Instructional Design is the practice of creating "instructional experiences which make the acquisition of knowledge and skill more efficient, effective, and appealing." The process consists broadly of determining the current state and needs of the learner, defining the end goal of instruction, and creating some "intervention" to assist in the transition. Ideally the process is informed by pedagogically (process of teaching) and andragogically (adult learning) tested theories of learning and may take place in student-only, teacher-led or community-based settings. The outcome of this instruction may be directly observable and scientifically measured or completely hidden and assumed. There are many instructional design models but many are based on the ADDIE model with the five phases: 1) analysis, 2) design, 3) development, 4) implementation, and 5) evaluation. As a field, instructional design is historically and traditionally rooted in cognitive and behavioral psychology.

History

Much of the foundations of the field of instructional design was laid in World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, when the U.S. military faced the need to rapidly train large numbers of people to perform complex technical tasks, from field-stripping a carbine to navigating across the ocean to building a bomber—see "Training Within Industry

Training Within Industry

The Training Within Industry service was created by the United States Department of War, running from 1940 to 1945 within the War Manpower Commission. The purpose was to provide consulting services to war-related industries whose personnel were being conscripted into the US Army at the same time...

 (TWI)". Drawing on the research and theories of B.F. Skinner on operant conditioning, training programs focused on observable behaviors. Tasks were broken down into subtasks, and each subtask treated as a separate learning goal. Training was designed to reward correct performance and remediate incorrect performance. Mastery was assumed to be possible for every learner, given enough repetition and feedback. After the war, the success of the wartime training model was replicated in business and industrial training, and to a lesser extent in the primary and secondary classroom. The approach is still common in the U.S. military.

In 1956, a committee led by Benjamin Bloom

Benjamin Bloom

Benjamin Samuel Bloom was an American educational psychologist who made contributions to the classification of educational objectives and to the theory of mastery-learning...

 published an influential taxonomy

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives

Bloom's Taxonomy is a classification of learning objectives within education proposed in 1956 by a committee of educators chaired by Benjamin Bloom who also edited the first volume of the standard text, Taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of educational goals...

 of what he termed the three domains of learning: Cognitive (what one knows or thinks), Psychomotor (what one does, physically) and Affective (what one feels, or what attitudes

Attitude (psychology)

An attitude is a hypothetical construct that represents an individual's degree of like or dislike for something. Attitudes are generally positive or negative views of a person, place, thing, or event— this is often referred to as the attitude object...

 one has). These taxonomies still influence the design of instruction.

During the latter half of the 20th century, learning theories began to be influenced by the growth of digital computers.

In the 1970s, many instructional design theorists began to adopt an information-processing-based approach to the design of instruction. David Merrill for instance developed Component Display Theory (CDT), which concentrates on the means of presenting instructional materials (presentation techniques).

Later in the 1980s and throughout the 1990s cognitive load

Cognitive load

The term cognitive load is used in cognitive psychology to illustrate the load related to the executive control of working memory . Theories contend that during complex learning activities the amount of information and interactions that must be processed simultaneously can either under-load, or...

 theory began to find empirical support for a variety of presentation techniques.

Cognitive load theory and the design of instruction

Cognitive load theory developed out of several empirical studies of learners, as they interacted with instructional materials. Sweller

John Sweller

John Sweller is an Australian educational psychologist who is best known for formulating an influential theory of cognitive load.He has a Ph.D. from the University of Adelaide's Department of Psychology — his thesis was titled "Effects of initial discrimination training on subsequent shift learning...

 and his associates began to measure the effects of working memory

Memory

In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....

 load, and found that the format of instructional materials has a direct effect on the performance of the learners using those materials.

While the media debates of the 1990s focused on the influences of media on learning, cognitive load effects were being documented in several journals. Rather than attempting to substantiate the use of media, these cognitive load learning effects provided an empirical basis for the use of instructional strategies. Mayer asked the instructional design community to reassess the media debate, to refocus their attention on what was most important: learning.

By the mid- to late-1990s, Sweller and his associates had discovered several learning effects related to cognitive load and the design of instruction (e.g. the split attention effect

Split attention effect

The split-attention effect is a learning effect inherent within some poorly designed instructional materials. It is apparent when the same modality is used for various types of information within the same display...

, redundancy effect, and the worked-example effect

Worked-example effect

The worked-example effect is a learning effect predicted by cognitive load theory . According to Sweller: "The worked example effect is the best known and most widely studied of the cognitive load effects"The worked-example effect is a learning effect predicted by cognitive load theory (Sweller,...

). Later, other researchers like Richard Mayer began to attribute learning effects to cognitive load. Mayer and his associates soon developed a Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning.

In the past decade, cognitive load theory has begun to be internationally accepted and begun to revolutionize how practitioners of instructional design view instruction. Recently, human performance experts have even taken notice of cognitive load theory, and have begun to promote this theory base as the science of instruction, with instructional designers as the practitioners of this field. Finally Clark, Nguyen and Sweller published a textbook describing how Instructional Designers can promote efficient learning using evidence-based guidelines of cognitive load theory.

Instructional Designers use various instructional strategies to reduce cognitive load. For example, they think that the onscreen text should not be more than 150 words or the text should be presented in small meaningful chunks. The designers also use auditory and visual methods to communicate information to the learner.

Learning design

The concept of learning design arrived in the literature of technology for education in the late nineties and early 2000s with the idea that "designers and instructors need to choose for themselves the best mixture of behaviourist and constructivist learning experiences for their online courses". But the concept of learning design is probably as old as the concept of teaching. Learning design might be defined as "the description of the teaching-learning process that takes place in a unit of learning (eg, a course, a lesson or any other designed learning event)".

As summarized by Britain, learning design may be associated with:

• The concept of learning design
• The implementation of the concept made by learning design specifications like PALO, IMS Learning Design
  IMS Learning Design
  IMS Learning Design is a specification for a metalanguage which enables the modelling of learning processes. The specification is maintained by IMS Global Learning Consortium.-Background:...
  
  , LDL, SLD 2.0
  Simple learning design 2.0
  Simple Learning Design 2.0 is a learning design specification proposed by Durand and Downes from the National Research Council of Canada in 2009.SLD 2.0 is designed to be easily implemented by developers in a commercial e-learning application....
  
  , etc...
• The technical realisations around the implementation of the concept like TELOS, RELOAD LD-Author, etc...

ADDIE process

Perhaps the most common model used for creating instructional materials is the ADDIE Process. This acronym stands for the 5 phases contained in the model:

• Analyze – analyze learner characteristics, task to be learned, etc.

Identify Instructional Goals, Conduct Instructional Analysis, Analyze Learners and Contexts

• Design – develop learning objectives, choose an instructional approach

Write Performance Objectives, Develop Assessment Instruments, Develop Instructional Strategy

• Develop – create instructional or training materials

Design and selection of materials appropriate for learning activity, Design and Conduct Formative Evaluation

• Implement – deliver or distribute the instructional materials
• Evaluate – make sure the materials achieved the desired goals

Design and Conduct Summative Evaluation

Most of the current instructional design models are variations of the ADDIE process.
Dick,W.O,.Carey, L.,&Carey, J.O.(2004)Systematic Design of Instruction. Boston,MA:Allyn&Bacon.

Rapid prototyping

Sometimes utilized adaptation to the ADDIE model is in a practice known as rapid prototyping

Rapid prototyping

Rapid prototyping is the automatic construction of physical objects using additive manufacturing technology. The first techniques for rapid prototyping became available in the late 1980s and were used to produce models and prototype parts. Today, they are used for a much wider range of applications...

.

Proponents suggest that through an iterative process the verification of the design documents saves time and money by catching problems while they are still easy to fix. This approach is not novel to the design of instruction, but appears in many design-related domains including software design, architecture, transportation planning, product development, message design, user experience design, etc. In fact, some proponents of design prototyping assert that a sophisticated understanding of a problem is incomplete without creating and evaluating some type of prototype, regardless of the analysis rigor that may have been applied up front. In other words, up-front analysis is rarely sufficient to allow one to confidently select an instructional model. For this reason many traditional methods of instructional design are beginning to be seen as incomplete, naive, and even counter-productive.

However, some consider rapid prototyping to be a somewhat simplistic type of model. As this argument goes, at the heart of Instructional Design is the analysis phase. After you thoroughly conduct the analysis—you can then choose a model based on your findings. That is the area where most people get snagged—they simply do not do a thorough-enough analysis. (Part of Article By Chris Bressi on LinkedIn)

Dick and Carey

Another well-known instructional design model is The Dick and Carey Systems Approach Model. The model was originally published in 1978 by Walter Dick and Lou Carey in their book entitled The Systematic Design of Instruction.



Dick and Carey made a significant contribution to the instructional design field by championing a systems view of instruction as opposed to viewing instruction as a sum of isolated parts. The model addresses instruction as an entire system, focusing on the interrelationship between context, content, learning and instruction. According to Dick and Carey, "Components such as the instructor, learners, materials, instructional activities, delivery system, and learning and performance environments interact with each other and work together to bring about the desired student learning outcomes". The components of the Systems Approach Model, also known as the Dick and Carey Model, are as follows:

• Identify Instructional Goal(s): goal statement describes a skill, knowledge or attitude(SKA) that a learner will be expected to acquire
• Conduct Instructional Analysis: Identify what a learner must recall and identify what learner must be able to do to perform particular task
• Analyze Learners and Contexts: Identify general characteristics of the target audience including prior skills, prior experience, and basic demographics; identify characteristics directly related to the skill to be taught; and perform analysis of the performance and learning settings.
• Write Performance Objectives: Objectives consists of a description of the behavior, the condition and criteria. The component of an objective that describes the criteria that will be used to judge the learner's performance.
• Develop Assessment Instruments: Purpose of entry behavior testing, purpose of pretesting, purpose of posttesting, purpose of practive items/practive problems
• Develop Instructional Strategy: Pre-instructional activities, content presentation, Learner participation, assessment
• Develop and Select Instructional Materials
• Design and Conduct Formative Evaluation of Instruction: Designer try to identify areas of the instructional materials that are in need to improvement.
• Revise Instruction: To identify poor test items and to identify poor instruction
• Design and Conduct Summative Evaluation

With this model, components are executed iteratively and in parallel rather than linearly.
http://www.slideshare.net/akteacher/dick-cary-instructional-design-model

Instructional Development Learning System (IDLS)

Another instructional design model is the Instructional Development Learning System (IDLS). The model was originally published in 1970 by Peter J. Esseff, PhD and Mary Sullivan Esseff, PhD in their book entitled IDLS—Pro Trainer 1: How to Design, Develop, and Validate Instructional Materials.

Peter (1968) & Mary (1972) Esseff both received their doctorates in Educational Technology from the Catholic University of America under the mentorship of Dr. Gabriel Ofiesh, a Founding Father of the Military Model mentioned above. Esseff and Esseff contributed synthesized existing theories to develop their approach to systematic design, "Instructional Development Learning System" (IDLS).

The components of the IDLS Model are:

• Design a Task Analysis
• Develop Criterion Tests and Performance Measures
• Develop Interactive Instructional Materials
• Validate the Interactive Instructional Materials

Other models

Some other useful models of instructional design include: the Smith/Ragan Model, the Morrison/Ross/Kemp Model and the OAR Model of instructional design in higher education, as well as, Wiggins' theory of backward design.

Learning theories also play an important role in the design of instructional materials. Theories such as behaviorism

Behaviorism

Behaviorism , also called the learning perspective , is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things that organisms do—including acting, thinking, and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors, and that psychological disorders are best treated by altering behavior...

, constructivism

Constructivism (learning theory)

Constructivism is a theory of knowledge that argues that humans generate knowledge and meaning from an interaction between their experiences and their ideas. During infancy, it was an interaction between human experiences and their reflexes or behavior-patterns. Piaget called these systems of...

, social learning

Social learning

Social learning may refer to:* Observational learning , learning that occurs as a function of observing, retaining and replicating behavior observed in ones environment or other people....

 and cognitivism

Cognitivism (psychology)

In psychology, cognitivism is a theoretical framework for understanding the mind that came into usage in the 1950s. The movement was a response to behaviorism, which cognitivists said neglected to explain cognition...

 help shape and define the outcome of instructional materials.

Influential researchers and theorists

Alphabetic by last name

• Bloom, Benjamin
  Benjamin Bloom
  Benjamin Samuel Bloom was an American educational psychologist who made contributions to the classification of educational objectives and to the theory of mastery-learning...
  
   – Taxonomies of the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains – 1955
• Bonk, Curtis – Blended learning
  Blended learning
  Blended learning refers to a mixing of different learning environments. It combines traditional face-to-face classroom methods with more modern computer-mediated activities. According to its proponents, the strategy creates a more integrated approach for both instructors and learners. Formerly,...
  
   – 2000s
• Bransford, John D.
  John D. Bransford
  Dr. John D. Bransford holds the Shauna C. LarsonUniversity Professor of Education and Psychology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Dr. Bransford is also Co-Principal Investigator and Director of , an ....
  
   – How People Learn: Bridging Research and Practice – 1999
• Bruner, Jerome
  Jerome Bruner
  Jerome Seymour Bruner is an American psychologist who has contributed to cognitive psychology and cognitive learning theory in educational psychology, as well as to history and to the general philosophy of education. Bruner is currently a senior research fellow at the New York University School...
  
   – Constructivism
• Carr-Chellman, Alison – Instructional Design for Teachers ID4T −2010
• Carey, L. – "The Systematic Design of Instruction"
• Clark, Richard – Clark-Kosma "Media vs Methods debate", "Guidance" debate.
• Clark, Ruth – Efficiency in Learning: Evidence-Based Guidelines to Manage Cognitive Load / Guided Instruction / Cognitive Load Theory
• Dick, W. – "The Systematic Design of Instruction"
• Gagné, Robert M.
  Robert M. Gagné
  Robert Mills Gagné was an American educational psychologist best known for his "Conditions of Learning". Gagné pioneered the science of instruction during WWII for the air force with pilot training...
  
   – Nine Events of Instruction (Gagné and Merrill Video Seminar)
• Hannum, Wallace H., Professor, UNC-Chapel Hill – numerous articles and books; search via Google and Google Scholar
• Heinich, Robert – Instructional Media and the new technologies of instruction 3rd ed. – Educational Technology – 1989
• Jonassen, David – problem-solving strategies – 1990s
• Langdon, Danny G – The Instructional Designs Library: 40 Instructional Designs, Educational Tech. Publications
• Mager, Robert F. – ABCD model for instructional objectives – 1962
• Merrill, M. David – Component Display Theory / Knowledge Objects / First Principles of Instruction
  First Principles of Instruction
  First Principles of Instruction, created by M. David Merrill, Professor Emeritus at Utah State University, is an instructional theory based on a broad review of many instructional models and theories...
  
  
• Papert, Seymour
  Seymour Papert
  Seymour Papert is an MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and educator. He is one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, as well as an inventor of the Logo programming language....
  
   – Constructionism, LOGO – 1970s
• Piaget, Jean
  Jean Piaget
  Jean Piaget was a French-speaking Swiss developmental psychologist and philosopher known for his epistemological studies with children. His theory of cognitive development and epistemological view are together called "genetic epistemology"....
  
   – Cognitive development – 1960s
• Piskurich, George – Rapid Instructional Design – 2006
• Simonson, Michael – Instructional Systems and Design via Distance Education – 1980s
• Schank, Roger
  Roger Schank
  Roger Schank is an American artificial intelligence theorist, cognitive psychologist, learning scientist, educational reformer, and entrepreneur.-Academic career:...
  
   – Constructivist simulations – 1990s
• Sweller, John – Cognitive load
  Cognitive load
  The term cognitive load is used in cognitive psychology to illustrate the load related to the executive control of working memory . Theories contend that during complex learning activities the amount of information and interactions that must be processed simultaneously can either under-load, or...
  
  , Worked-example effect
  Worked-example effect
  The worked-example effect is a learning effect predicted by cognitive load theory . According to Sweller: "The worked example effect is the best known and most widely studied of the cognitive load effects"The worked-example effect is a learning effect predicted by cognitive load theory (Sweller,...
  
  , Split-attention effect
• Roberts, Clifton Lee – From Analysis to Design, Practical Applications of ADDIE within the Enterprise – 2011
• Reigeluth, Charles – Elaboration Theory, "Green Books" I, II, and III – 1999–2010
• Skinner, B.F. – Radical Behaviorism, Programed Instruction
• Vygotsky, Lev
  Lev Vygotsky
  Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist, the founder of cultural-historical psychology, and the leader of the Vygotsky Circle.-Biography:...
  
   – Learning as a social activity – 1930s
• Wiley, David
  David A. Wiley
  David A. Wiley is an Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology & Technology at Brigham Young University. He is also Chief Openness Officer of Flat World Knowledge and founder of the Open High School of Utah...
  
   – Learning Objects, Open Learning – 2000s

See also

• educational assessment
• confidence-based learning
  Confidence-based learning
  Confidence-Based Learning or CBL is a methodology used in learning and training that measures a learner's knowledge quality by determining both the correctness of the learner's knowledge and confidence in that knowledge. Additionally, the CBL process is designed to increase retention and minimize...
  
  
• educational animation
  Educational animation
  Educational animations are animations produced for the specific purpose of fostering learning.The popularity of using animations to help learners understand and remember information has greatly increased since the advent of powerful graphics-oriented computers. This technology allows animations to...
  
  
• educational psychology
  Educational psychology
  Educational psychology is the study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations. Educational psychology is concerned with how students learn and develop, often focusing...
  
  
• educational technology
  Educational technology
  Educational technology is the study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using and managing appropriate technological processes and resources." The term educational technology is often associated with, and encompasses, instructional theory and...
  
  
• e-learning
  E-learning
  E-learning comprises all forms of electronically supported learning and teaching. The information and communication systems, whether networked learning or not, serve as specific media to implement the learning process...
  
  
• electronic portfolio
  Electronic portfolio
  An electronic portfolio, also known as an e-portfolio or digital portfolio, is a collection of electronic evidence assembled and managed by a user, usually on the Web. Such electronic evidence may include inputted text, electronic files, images, multimedia, blog entries, and hyperlinks...
  
  
• evaluation
  Evaluation
  Evaluation is systematic determination of merit, worth, and significance of something or someone using criteria against a set of standards.Evaluation often is used to characterize and appraise subjects of interest in a wide range of human enterprises, including the arts, criminal justice,...
  
  
• human–computer interaction
  Human–computer interaction
  Human–computer Interaction is the study, planning, and design of the interaction between people and computers. It is often regarded as the intersection of computer science, behavioral sciences, design and several other fields of study...
  
  
• instructional technology
  Instructional technology
  In education, instructional technology is "the theory and practice ofdesign, development, utilization, management, and evaluation of processes and resources for learning," according to the Association for Educational Communications and Technology Definitions and Terminology Committee...
  
  
• instructional theory
  Instructional theory
  An Instructional theory is "a theory that offers explicit guidance on how to better help people learn and develop." Instructional theories focus on how to structure material for promoting the education of human beings, particularly youth...
  
  
• interaction design
  Interaction design
  In design, human–computer interaction, and software development, interaction design, often abbreviated IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." Like many other design fields interaction design also has an interest in form but its main...
  
  
• learning object
  Learning object
  A learning object is "a collection of content items, practice items, and assessment items that are combined based on a single learning objective". The term is credited to Wayne Hogins when he created a working group in 1994 bearing the name though the concept was first described by Gerard in 1967...
  
  
• learning science
  Learning sciences
  The term Learning Sciences refers to an interdisciplinary field that works to further scientific understanding of learning as well as to engage in the design and implementation of learning innovations, and improvement of instructional methodologies...
  
  
• m-learning
  M-learning
  The term M-Learning, or "mobile learning", has different meanings for different communities. Although related to e-learning and distance education, it is distinct in its focus on learning across contexts and learning with mobile devices...
  
  
• multimedia learning
  Multimedia learning
  Multimedia learning is the common name used to describe the cognitive theory of multimedia learning This theory encompasses several principles of learning with multimedia.-The Modality principle:...
  
  
• online education
• instructional design coordinator
  Instructional design coordinator
  An Instructional Design Coordinator is a person who is responsible for overseeing the implementation of instructional design techniques, usually in an academic setting or in corporate training....
  
  
• storyboarding
• training
  Training
  The term training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. It forms the core of apprenticeships and provides the backbone of content at institutes of...
  
  
• interdisciplinary teaching
  Interdisciplinary teaching
  Interdisciplinary teaching is a method, or set of methods, used to teach a unit across different curricular disciplines. For example, the seventh grade Language Arts, Science and Social Studies teachers might work together to form an interdisciplinary unit on rivers.The local river system would be...
  
  
• rapid prototyping
  Rapid prototyping
  Rapid prototyping is the automatic construction of physical objects using additive manufacturing technology. The first techniques for rapid prototyping became available in the late 1980s and were used to produce models and prototype parts. Today, they are used for a much wider range of applications...
  
  
• lesson study
  Lesson study
  Lesson Study is a teaching improvement process that has origins in Japanese elementary education, where it is a widespread professional development practice...
  
  
• Understanding by Design
  Understanding by Design
  Understanding by Design, or UbD, is a tool utilized for educational planning focused on "teaching for understanding". The emphasis of UbD is on "backward design", the practice of looking at the outcomes in order to design curriculum units, performance assessments, and classroom instruction...
  
  

External links

• Instructional Design – An overview of Instructional Design
• ISD Handbook
• Edutech wiki: Instructional design model http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Instructional_design_model
• Debby Kalk, Real World Instructional Design Interview