRI imaging combined with auscultation recordings that promote simultaneous visual and auditory input. I hope to collaborate or produce a more complete library of simultaneous video and audio of cardiac physical diagnosis findings.