KNILT Student Experiences
What is KNILT
KNILT is an online platform for educators and professionals in which they can collaborate and connect about teaching practices, course ideas, and much more! KNILT was added to SUNY Albany's curriculum in 2007 and is used for the course: Systematic Design of Instruction to help teachers become aware of online learning techniques and improvements. If you are not a teacher, you can still benefit from using KNILT. Some examples of professionals that can benefit from KNILT are: curriculum designers, instructional designers, online educators, etc. COVID-19 has brought a greater need for websites like KNILT, due to the ever-growing online learning population. As the semesters go on, the KNILT library increases and you can view all courses from past semesters!
What Do Students Learn During the ID Process?
During the ID process, students learn how to properly structure a course. One of the biggest takeaways especially, is the creation of a curriculum map. Curriculum maps are very important because they enable educators to concentrate on ensuring that the content across all curriculums is balanced. With this inclusion, students can help better organize their courses based upon module/unit ideas, lesson objectives, assessments, and reflections. Before creating a course, it is also important to identify multiple factors such as, scope of learning outcomes and purpose of the topic, the analysis of the learner and context, needs assessment, performance-based objectives and the task analysis. Besides the basic processes of ID, differentiating instruction for all learners is something that is acquired during the ID learning process. With online learning, the inclusion of visual aids, larger fonts, auditory aids, breakout rooms with peers, one-on-one sessions with teachers, chat functions with other students and educators, etc.
Advice for Future ETAP 623 Students - Student Experiences within the ID Process
Over the course of the semester, students worked on creating their mini-courses for ETAP 623. After reflecting back on their personal experiences, here's what they recommend for incoming ETAP 623 students!
- One of the biggest recommendations: Don't fall behind in your schedule when creating your mini course, procrastination is easy and it can be hard to keep up with the given schedule. Keeping a printed out schedule of the course can be a great idea too!
- When looking at the KNILT Project at the beginning of the semester, it can definitely become overwhelming. Try to relax and know that the schedule is paced so that not everything is due at once! Also, it doesn't hurt to try to be ahead of schedule if your time allows!
- Make sure to choose a topic to design your mini course around that interests you! This will make the process more enjoyable and effortless.
- It is important to take a look at the student portfolio page sample before creating your portfolio page.
- Before choosing your topic, take a look at some of the other mini-courses from previous semesters. This can help spark ideas for your own course! (Click the link under the image to view some of the past courses!)
- While creating your mini-course, you there will be peer-reviews. Take these seriously as they your classmates offer valuable information and ideas!
- Throughout the course, go in some of your peers mini-courses in progress to get some ideas and see what you think you can add to your course to make it stronger.
- While creating your mini-course, don't be afraid to get creative! Make sure you try to utilize and include images, videos, and embedded links. You can even include videos and images that you take yourself!
- It is important to use as many references and sources as possible in order to make your claims in your course credible! This is especially important when going over unit rationales and needs assessments.
- That being said, make sure to always keep a running list of all of your references and include them on your main portfolio page and their respective pages in your course where the information is cited.
Resources for Future Instructional Designers and Educational Technologists
If you think that you want to continue upon the educational technology path, click on the link embedded in the picture to see future job opportunities and resources!
