What is instructional design?
When I hear the phrase instructional design I immediately picture a poorly designed presentation. I don't know why. It makes me think about a blog I wrote in February about effective presentations. Within that blog I talk about the dos and don'ts of effective presentations. Instructional design takes this a step further. An effective instructional design may include an presentation, but it encompasses the entire body of work not just that one facet.
Why is instructional design important?
Instructional design can make or break a lesson. Good instructional design can engage students and streamline instruction, whereas poor design can lead to headaches and nightmares in the classroom. It could determine which of the following represents your classroom.
How do you design instruction?
There are numerous resources and models available for effective instructional design. In my experience as school and district administrator, I have encountered numerous classroom teachers who needed assistance with their instructional design. I think there are far too many teachers who still rely on their knowledge alone to carry a lesson through.
John Dempsey and Robert Reiser describe three of these models in the text: ADDIE, SAM, and Pebble-in-the-Pond. "ADDIE is an acronym for Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate," (Dempsey & Reiser, 2017). SAM, Successive Approximation Model, tends to be a little simpler than ADDIE. The main attractions of this model focus on continuously repeating review of the design and understanding that no design is ever complete, (2017, p. 43). Pebble-in-the-Pond focuses primarily on the instructional design more than development. SAM and Pebble are both considered good alternatives to the ADDIE model which can be slow and complicated.
See the following infographic for a clearer comparison of ADDIE and SAM.
References
Balasubramaniam,
C. (2015, January 7). [Learning and Development Models – ADDIE vs. SAM].
[Infographic]. Retrieved from http://hrcoffeetime.kakushinwebinars.com/2015/01/learning-development-models-addie-vs.html
Dempsey,
J. and Reiser, R. (2017) Trends and
Issues in Instructional Design and Technology. Pearson, New York, NY.
Instructional
Design. (n.d.) In Wikipedia. Retrieved July 12, 2017, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructional_design
I completely agree that good instructional design can make or break a lesson. Often times, good educators know this without really knowing the technical term "instructional design". Many educators learn this through trial and error. While I was taught lecture style growing up, I am thankful that most teachers have progressed past the lecture form of instruction as a way to engage our students. Reiser & Dempsey (2018) delve into the idea that the reason for many instructional technologies falling by the wayside was due to teachers' resistance to change and lack of guidance to integrate new forms of technologies into the classroom (p.16). I feel that with current technologies, educators are seeing that technology can "make" their lessons and lead to student engagement and learning. My hope is that teachers continue see the importance of good instructional design and technology instead of resisting to change as they have done in the past.
ReplyDeleteReiser, R. A., & Dempsey, J. V. (2018). Trends and issues in instructional design and technology. New York: Pearson Education.
Wes,
ReplyDeleteWhen I think of instructional design, I think of basal reading programs like Scott Foresman's Reading Street. When I first started my career in education, I was a first grade teacher and "fidelity" was a buzz word. It meant you'd better follow that teacher's manual word for word. Apparently, someone thought it covered all the standards and had solid instructional design. Maybe it had some elements of good instructional design, but no part of teaching can be described with a word like fidelity.
You make a great point about teachers relying only on their content knowledge for their lessons. Since I started in elementary and am now secondary, I've seen a tremendous difference in the perspectives of the teachers when it comes to instructional design, and specifically, lesson planning. Since secondary is all about the content, I don't see a lot of purposeful planning. I believe this is where instructional design starts for the classroom teacher. Many rely on a "wing-it" mentality because after all, they are masters of their content...just maybe not delivery...or collaboration...or inquiry...or...anyway, I know you know!
I'm surprised that our book is geared more towards professional instructional designers, instead of teachers. Reiser and Dempsey (2017) refers to instructional design being done by "a design team, clients, sponsors, primary stakeholders, and secondary stakeholders" (p. 27). It will be interesting to see how we will adapt this concept into our class and our own jobs.
Great blog!
Reference for my post:
ReplyDeleteReiser, R. A., & Dempsey, J. V. (2018). Trends and issues in instructional design and technology. New York: Pearson Education.
I agree very much with your statement where you said "I think there are far too many teachers who still rely on their knowledge alone to carry a lesson through." And your picture about the objective and agenda is something you see in classrooms everyday. I think that the SAM model like you said focuses on continuously repeating review of the design and understanding that no design is ever complete, and thats a really attractive feature. I enjoy actually finding new lessons and units that I know little about and learning a lot as I go and designing units that will start the kids thinking and learning but then seeing where they take the unit and adapt to their interests and their learning styles. ADDIE projects, Reiser and Dempsey (2018) discuss, "are at considerable risk if stakeholders are displeased or if learners respond quite differently from expectations" (p. 33). I feel like the SAM model helps takes away expectations and right and wrong and allows from modifications and creativity.
ReplyDeleteReiser, R. A., & Dempsey, J. V. (2018). Trends and issues in instructional design and technology. New York: Pearson Education.
Wes, I love your classroom graphic. Many times I thought my lessons would end with the class on the top. To my surprise, they would often end like the class on the bottom. I am a media specialist and have always though my lessons to be very important. I came to understand the students think differently. The SAM model offers the Savvy Start as the beginning phase. I like how "each design candidate is put on the table for discussion, the question becomes, Why shouldn't we do this?" ( Reiser & Dempsey p. 34). This is a great starting point while planning a lesson. If this question is asked at the beginning of planning, I might have more end results like the top picture in your cartoon.
ReplyDeleteReiser, R., & Dempsey, J. (2018). Trends and Issues in Instructional Design and Technology