My opinion is influenced by my professional experience as a classroom teacher, that utilizes the Flip model and other non-traditional instructional practices. In teacher professional development we talk a lot about “best practices” and how best to reach our students, and this class just fails miserably in achieving “best practices”.

As a teacher, I’m not completely ignorant when it comes to the content of this course. Weeks 3 and 4 covered content I am familiar with and/or have received specialized training concerning those topics. Weeks 1 and 2 were largely new information and really just provided me with vocabulary and structured thinking to many things that I do already. Returning to “best practices”, the entire course simply fails to demonstrate the concepts it is teaching. Using Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction, the instructors have failed to gain the attention of their audience, and they fail to recognize the impact of their presentation style on the attitudes – specifically motivation and engagement – of the audience.

I would like to share a few recommendations with you. First, the instructional video format. A rule with instructional videos is that you can expect about 1 minute of attention for every grade level. So for a 9^th grader, don’t make your videos longer than about 9 minutes. There is a point of diminishing returns. Keep your videos short. A thirty-minute instructional video is a bad idea in general. Break the video into multiple parts to make it “digestible”, and not overload the learner. The “talking heads” format that is utilized is not engaging. The slides have too much text; if the learner has to read the slides, then they aren’t listening to you. None of the presenters are engaging in personality or delivery. Dr. Huang may be an expert in this field, but his videos are long, his voice is monotone, and he just doesn’t have a presence on screen. Nothing about any of the presenters’ deliveries makes learning in this course exciting.

Required reading in this course needs to be altered. I could have purchased a book on Amazon for $20 that covered the same content in fewer pages and would focus more on practicality than straight up theory. The week 3 required reading was “unreadable”. You could get the same result of your required readings by just giving students a bullet list of topics and having them do their own Google Search of terms. That would at least be active learning.

Assessment design in this course is poor. The discussion prompts in videos are a waste of time as every student creates their own thread in the discussion forum and there is no incentive to dig through responses to get other people’s opinions or views because it is not referenced directly in the summative assessments. Question design in the quizzes should be changed as well. Multiple choice questions are one thing, but multiple choice-multiple answer questions are cruel. The later quizzes are extremely difficult because of this as phrasing and structuring of answers is not referenced directly from the videos. This requires content fluency from the learner that has not been practiced, developed or assessed prior to this quiz, so the learner is left guessing and hoping. Thankfully, there are essentially unlimited retakes.

THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT. At the beginning of the course it is stated that this course is part of the MicroMasters program. According to the course listing for that program on CoursEra….it’s not.

I WOULD STRONGLY RECOMMEND using a couple of case studies that are introduced at the beginning of the course and are examined throughout the course as topics and methods are discussed. Draw parallels; point out possible errors; DEMONSTRATE what you are talking about.

As a teacher, I always strive for student engagement. This is even discussed during the course, attitude/motivation has a big influence on the success of the learning experience. Make the course more engaging. Right now I don’t plan to continue the MicroMasters program because the experience thus far has been a soul-sucking/motivation-draining experience AND I’m not convinced the instructors can provide me with any information, methods, etc., that I’m not already familiar with that will improve my skills in the development, implementation, and evaluation of my learning resources.

I would give this course zero stars if i could. The presentation style of some of the presenters was incredibly monotonous, the visual style was at the cost of clarity and retention, the content was repeated across each week, the MCQs were an absolute horror show, scavenging for answers that didn't exist rather than actually learning...the irony of an instructional design course being this badly designed is outrageous! Seriously people, you need to go back to the drawing board with this one. This is by far the worst online course i have ever completed. I dont understand how people are giving this positive reviews. The one positive thing i can offer, it does help you pick up key words and descriptions for the field of ID, outside of that avoid like the plague.

While the information is comprehensive and certainly very useful, the delivery method of talking heads, power point slides, and online reading material in this course is very stagnant.

I find that the content of this course is relevant to the career and it does, in fact, gives the audience a good idea of what to expect from a career as Instructional Designer. However, the way the course was instructed did not meet my expectations.

Firstly, content is recited over the videos, this means, students are to sit watching a video of an instructor that talks about complex subjects in a monochrome tone of voice, with the exception of 2-3 speakers. Reciting a content leaves no room for the audience to interpret the subjects, but to learn by heart what was said leading to no motivation from the audience. Secondly, this way of "teaching" made quizzes extremely, not to mention unnecessarily, complex for the answers needed to be a copy/paste from the lessons, changing one word could lead to an incorrect answer. Thirdly, why not providing the right answers after succeeding a test, how are we supposed to know the right answers of those questions we did not get right?. Not to talk about the various technical issues, like running out of quiz attempts after using only 2 chances making you hand in the assignments late, marking right answers wrong even when you had a screen shot of the exact words from the video lessons, finding out that your first answers were correct after 8 attempts. Not being able to interact with the instructors when in doubt or in need of clarification.

Overall, sadly, I did not have a good experience doing this course; therefore, I would not recommend. I enrolled in the course to have a better understanding of what the career was before going through admissions for a diploma degree. Now I come to realize that paying for this course was not necessary for completing the certificate did not change the outcome. I could have just followed the course without the hazard of completing the assignments, that would have been enough.

I highly recommend this course for those who are interested in pursuing a career in instructional design. It lays a solid foundation of the history, methods, and practical applications of ID. The concepts are presented in a brief but comprehensive manner.

I enjoyed the readings but felt that there could be more case studies and application based stuff because there was a lot of theory in it. Which is why the assignments were hard as questions had content which was sometimes not mentioned even briefly in the video. Considering it as a course in ID, I did expect more variations and more resources to read. Sometimes the narrators tone became monotonous. Further I struggled a lot with Quiz 4 and found the content to be highly disconnected from it. The quiz had a few application based questions, particularly question 3 and 5 which were too difficult had not reference in the video and no readings were assigned for the that week. Also It would be nice if instructors were more responsive to individual posts than just big threads, as my doubts were not responded to. More interaction with instructors through a message tool or any other way will make the course more enriching.

I feel this course would have been much better if the history portion at the beginning were removed and replaced with some real-life examples and dig deeper into the application of these concepts.

This course was excellent! It provided a great overview of the instructional design field. I'm excited to take more courses from the University of Illinois.

The course was very informational. I hope there will be other courses to follow to complete the ADDIE Model.

Very good content and pace. Great community of encouraging fellow students

The video instruction was very monotone at times. The course work at the end (assignments) are purely peer-rated not really giving insight into improvements on the course, as all the peers are doing the same course. This makes me question the credibility of the course, as part of your result is dependent on another student's interpretation of your work.

I really liked this course. The assignments were designed really well, giving us the sneak peek into what a instructional designer would do.

Quite an intensive online course. Insightful as a good foundation to Instructional Design Overall i will rate the course 3.5 out of 5.

It was quite heavy on theory; typical of a school course, with all of the journal readings, but practical real life scenarios and best practice ideologies would have been great to aid learning and engagement. For example having an Instructional Designer at a company teach one of the modules or run us through one of his past projects, So we get a feel of what a real life project is like, straight from the horses mouth.

Also the quizzes- The point isn't just to score 80% as a pass grade for the quiz. The quiz is to aid learning and ensure the participants can recall what has been taught.

Firstly, when attempting the quiz more than once it will be good to show the correct options to the answers the learner got right, and not make them attempt answering those right questions again. Let the answers to the right options be visible. Looking at them over and over will aid learning.

Also, after scoring the pass mark of 80 let the participant know the answers to the failed options. The point isn't just to score grades to pass, but for learning.

I expected more from the course. I want to understand the process of translating a Face-to-face course to an online learning environment. Also a bit more dynamism in the lectures would help a lot. It is too theoretical. I love theory but lets not forget the application. Nonetheless, thank you for the course.

I do not recommend this course. It is monotone, and full of irrelevant information that will not be used in the field. Even the useful information is merely statements without examples of how to incorporate it into your daily instructional design.

Quizzes seem designed to frustrate, not reinforce material. Questions with multiple answers should not be weighted the same as single answer questions.

For an instructional design course this was not well-designed.

Really boring to be hosted by people who specialize in ID.

This course gave me very useful insights into the world of instructional design. Although I am not an Instructional Designer, I am involved extensively in the activities of the Analysis phase to plan training programs in the organization I work with. In other terms I am a general L&D professional, and was at a career crossroad. I am now very sure that I would like to specialize in the field of Instructional Design and this course is an absolute first step in my journey.

A huge thanks to University of Illinois and Coursera for designing such insightful programs. I particularly loved the options for scholarships. Please keep doing the good work! Look forward to my next course.

All the best!

This course met my expectations in providing the foundational knowledge that I needed. I am used to taking traditional in-person college classes and was unsure how this course would operate online. However, I was very satisfied with this course and the various professors that led the instruction. I would suggest this course to anyone seeking a professional and structured course providing the foundational knowledge about Instructional Design. They provided several resources for learners to follow up on after the modules. As well, the quizzes and activities helped to reinforce the knowledge. Thank you for helping me to take my first step towards my career as an Instructional Designer.

This course is very comprehensive and gave me great knowledge of instructional design. Course is well designed and really helped me understand many concepts with a very well managed way. All the quizzes, study material and lectures are very well designed and really helped he novice learners like me a solid foundation of the course. The structure of the course and breaking up of concepts into smaller modules was really helpful. Overall, I had a great time.

This course covers the important aspects of Instructional Design and is good for beginners to understand concepts and gain a clear insight on what the profession is all about. However, in terms of the assignments and examples it would help if a short course is prepared by learners, through examples and/or actual courses prepared by professionals to better relate with the theoretical content.

A very interesting course that facilitates many students to know the most important foundation of the instructional design world. The material presentation is very interesting, the instructor presents the material in a cool and easy to understand style. The task given is also very helpful in understanding the material that has been delivered. I really like this course!

Well crafted, Perfectly planned and excellently executed Course. It was a great time being part of this course. A value addition indeed. I highly recommend this course to everyone concerned with Instructional Material Development. The content is highly effective and delivered in a contended way.

As introduction to the instructional design subject It is an excellent course, i strongly recommend it for the beginners, but it is better to add new module to clarify how we should transfer from the ANALYSIS stage to the DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT stages.