Hart Instructional Design Plan MEDT 7490

My client for this plan is Kathy Glisson at Mt. Zion High School in Carroll County,
Georgia. Kathy is the club advisor for the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA), an
organization that works to prepare students for careers in business. The instructional problem
Kathy presented to me in my conversation with her was that the FBLA members did not have a
clear understanding of the roles of the club officers. This lack of understanding has led to
confusion at club meetings and the management of the club as a whole. Members are also
reluctant to volunteer for officer positions because they do not fully understand what the
positions do. There are also many misconceptions about what each role does. The members
often come into conflict as their roles mistakenly overlap with each other.
My plan is to create visuals that help explain these roles to all the members. It will serve
to educate not only the present officers, but all members. Younger FBLA members will be the
officers of tomorrow, and these images and exercises will help clarify what is expected on each
in a leadership role. A series of infographics (Artifacts 1-7) will explain the duties and
responsibilities of each position in a visually stimulating way. These instruments work on the
principles of dual coding and multimedia learning, presenting information through both the
written word and through visuals.
After receiving the information on the roles from the infographic, the members will then
chose one of the officers and complete one of the following tasks:
1. Comic strip/graphic novel - Students will create a comic strip or graphic novel
detailing the duties and responsibilities of their chosen officer. If doing a comic strip,
students must complete at least 9 panels. If doing a graphic novel, one to two pages

should be completed. Students may draw the images themselves or use online comic
makers such as those found on pixton.com, bitstrips.com, makebeliefscomix.com, or
any other site of their choosing.
2. Concept mapping - students will create their own visually oriented concept map
detailing the duties of their chosen officer. Students will use electronic devices
(computers, tablets, smart phones, etc.) to create a concept map using images as their
primary medium. The images can be hyperlinked to verbal information elsewhere on
the internet, but students should endeavor to tell the responsibilities mainly through
images.
3. Photo sequence students will create a photograph montage that explains the duties
and responsibilities of FBLA officers. These images should be student-created. They
can be images of the duty in action or anything else that the student think effectively
conveys that responsibility.
Alternatively, students may create any of the above and focus on the relationships
between the officers. For example, they may create a concept map that shows how the officers
work together in a meeting to make it run smoothly. Any of the above activities can be adapted
to suit this alternate assignment.
To assess and evaluate the effectiveness of the lesson, the following rubric will be used
for the student submissions:

The effectiveness of the lesson will also be gauged by the advisor and evidence will be
seen in increased interest in the roles of officers. FBLA members will demonstrate more
knowledge of the duties of each officer during meetings and interactions with each other as they
carry out the work of the organization. They will also show increased interest in volunteering for
officer positions and will show enthusiasm in regards to serving in these roles. Evidence will
also be seen when meeting run more smoothly and the work of the organization will be

shouldered by the students in a proactive manner, instead of waiting for the advisor to create and
assign responsibilities of not only officers but all members.
I think this plan will be effective based on the principles Ive learned in this class. We
know that there is a much greater possibility of transfer of knowledge when information is
communicated both verbally and visually. This is known as dual coding, and instruments such as
the infographic used in this plan will help students to learn and recall the duties of FBLA
officers.
Similarly, the student led activities work on the same principle. As active participants,
creating visual representations of the knowledge they learned, they will give evidence of the
learning that has occurred. The comic and graphic organizer require students to take information
they have learned and condense it down to panels of a comic. They cannot put too much text in
the comic, forcing them to summarize and distill the information. The concept map requiring
images of the duties of officers necessitate that students first understand the responsibilities and
then translate that information into representative images. Based on the findings of the study I
read by Yen, Lee, and Chen, I think that this type of concept map will work better than a textbased concept map (2012). As with the comics, students have to think abstractly about the
information and translate it into a pictures that represent the data visually. The other assignment
works on the same principle. By coming up with a photographic sequence, students cannot
simply relist a bunch of bullet points about what an FBLA officer should do. They have to think
and turn this into an image.
I feel confident that the above techniques will work. They worked in exactly the same
way I described when I did them myself this summer. Whats more, I think exercises like this
are fun. While they are creating cool and exciting images and graphics, they are also forced to

show real knowledge about what they learned. There is no way to effectively fake projects
like thisstudents must not only show that they learned the information about FBLA officers,
but they also must show a competency in visual literacy.
This instructional design plan meets many of the ACRL Visual Literacy Competency
Standards for Higher Education. By interpreting the FBLA officer infographic and gleaning the
necessary information from it, students will meet Standard 3, which reads the visually literate
student interprets and analyzes the meanings of images and visual media. Standard 5, which
states that the visually literate student uses images and visual media effectively is met by the
student-centered learning of the second part of this plan. This second part also meets Standard 6,
which states that the visually literate student creates meaningful images and visual media.
Creating a comic, image-based infographic, or photography montage requires students to show
effective use of images and visual media.
Creating this design plan was effective in requiring me to pull together all that I have
learned this semester about visual literacy and its use in classroom instruction. Completing this
task for my client has allowed me to see how it can be used to plan lessons based on interpreting
and using images. Many times we learn about new teaching techniques and that is where the
lesson ends. This assignment allowed us to create our own plan, utilizing many facets of this
course, and in doing so reinforced the ideas by making us active learners in the process.
I thankfully had a very informed client who knew exactly what she wanted, so I had no
real problems completing this assignment. The instructional problem Kathy presented was clear
and I was immediately thinking of remedies that might work to help her FBLA chapter
understand the roles of officers. I ran a few suggestions by her to ask what she thought and she
was very accepting and gracious. I think she was excited to have some help in this; I know how

stressful being a club advisor can be. Kathys willingness to let me help her and her clear
objective made my job in this clear-cut and relatively straightforward. I simply had to apply
what I had learned to her problem and I think she will be happy with how this design plan meets
her expectations when her chapter reconvenes in the fall.

References
Yen, J. C., Lee, C. Y., & Chen, I. J. (2012). The effects of image-based concept mapping on the
learning outcomes and cognitive processes of mobile learners. British Journal of
Educational Technology, 43(2), 307-320.