Disciplinary Differences in E-learning Instructional Design

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Brief Abstract

Disciplinary differences are overlooked in respect of e-learning instructional design, course delivery format, and selecting suitable technology. This synchronous information session will introduce disciplinary differences by illustrating how to apply the Biglan’s framework in the selection of effective e-learning approaches focusing on curriculum content, cognitive purpose, and assessment.

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Kadriye Lewis, Childrens Mercy Hospital - Department of Pediatrics - UMKC School of Medicine

Kadriye O. Lewis, EdD, is the Director of Evaluation and Program Development in the Department of Graduate Medical Education at Children's Mercy Hospital CMH). She is also Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine (UMKC SOM). Prior to coming to Children’s Mercy, Dr. Lewis worked for Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (CCHMC) for more than 13 years. She played a major role in the development of the Online Master's Degree in Education Program for Healthcare Professionals. This program has developed a national and international reputation for excellence and played an important role in training future leaders in medical education. Dr. Lewis served as an education consultant to the medical center's faculty development program. She applied her educational background and academic skills to health literacy by establishing a Health Literacy Committee at CCHMC in 2007 and chaired this committee successfully for three years. Along with her many accomplishments in the area of scholarly activities, she also established the e-Learning SIG in Medical Education for the Academic Pediatrics Association (APA) in 2008 and served this group as the chair person for six years. Dr. Lewis is active in medical education research and her scholarly interests include performance-based assessment, the construction of new assessment tools as well as the improvement and validation of existing tools and methods. She also has a particular interest in instructional design and implementation of innovative technologies for curriculum delivery at many levels in healthcare education due to her extensive experience in e-learning and web-based technologies. Currently, she is involved in an NIH funded grant project on genome, various curriculum development projects for the graduate medical education programs at CMH and teaches an online/blended course in the Master of Health Professions Education program at UMKC SOM (http://med.umkc.edu/mhpe/). Dr. Lewis presents extensively at many professional meetings and conferences, and has been an invited speaker at many national and international universities.

Extended Abstract

Session Objectives

At the end of this session, participants will be able to:

  • Analyze disciplinary differences based on the Biglan’s framework for the purpose of the selection of effective e-learning approaches focusing on curriculum content, cognitive purpose, and assessment.
  • Discuss challenges and opportunities of developing discipline specific e-learning solutions in various subject matters.

e-learning has shown massive growth in the delivery of educational contents in all learning fields for some time. Also, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have had a sudden shift to developing more e-learning solutions for many courses and training programs at all levels. However, this sudden transition to an online environment with an unfamiliar mode of teaching has caused frustration to many educators, not knowing how to design and deliver their courses effectively to their target audience. Moreover, disciplinary differences are overlooked in respect of e-learning instructional design, course delivery format, and selecting suitable technology or learning management systems. Educators need to be cognizant of disciplinary differences in e-learning solutions in their educational practices so they can reap benefits in terms of their trainees’ learning and curriculum innovation.

This synchronous information session will introduce disciplinary differences by illustrating how to apply the Biglan’s framework in the selection of effective e-learning approaches focusing on curriculum content, cognitive purpose, and assessment (Four disciplinary groups by Biglan: hard pure, soft pure, hard applied, and soft applied). Based on a given scenario, participants will be invited to discuss the following questions:

  1. What unique learning opportunities for this specific discipline can apply conveniently to an online teaching situation?
  2. How can knowledge of disciplinary differences be used to inform the selection, design and integration of appropriate e-learning activities in this e-learning development?
  3. What are the important issues of assessment in a specific discipline when you use different e-learning modalities?
  4. What may be some of the unique challenges of developing your e-learning solutions involved in your discipline in the context of e-learning modalities?

In brief, this session will increase participants’ awareness of disciplinary differences and analyzing their own discipline specific constructs to design and develop e-learning solutions at their own institution.

Reference:

Biglan, A. (1973). The characteristics of subject matter in different academic areas. Journal of Applied Psychology, 57(3), 195−203.