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Vacation Budgeting 101 Instructional Website

Vacation Budgeting 101 Home Page
Context

In R547, a course on computer-mediated learning that I took in the summer of 2020, students were tasked with creating a digital learning intervention using Merrill's pebble-in-the-pond model to design the instruction and what we were learning about HTML and CSS to develop the website. My partner Amanda Zwirecki and I created an instructional site on how to budget for a vacation. We contributed equally to the instructional design and development.

Summary

Amanda and I chose to create a course on how to budget for a vacation. We provided learners with a templated budgeting spreadsheet and progressively walked them through problems that increased in complexity from selecting categories of expenses, to estimating amounts, and finding savings. Each problem had an initial instructional page with a priming question, motivational video, and text; a demonstration page with short videos modeling skills; a page with knowledge check questions; a page with a practice scenario; a page with the solution; and a page for reflection. The website also includes a mastery assessment. Amanda and I developed the entire website from scratch in Dreamweaver.  

Reflection

In reviewing this project, I have to say, I'm proud of it! Amanda and I created a multi-faceted instructional intervention that looks quite polished. The project gave me some valuable practice in design and development skills that allow me as a leader to be able to more effectively coach my team in their work. Getting to know HTML and CSS has helped me better understand and communicate with our product and technology teams, and has helped me identify opportunities for aesthetic improvement to course pages in our learning management system. 

Key Takeaways

  • Instructional design: This project taught me a new design model in pebble-in-the-pond. The broader my knowledge as a leader, the more effective I am as a coach and decision-maker.

  • HTML and CSS: This project taught me how to code an entire website. I learned all the basics of HTML and CSS and even took it a step further to independently research and use some JavaScript. 

  • Collaboration: Throughout my degree I largely chose to work alone. This was one project where I worked with a partner and it was a great experience to be able to work with Amanda. As a leader, being able to collaborate effectively is essential.

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