Value: 30%
A gentle reminder that as with all LRNT courses, you are expected to incorporate APA standards for citations, formatting, and references and to back up your writing with evidence and appropriate academic literature as necessary. You are required to pay attention to grammar and clarity and to avoid colloquialisms. References are not included in the assignment word count. Also, don’t forget the numerous resources available to you as you build your competence and fluency with APA formatting and writing style. In particular, check out the RRU APA 7 formatting checklists as well as RRU WriteAnswers where you can ask your APA questions.
Purpose
The purpose of this assignment is to develop your ability to synthesize instructional design scholarship into practical, evidence-informed guidance for a specific audience while collaborating as a design team. Through the creation of an Instructional Design Field Guide, you will investigate a contemporary instructional design challenge, translate research into actionable recommendations, and critically explore the use of generative AI to provide a simulated, audience-specific perspective on your design.
Rather than asking AI to draft your field guide, your team will first develop an evidence-informed draft grounded in scholarly literature and your own professional judgment. Your team will then develop and engage with an AI persona designed to provide a contextually relevant, audience-specific perspective. Through this interaction, you will critically examine your draft, consider alternative perspectives, and evaluate AI-generated recommendations to inform potential revisions.
The final field guide should demonstrate your team’s professional judgment, evidence-informed decision-making, and collaborative design processes.
Deliverables
Your team will submit two deliverables:
- An annotated AI design process review document, highlighting how your team engaged with generative AI during the revision process. This annotated document should include:
- the prompt(s) used to develop the AI persona (audience lens);
- key recommendations generated by the AI;
- annotations identifying which recommendations were adopted, adapted, or rejected; and
- brief evidence-informed explanations for your decisions.
Your team may integrate the AI design process review document into the field guide or include it as an appendix.
2. An Instructional Design Field Guide designed for a specific audience and context of your choosing; presented in the format of your choosing (e.g., website, interactive document, multimedia guide, infographic series, digital handbook, or another approved format).
Use of AI in this Assignment
Unlike Assignment 1, this assignment requires engagement with generative AI.
Your team will first develop an evidence-informed draft of your Instructional Design Field Guide grounded in scholarly literature and your collective expertise. You will then develop and engage with an AI persona to provide a contextually relevant, audience-specific perspective, critically examining your draft and considering recommendations for improvement.
An AI persona provides a simulated audience perspective, not an authentic representation of actual audience members’ experiences or needs. Your team is expected to critically evaluate AI-generated recommendations against scholarly evidence, your chosen context, and your professional judgment. Document and justify which recommendations you adopt, adapt, or reject in your annotated AI design process review document.
Your work will be evaluated on the strength of your scholarly synthesis, contextual understanding, design decisions, and critical evaluation of AI-generated feedback, rather than the quantity of AI-generated content. Your team remains responsible for the accuracy, originality, and scholarly integrity of all submitted work and must include an AI Use Disclaimer.
Developing and Engaging with an AI Persona
Once your team has developed an evidence-informed draft of your Instructional Design Field Guide, you will create an AI persona to provide a contextually relevant, audience-specific perspective.
Consider the characteristics of your intended audience, including their roles, experiences, instructional contexts, needs, and potential challenges. Use these characteristics to develop a persona that can critically review your draft, question assumptions, identify potential gaps, and suggest improvements to its relevance and practical application.
Be mindful that an AI persona provides a simulated audience perspective, not an authentic representation of the experiences or needs of actual audience members. Critically evaluate its feedback against scholarly evidence, your understanding of the intended audience, and your team’s professional judgment.
Your team will determine which AI-generated recommendations to adopt, adapt, or reject, providing brief, evidence-informed explanations for your decisions.
The example prompt is provided as a starting point for developing your AI persona. Your team may adapt it to your chosen audience and design context or create your own context-specific prompt. Be sure to include the prompt(s) used to develop your AI persona in your submitted annotated document.
Example prompt: “Act as an instructional designer working in a small, rural post-secondary institution with limited access to instructional design support and educational technology resources. You design online courses for adult learners with diverse learning needs and work collaboratively with educators who bring a range of skills, experiences, and teaching styles to course delivery.
Review our draft Instructional Design Field Guide from this perspective. Identify recommendations that may be difficult to implement in context, areas requiring further clarification, and opportunities to strengthen the guide’s relevance and practical application. Ask questions that challenge our assumptions and suggest potential improvements, explaining your reasoning.”
Teams and Teamwork
For this assignment, you will self-select a team of three to four members. Collaborating across different disciplines, professional experiences, and instructional contexts creates opportunities to explore diverse perspectives and approaches to instructional design. You are encouraged to form your team and hold an initial meeting as early as possible, ideally by the end of Week 3, as this assignment will require strategic planning to complete by the Week 6 due date. Once your team is formed, email your instructor with the names of all team members by the beginning of Week 4.
Meet with your team to discuss your interests, identify a shared instructional design challenge, and agree on the audience and context for your Instructional Design Field Guide. Finding a common direction may require some negotiation, particularly when team members work in different disciplines or with different learner populations. Consider how your diverse experiences can inform a shared approach while ensuring your field guide remains focused on a clearly defined audience and context.
To support your team’s collaboration, you are expected to use Royal Roads University’s Teamwork Resources to guide your team-building and teamwork practices. During your initial meeting, use the Essential Teamwork Conversations template and develop a team agreement that establishes shared expectations for communication, participation, responsibilities, decision-making, and managing challenges. Revisit your agreement as needed throughout the assignment.
Your Royal Roads team coach will join us during one of our early Zoom sessions to share strategies for successful teamwork.
Select a Context
Each team will situate its field guide within a specific context and develop guidance for an authentic audience.
Possible contexts include:
- Higher Education
- Corporate Learning
- Healthcare
- Government
- Non-profit Organizations
- Trades
- Military
- K–12 Education
Examples of intended audiences include instructional designers, faculty members, teaching and learning centre staff, educational developers, corporate trainers, curriculum specialists, learning consultants, instructional coaches, or other professionals working within your chosen context.
Select a Design Challenge
Working collaboratively, your team will investigate one significant instructional design challenge through the lens of scholarly literature.
Suggested design challenges include:
- Designing for Learner Engagement
- Designing Authentic Assessment
- Designing for Indigenous Learners
- Designing for Accessibility and Inclusion
- Designing for Industry Skills and Competencies
- Designing for Prior Learning Assessment
- Designing with Emerging Technologies
- Designing for Transfer of Learning
- Designing for Belonging and Community
- Designing for Voice and Choice
This topic list is not exhaustive but highlights common, contemporary instructional design challenges that can be explored through evidence-informed approaches. If your team wishes to investigate a different instructional design challenge that aligns with the course learning outcomes, discuss your proposed topic with the instructor by the end of Week 4 before proceeding.
Assignment Process
Phase 1 – Build Your Design Team
Form a team of three to four members and arrange an initial meeting to discuss your interests, identify a shared instructional design challenge, and agree on your intended audience and context. Consider how your team’s diverse experiences and perspectives can inform your approach.
As outlined in the Teams and Teamwork section of this assignment description, use Royal Roads University’s Teamwork Resources, including the Essential Teamwork Conversations template, to guide your initial discussions and develop your Team Agreement.
Your agreement should establish shared expectations for communication, participation, roles and responsibilities, workload distribution, decision-making, timelines, and managing challenges. Revisit your agreement as needed throughout the assignment.
Email your instructor the names of your team members by the beginning of Week 4, and include your completed Team Agreement with your final submission.
Phase 2 – Develop an Evidence-Informed Draft
Drawing upon scholarly literature and your collective expertise, develop an initial Instructional Design Field Guide that translates research into practical, evidence-informed guidance for your chosen audience and context.
Your initial draft should reflect your team’s own analysis, synthesis, and recommendations before engaging with generative AI. Rather than producing a traditional literature review, focus on creating an accessible and actionable resource for your intended audience.
Phase 3 – Develop and Engage with an AI Persona
Once your initial draft is complete, develop an AI persona that provides a contextually relevant, audience-specific perspective. Consider the roles, experiences, needs, and potential challenges of your intended audience when developing your persona.
Engage with your AI persona to critically review your draft, question assumptions, identify potential gaps or implementation challenges, and suggest improvements to its relevance and practical application.
Remember that an AI persona provides a simulated audience perspective, not an authentic representation of actual audience members’ experiences or needs.
Refer to the Developing and Engaging with an AI Persona section of this assignment description for further guidance and an example prompt.
Phase 4 – Critically Evaluate AI-Generated Feedback
Critically evaluate the recommendations generated by your AI persona using scholarly evidence, your contextual understanding, and your team’s professional judgment.
For each significant recommendation, determine whether your team will:
- Adopt: Incorporate the recommendation into your field guide.
- Adapt: Modify the recommendation to better suit your audience and context.
- Reject: Decide not to incorporate the recommendation.
Document your decisions in your annotated AI design process review document, providing brief, evidence-informed explanations for your choices.
The goal is to demonstrate your team’s ability to critically evaluate AI-generated feedback and make informed instructional design decisions.
Phase 5 – Revise and Finalize Your Field Guide
Drawing on scholarly research, your collaborative discussions, and critical evaluation of AI-generated feedback, revise and finalize your Instructional Design Field Guide.
Your completed guide should demonstrate evidence-informed design, contextual relevance, and thoughtful professional judgment in creating a practical resource for your intended audience.
Ensure that all required deliverables, including your annotated AI design process review document, Team Agreement, and AI Use Disclaimer, are included in your final submission.
Submission Package
Only one member of your team should submit the assignment to the Assignment 2 Moodle Dropbox on behalf of the group.
Your submission package must include:
- Your team agreement and an AI disclaimer
- A link to the completed Instructional Design Field Guide or a copy of it in its entirety;
- The Annotated AI Design Review Process Document (integrated into the field guide or submitted as an appendix)
Grading
Your Team’s submission package will be assessed against the provided Rubric. All team members will receive the same grade and the same feedback:
| Criteria | Excellent (A+ to A) | Proficient (A- to B+) | Satisfactory (B to B-) | Unsatisfactory (F) |
| Instructional Design Field Guide | Creates a polished, engaging, and evidence-informed field guide that effectively synthesizes scholarly literature and relevant instructional design models and frameworks into practical guidance for a clearly defined audience and context. Recommendations are context-specific, actionable, and well justified. The field guide is professionally organized, visually effective, and appropriately referenced using APA 7. | Creates an evidence-informed field guide that synthesizes relevant instructional design models, frameworks, and scholarly literature into practical guidance for an identified audience and context. Recommendations are generally actionable and supported by evidence. Organization, visual communication, and APA 7 referencing are effective, with minor areas for improvement. | Creates a field guide that demonstrates limited synthesis of scholarly literature or instructional design models and frameworks. Guidance is primarily descriptive, insufficiently supported by evidence, or inconsistently aligned with the intended audience and context. Recommendations require further development to strengthen their relevance and practical application. Organization, visual communication, or APA 7 referencing require improvement. | Produces an incomplete or substantially underdeveloped field guide that demonstrates little or no meaningful synthesis of scholarly literature or instructional design models and frameworks. Guidance is absent, unsupported by evidence, or disconnected from the intended audience and context. Recommendations lack sufficient relevance or practical application. Significant deficiencies in organization, visual communication, or APA 7 referencing compromise the effectiveness of the field guide. |
| Annotated AI Design Review Process Document | Clearly documents the development of a contextually relevant, audience-specific AI persona, including the AI tool, prompts, and key recommendations generated through engagement with the persona. Demonstrates thoughtful and critical evaluation of AI-generated feedback, with clear, evidence-informed justifications for adopting, adapting, or rejecting recommendations. Demonstrates strong professional judgment and a nuanced understanding of the possibilities and limitations of using a simulated audience perspective to inform instructional design decisions. | Documents the development of an audience-specific AI persona, including the AI tool, prompts, and key recommendations generated through engagement with the persona. Evaluates AI-generated feedback and provides appropriate, evidence-informed explanations for adopting, adapting, or rejecting recommendations. Demonstrates sound professional judgment and an understanding of the possibilities and limitations of using a simulated audience perspective to inform instructional design decisions. | Provides incomplete or limited documentation of the AI persona development and engagement process. The persona demonstrates limited alignment with the intended audience or context. Evaluation of AI-generated recommendations is primarily descriptive or lacks sufficient evidence-informed justification for adopting, adapting, or rejecting recommendations. Demonstrates limited critical engagement with AI-generated feedback or consideration of the limitations of a simulated audience perspective. | Provides minimal or no meaningful documentation of the AI persona development and engagement process. The AI persona is absent or lacks a discernible connection to the intended audience and context. AI-generated recommendations are not meaningfully evaluated, and decisions to adopt, adapt, or reject recommendations are absent or unsupported. Demonstrates little or no evidence of critical evaluation, evidence-informed decision-making, or recognition of the limitations of a simulated audience perspective. |
| Team Agreement and Collaborative Planning | Develops a comprehensive and thoughtfully constructed Team Agreement that establishes clear, actionable expectations for communication, participation, roles and responsibilities, workload distribution, decision-making, timelines, and managing challenges. Demonstrates meaningful engagement with Royal Roads University’s teamwork resources and a proactive, collaborative approach to supporting team success. | Develops a clear and practical Team Agreement that establishes shared expectations for communication, participation, responsibilities, decision-making, timelines, and managing challenges. Demonstrates appropriate use of Royal Roads University’s teamwork resources and a collaborative approach to supporting team success, with minor areas for further development. | Develops a Team Agreement that addresses some expectations for collaboration but lacks sufficient detail or clarity in key areas, such as responsibilities, communication, decision-making, or managing challenges. Demonstrates limited application of Royal Roads University’s teamwork resources. The agreement requires further development to effectively guide the team’s collaborative work. | Submits an incomplete or substantially underdeveloped Team Agreement that lacks clear expectations for effective collaboration. Key elements, such as communication, responsibilities, decision-making, timelines, or managing challenges, are absent or inadequately addressed. Demonstrates little or no meaningful application of Royal Roads University’s teamwork resources. The agreement provides insufficient guidance to support the team’s collaborative work, or no Team Agreement is submitted. |