This study used content analysis to examine the coverage of cultural issues in the five phases of instructional design within ID/ISD textbooks published between 1993 and 2003. The results indicated that not all the ID/ISD textbooks examined in this study covered cultural issues. Among the textbooks that did cover cultural issues, none of them reached more than 10% coverage of the total pages of any one book. The phase of Analysis and the Other category received the highest amount of coverage in both the 53 books sample and 36 books sample; whereas the phase of Implementation received the least amount of coverage overall. The findings from this study have implications for both students and faculty members. With respect to students, the coverage of cultural issues in the textbooks examined in this study might influence students' beliefs regarding cultural issues. It may indirectly influence future instructional designers' work effectiveness as well. With respect to faculty members, the amount of cultural issues coverage may reinforce faculty members to underrate the importance of cultural issues in the instructional design process. The study also provides several recommendations to textbook authors, faculty members and instructional designers regarding the amount of coverage of cultural issues within the ID/ISD textbooks.

In 2014, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) highlighted to the U.S. Senate the need to focus on air traffic control (ATC) training to meet job qualification and attrition rates within the career field. One U.S. Department of Defense military service assists the FAA in providing worldwide ATC services. This service is referred to as the agency throughout this paper to ensure confidentiality. The agency's ATC career field manager echoed the FAA's call for action in his 2014 Strategic/Action Plan. In August 2013, the agency's ATC trainer program was published. As of December 2015, the program had not been evaluated. The purpose of this study was to ascertain if the program facilitated the learning of critical ATC on-the-job training skills. An ad hoc expertise-oriented evaluation was conducted using the lenses of andragogy, experiential learning, and instructional system design (ISD). Purposeful sampling procedures were used to select 20 participants across the subgroups of supervisors, trainers, managers, and training developers from 7 focus sites. The semi-structured interviews queried 4 topical areas derived from Kirkpatrick's 4 levels of evaluation model. Data collected via documents and interviews were analyzed using descriptive, emotion, eclectic, and pattern coding. Key findings indicated that the program was not developed compliant with ISD principles and did not promote adult learning as endorsed by andragogy and experiential learning theory. The implications for positive social change include providing stakeholders with data needed to make evidence-based decisions regarding the current and future state of the program. The evaluation report project can be shared with the FAA, an agency partner, and has the potential to create a platform for improved training practices focusing on optimum and successful adult learning transactions.

Increasing enrollment of students and declining availability of qualified and experienced faculty are leading to increased assessment loads of the existing faculty. Moreover, the assessment techniques are changing drastically due to the ever-increasing demand of new knowledge and abilities from the students. The tools offered by information technology can now be effectively used in enhancing the productivity of a teacher. This thesis proposes a mechanism for creating both summative and formative assessment instruments for a course in an engineering program. The assessment instruments will vary widely in nature depending on the subject. With increasing prevalence of digital devices in all walks of life a first level knowledge of digital systems is considered necessary for all engineers especially under electrical and computer engineering curricula. The first level course ‘Basics of Digital Systems’ is chosen for developing a framework of computer assisted evaluation. Creation of assessment instruments is best done in the context of an instructional system design (ISD) model. ADDIE, a generic model is chosen for the study. Bloom’s classification of levels of cognition, Vincenti’s categorization of engineering knowledge, and ‘Gronlund 2-level’ method for writing the learning objectives are integrated to create a ‘Bloom-Vincenti–Gronlund’(BVG)framework for preparing the learning objectives/assessment instruments. Developing tools for evaluation of performance of students in the assessment tests requires consideration of many issues: analysis of problems and their solution methods, errors normally committed by students, grading preferences of the instructor and feedback to students. A set of tools are developed that are able to evaluate the truth tables, state tables, excitation tables, timing diagram and VHDL codes. The developed tools are validated. The submission of the assignment and the integration of all the tools for evaluation will be more effective if they can be integrated in a learning management system (LMS). ‘MOODLE’, an open source LMS, is identified for the integration of the tools. The developed tools execute the files submitted by the students, evaluate them, and provide feedback to the students. In summary, the thesis addressed some key issues related to “assessment and evaluation of students’ performance” and proposed an integrated computer assisted system for the evaluation of students’ performance in the course ‘Basics of Digital Systems’.