Instructional Design
It is not easy to take a 200-year-old artisan craft and teach it in an online environment, but we did just that.
My Role: Instructional Designer, Script Writer, Video Producer, & Evaluator
Making Bassoon Reeds is Difficult
We conducted extensive user, environmental, needs, and other analyses. I discovered an old saying goes, “it takes five years to learn to play the bassoon and 25 years to learn to make a reed.” Why is it so difficult?
Reeds Change Daily
Altitude, humidity, and barometric pressure are just a few of the factors that affect how a reed will perform.
Experts Required
Like a master and an apprentice, the skill has been handed down from teacher to student for centuries.
Tiny Changes Make a Big Difference
If you do not know exactly what you are doing, one slip of the file can ruin hours’ worth of work.
Reeds are Expensive
Many bassoonists cannot afford to buy reeds from other makers because they cost $25+ per reed.
Reeds are Made of Natural Material
The variations in the cane used for reeds introduces numerous variables that cannot be controlled for.
Hand Skills
Many people in our modern world lack the manual dexterity to be able to use hand tools in a skilled way.
Our first step was to create 20+
all-new instructional videos.
Click below to see the full playlist of the videos.
We understood that we needed more than just well-made videos. We needed to teach students exactly what to do to fix their reeds and when to do it.
To do this, we used a combination of tried-and-true instructional design methodologies (e.g. ADDIE model) and a newer method called Decision-based Learning.
How we used the ADDIE Model
- Analysis: Conducted user, resource, environmental, content, and constraints analyses prior to starting the project.
- Design: Created a detailed plan for the website, including the instructional methodology & content, multimedia elements like videos, and the overall structure.
- Development: Created the website, including writing content, developing videos, and building the interactive elements.
- Implementation: Launched the website for our target audience.
- Evaluation: Collected feedback from users through testing and evaluation. Adjustments to the website were made based on user feedback.
Conditional Knowledge: Knowledge that allows a learner to know what to do and when to do it.
Watch a video walkthrough of the DBL software in action:
We utilized a new methodology called Decision-based Learning (DBL) that targets conditional knowledge.
By providing students just-in-time instruction for the most difficult parts of reed making, we overcame the limitations of previous attempts at online reed making that only provided video instruction.
We also provided visual guides that highlighted the tools required for each step of the reed making process
- We included links to double reed shops where tools may be purchased.
- All links are updated yearly.
