Part 2: How to Recognize Instructional Media Alignment with Learning Goals
The companion lesson for LT 7100, Instructional Design, in the Georgia State University M.S. Instructional Design & Technology program. Function first, form follows: this video shows how to judge media against the objective rather than against taste.
3:47Narrated lesson
What it covers
1 · What alignment means
Constructive alignment applied to media: it has to serve both the objective (what the learner must be able to do) and the performance conditions (where, with what, and under what pressure).
2 · Three signs of misalignment
How to spot media that only looks aligned, including motion or detail the task doesn't need and designs that split the learner's attention.
Worked examples
A phishing course that needs a practice simulation rather than a talking avatar, and a lockout-tagout procedure where five annotated photos beat video and double as a job aid.
How it was made
Design
Script written and locked by the instructor, grounded in Mayer's multimedia learning research
A deliberately calm, Vox-style paper-collage look: no fly-ins, elements fade up in place, motion only where motion is the content
Media
Still images from GPT Image 2.5 against a single style frame; two short B-roll clips from Grok Video 1.5
Narration in a Higgsfield preset voice, with pauses tightened and loudness set to −16 LUFS
Build
A GSAP scene engine in HTML, with every label timed to the spoken word by audio alignment
Rendered frame by frame in headless Chromium and assembled with FFmpeg behind the branded LT 7100 splash