Building Proficiency

An important instructional-design concept has to do with levels of proficiency expected of the learners throughout the time span of the course and within each learning activity. To illustrate this concept and the need for courses to move beyond the base(ment), knowledge and comprehension level, I came up with the visual metaphor you can see below.

Designers often liken creating instruction to the construction of a building (think of a course development plan as the quivalent of an architect's blue print, think of the creation of course materials and learning experiences much like the raising of a building from the foundation up to the roof, etc.). Thus, the metaphor illustrates proficiency levels as floors within a building. The idea of going up in the building (i.e., progressing through the proficiency levels) is renedred through the dynamic visual of the elevator going up and down.

For each floor inside the "proficiency building," viewers can see the title of the level (e.g., "application" for level 1), the main idea (i.e., learners use the knowledge gained in the B level), and a brief description (in this case, adding the concept of applying knowledge to particular, meaningful contexts that replicate the settings in which those skills normally occur in the workplace for which the learners are preparing.

Lastly, this illustration goes beyond Bloom's taxonomy (my inspiration) and adds a top level where the learners are fully functioning in the respective knowledge and skill set. This is actually a metaphor within a metaphor when you think of the "proficiency building" not necessarily as the progression of learning and ability through a course but, why not, through a lesson (at the smaller end of the spectrum) or an entire academic program (at the larger end of the spectrum).