Camy Bean and her followers said it best a few years ago here: http://cammybean.kineo.com/2007/12/my-objection-to-learning-objectives.html

Learning objectives in the beginning of a project can be a signal to “listen up kiddies, and prepare to be bored”. As a learner I also usually skip over objectives. I’m afraid that to alot of people they are preceived as a signal to prepare for some really dull “educational” but good for you cod liver oil. As you may know, I’m a career changer with only a few actual design projects under my belt so far. It is my preference to try to engage and motivate the learner first. Don’t get me wrong, I believe it’s crucial to have well thought out objectives in order to design effective training. I just don’t believe it’s alway necessary to introduce them to the learner in the beginning of a module.

But the issue comes seems to come up again and again with every project I do. My current project is a live webinar/presentation about an emerging technology and how it applies to e-learning. The goal is to get us used to presenting and inform other students. So I jumped right in, and was having a grand old time making something which I think will have a nice flow and be interesting and informative. Then it occurs to me that I’m not using proper ISD techniques because I’m not writing, much less including the old “Objectives: Here’s what we are going to learn today bullet one, two, three etc.”. Will I be marked off for this by the teacher? When I asked him he said (to paraphrase) . . .

“at least let us know what we are going to be learning” if you are going into several points in the presentation then it would be good to have bullet points”.

Perhaps this is a good compromise, and won’t make the presentation start off too stiffly. But I do wonder from the point of view of a portfolio piece, will not having formal objectives in the beginning be seen as a mark against me? Will I be judged as someone who doesn’t understand ISD principles? Or worse yet, as somebody “too creative” to be hirable by a company that does more routine training?

I am currently taking EDUC 682: Instructional Technology Design and Development at UMBC. This class is taught on-line synchronously. Last week’s lecture focused on wireframing. Many students were unfamiliar with this term, and confused about the difference between it, “storyboarding” and a “flow chart”. Professor Mark’s was almost evangelical about clarifying the differences. I think this is because in his experience in the “real world” he has observed that being able to do all 3 results in much better planning and project management. In a nutshell, a “wireframe” is a prototype of a single page of a website or learning module. A storyboard shows all the pages together in sequence. Only the flow chart allows for branching. Thus if a learner doesn’t follow the lesson sequentially, but is allowed to skip ahead or repeat based on their learning needs the flow chart will show their alternative paths.

At Professor Mark’s company professional software is used. I asked if there were any free on-line options for those of us who have already spent too much on software. He pointed us to this site: http://speckyboy.com/2010/01/11/10-completely-free-wireframe-and-mockup-applications/

I haven’t had a chance to test every program mentioned, but her are my preliminary results. Since I have a Mac, your results may vary:

Lumzy was the best.

Mockingbird and Hot Gloo – no longer free

Denim – was able to launch application, but not to figure out how to work it. Marks would slowly appear, then disappear

Cacoo looks to be the easiest to use and best designed, but very slow (constantly got what we mac users call “spinning volleyball of doom”}. It exported an image as a png

Simone’s thoughts and inspirations on better ways to create educational media.