Instructional Design Goals
My original goals for joining the ISD program at FSU were to combine my previous masters degree in Biblical Studies with an ISD masters from FSU so as to become the ideal e-learning director for a seminary or Christian college. Due to the my present work as the director of a non profit organization, I will not immediately be moving to find work in that field.1
The first step I eventually plan to take towards work in the ISD field will be the establishment of an LMS (Moodle or Joomla based) that small seminaries, Christian colleges, and churches can use as a platform for online education. Many small institutions can not afford the cost of a full scale LMS nor the salaries of staff to operate it or advise faculty regarding e-learning. As the operator of the LMS I intend on providing very low cost distance education consulting to institutions using the LMS.
Should the above program take off I intend on providing consulting services regarding online learning, distance education, and faculty-online-teaching-readiness to small colleges. I plan to simultaneously keep my eye out for academic institution positions analogous to director or assistant director of distance education.
Future areas of research interest include preparing face to face college faculty to teach online, emerging technologies for distance education, language acquisition through online learning, low cost online learning solutions, and learning through gaming and simulation. Should I find the time and resources to do so I would like to create a diagnostic tool that reliably measures the readiness of college faculty to teach online. Such a tool would play a counterpart role to some of the diagnostic tools attempting to predict the readiness of students to learn in online environments.2
Areas for future improvement of my own competencies include: Section 508 compliance, SCORM compliance, curriculum evaluation, rapid prototyping, and project management for distance education.
Like it or not, in today’s world, technology is the other side of the ISD coin. While saying “technology can be learned” is a true statement, saying “Thousands of dollars and hours can be lost by choosing the wrong technology for learning applications” is also a true statement. Training soldiers for battle readiness and courage is essential but at some point the technology and weaponry used by soldiers can make or break a battle.1 I have been asked for help in online course review by Clearwater Christian College.
2 See www.readi.info as an example of a learner diagnostic tool. The author built a website that incorporated this tool during his tutorial.
Specific field interests:
(1) In addition to general instructional design interests, I would like to investigate the interface between language learning (esp classical Greek/Hebrew) and distance education. Furthermore, are there ways to improve the traditional instructional method used in seminaries and Christian colleges to teach classical languages like Koine Greek and Biblical Hebrew?
Personal Goals:
(1) I'd like to eventually get my private pilot license and figure out some way to finance the purchase of a private aircraft.
(2) Travel to Israel eventually.
(3) Write several books on social/religious issues.
Bio is forthcoming.