User-design provides an alternative to top-down expert-driven design processes. Grounded in systems theory, user-design empowers frontline stakeholders to design and create their own innovations. As a result, users of innovations are transformed into co-designers of innovations, rather than passive recipients of designs that are imposed upon them by an expert, which in turn may lead to greater adoption and diffusion of those innovations.
During this webcast, we will also discuss the role of instructional designers, specifically how they provide resources and facilitate the work of the design team rather than impose their expertise upon the team members. We will discuss a range of user-design tools, including ethnography, cooperative design, design-based research, action research, and scenario-based design.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently launched a curriculum for its mission critical occupation—economists. Robert Jordan, an instructional designer, led an agency-wide team of economists and successfully incorporated user-design tools in creating the new curriculum. Joining Robert is Alison A. Carr-Chellman, a professor of Instructional Systems and an author on the topic of user-design. During this webcast, you will learn how the user-design process unfolded at BLS and the critical lessons learned as a result.
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Robert Jordan is employed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in its corporate university, BLS University, and has worked for the agency for almost 25 years. His primary responsibility is designing instruction and learning opportunities. Recently, he earned a PhD in Learning, Design, and Technology from the Pennsylvania State University and holds a masters degree in Instructional Systems Development from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His professional interests include informal learning and innovative learner-centered instructional design practices. He has written and co-written several articles and book chapters on various topics related to instructional design and learning.
Alison A. Carr-Chellman is currently the head of the Learning and Performance Systems department in the College of Education at the Pennsylvania State University. She earned her undergraduate in elementary education and taught school briefly before returning to school for her masters degree in Instructional Design, Development, and Evaluation, both at Syracuse University. She worked at a tutoring center while in Syracuse, followed by work as a trainer of jet fighter pilots at McDonnell Douglas in Denver, CO. She subsequently returned to graduate school in Instructional Systems Technology with a focus on Educational Systems Design at Indiana University in Bloomington. She then started examining broad system-wide changes in schools and how to affect and sustain them. She became enmeshed in research and theories with a particular interest in the underserved and silenced among those engaged in school change and policy-making.
This led Ali to a position at Penn State in their Instructional Systems graduate program. Here, her own research focus remained on systemic change of schools and how technology can be used to increase innovation and the creation of learning environments. About this time, Ali had twin sons and a daughter just a year after. Her experiences in schools around her own children dramatically affected her current research efforts, which are aimed at a deeper understanding of the experiences of boys in schools and how to re-engage them within a digital media learning framework. Her current research and teaching includes work with games in schools, both educational and commercial/entertainment. She is currently interested in the attitudes of teachers and parents toward gaming in the classroom and has a TED talk on the topic of using games to re-engage boys in their own schooling.
