How to Develop Mathematics Instructional Design

Instructional design can be interpreted from different perspectives, such as discipline, as a science, as a system, and as a process. As a discipline, instructional design discusses about various research and theories learning process strategies. As a science, instructional design is a science that creates the specification development, implementation, assessment, and management of situations that provide learning facilities in the macro and micro scale for various subjects at various levels of complexity. As a system, instructional design is the development of learning system and the implementation including the properties and procedures to improve the quality of learning. Instructional design as a process is the development of the specification of learning by using learning theory and learning theory to guarantee the quality of learning. Instructional design is the overall process of learning needs and goals as well as its delivery system, includes development of materials and learning activities, materials testing and evaluation, and implementation of learning activity⁽¹⁾ .

Some definitions of instructional design are:

1.      Reigeluth (1983); instructional design is the abstract of the application of learning theory and facilitating someone learning process;

2.      Rothwell-Kazana (1992); formulate the design of learning by improving the quality of one's performance and impact to the organization;

3.      Gagne, et al (1992); developed the design concept of learning by stating that the design of learning helps the learning process one in which the learning process itself has immediate and long-term stage;

4.      Gentry (1994); is a process of formulating and determining learning objectives, strategies, techniques and media in order to achieve common goal;

5.      Raiser (2002); instructional design was a series of procedures to develop a system of education and training programs with a consistent and proven. ⁽³⁾

Thus we can conclude that mathematics instructional design is a practice of creating students’ mathematical experiences which make the acquisition of knowledge and skill more efficient, effective, and appealing.

An instructional design consists of instructional design in general and design of teaching learning mathematics. The elements of instructional design in general are various or type; background or the philosophy; and also the example. The elements of design of teaching learning mathematics are various or type; background; example; comparison or reach marking; and appropriate design.

Before a teacher starts to teach in a class, first he must determine the philosophy, nature; method; and ethic or esthetics, and also the psychology of mathematics. After that he can teach the students that can be in innovative learning or traditional learning. During teaching learning processes there are many aspects that influence it. They are class management, theory or paradigm, context or culture, assessment, learning resources (textbook), philosophy; pedagogy; psychology, media or teaching aid, students worksheet, curriculum or syllabi (lesson plan), method or approach, and also class management. Teacher also must be pay attention on the references and implementation of the learning process. The references consist of formal object and mathematics object. For example to reach an international level, there are some process start from publishing, objective mathematics, reflecting, subjective mathematics, criticizing, and back to publishing.

Good instructional design takes into account the role the on-screen presentation plays and the role the instructor plays in the experience for the learner. Good instructional design will help to avoid what our math student is experiencing as she tries to grapple with solving linear equations. Good instructional design therefore has to provide accessible skill attainment. ⁽²⁾

Hence, here I will explain developing lesson plan, student worksheet, and learning resources.

1.      Developing Lesson Plan

Lesson Plan is teacher’s detailed description of the course of instruction for one class. In Indonesia, we called lesson plan as RPP (Rencana Pelaksanaan Pembelajaran). A daily lesson plan is developed by a teacher to guide class instruction. Detail will vary on the preference of the teacher, subject being covered, and the need or curiosity of the children. There may be requirements mandated by the school system regarding the plan.

A well-developed lesson plan reflects interests and needs of students. It incorporates best practices for the educational field. The lesson plan correlates with the teacher’s philosophy of education, which is what the teacher feels in the purpose of educating the students.

Also, when teacher develop lesson plan, the teacher must know the contents of lesson plan:

-          Identity and Information of school, class, subject, time allocation, etc.

-          Aim of the material

-          Competency that will be developed during the learning process

-          Description of the competency

-          Learning resources that most used during learning process

-          Teaching contents or material that will be studied.

So, from explanations above, I think that on developing lesson plan, teacher must pay attention on the meaning of lesson plan, that lesson plan developed based on the teacher, students’ needs, and school mandate. So, it must be different between one teacher and other teachers. Also teacher must pay attention on the contents of lesson plan. So lesson plan can be work well to teachers and students.

2.      Developing Student’s Worksheet

One of the characteristics of innovative learning is developing student’s worksheet. It caused the paradigm of learning is learning mathematics is doing some exercises. So we need teaching aids, and on of teaching aids is student’s worksheet.  Student’s worksheet or LKS is a worksheet that contains the information and command/instruction from teachers to students to do a learning activity in the form of work, practice, or in form of the application of learning outcomes to achieve a goal.

A good student’s worksheet must complete the characteristics of worksheet, which is student’s worksheet can promote students to construct their own knowledge of mathematics. On developing student’s worksheet, teacher can use discovery methods, they are structure guide discovery and unstructured guide discovery. So, a student’s worksheet is not only collection of many exercises.

Then, there are four steps in developing good student’s worksheet:

a.       Determining the instructional aims by analyzing the students by identify who are our students and knowing the character of our students

b.      Collects the materials that we need based on instructional aims

c.       Arranging the students worksheet, at least there are materials, tasks, and exercises

d.      Checking the student’s worksheet is it consistent with the instructional aim or not.

3.      Developing Learning Resources

Learning resources are all good sources of data, people, and the particular form that can be used by learners in learning, either separately or be combined to facilitate learners in achieving learning goals or achieve a certain competence.

There are two types of learning resources:

-          Learning resources are designed (learning resources, by design), the learning resources that are specifically designed or developed as a component of an instructional system to provide facilities directed learning and formal.

-          Learning resources are used (learning resources, by utilization), the learning resources that are not designed specifically for the purpose of learning and its existence can be found, implemented and utilized for the purposes of learning. This learning resources may take from:

a.       Message: information, teaching materials, etc

b.      People: teachers, students, etc

c.       Materials: books, pictures, etc

d.      Tools or equipment : computer, white board, etc

e.       Approaches, methods, techniques of solving problems

f.       Environment: class, library

Thus, we can conclude that learning resources can be come from many ways, not only based on books and teacher’s note like traditional methods.