Guest Participant
For the last two years I have been invited to be a guest participant in EDTC 602 — Educational Technology Field, Theory and Profession at Texas A&M. I am over joyed to say I have been invited back another year to share the Educational Technologist/Instructional Designer perspective in the commercial/government sector. I owe a great deal to Texas A&M’s Educational Technology program. Since I have been awarded my M.Ed. my family’s life has been an adventure.
I will be sure to post some of the questions and answers to my blog. If you have any questions please let me know.
What Is Instructional Design?
Objectives:
- Define the term Instructional Design
- Give a brief explanation of the ADDIE Model
- Describe the major components of the Instructional Design Model
- Explain how using Instructional Design helps produce successful training
What is Instructional Design?
Welcome to the first article in a series of articles about Instructional Design. Instructional Design in its most basic form is the systematic process of developing instruction. This instruction can be face-to-face classes (course in a classroom), trainings (corporate trainings), online (web-based trainings, Blackboard, Moodle), and/or static text (books, and job aids). Instructional Design or ID is the process of developing these trainings so that they are as effective and efficient as possible. You may also see the Instructional System Design (ISD) used as well.
Analogy: You go to the store to buy a bike. A bike is made of several parts: seat, handlebars, breaks, etc… When all the parts are assembled it is known as a bike.
Instructional Design is the name we give to a collection of smaller components. In this case the components are steps in the development of a course.
Introduction to the Steps in Instructional Design
If you were to take an introductory Instructional Design course or if you have taken a course you are probably familiar with ADDIE. ADDIE is not a person’s name, well maybe it is, but for our purposes ADDIE is the acronym for the theoretical steps found in the ID model. ADDIE stands for: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation. ADDIE is the general guideline of what should be done and the order it which it should be conducted.
The ADDIE Model
The Real World
Experience Instructional Designers (people whose job it is to developed courses) know the ADDIE model, and pay the proper respect to her, but we use something known as Rapid Instructional Design. Without going into too much detail at this time, the traditional method of ID is to go from one category then to the next. With rapid we hop around as needed. In the end we have hit all the steps but just not always in order. We will cover Rapid Instructional Design in another article.
