Instructional Design
By this time in your learning cycle you may already be aware of Instructional Design Models and Methodologies. You may not, however, often utilize these in your daily professional activities. I suppose you spend all sorts of time thinking things through but, unless you are an instructional designer by trade or what is known in business and industry a ‘platform instructor’ (one who delivers content that others prepare), you probably take these courses in college but do not have the time in your daily routine to actually write down all these steps and make all these preparations. After all, teacher planning time is often interrupted by hall duty, cafeteria duty and whatnot.
Oh yes, you do probably spend time each semester on class syllabic and before each of your classes (and most likely on your way to work in the morning) you attempt to make your presentations more clear or try to make the course more “fun” and effective for participants. But that is about the extent of it.
So, what do we do? Borrowing heavily from Michael J. Malachowski’s Five Step Process, the goal of this lesson is to provide you with some semblance of a procedure that is simple enough for you to internalize and utilize without great conscious effort. Who knows it may even be easy enough to do during your short planning periods!
ADDIE
We start with ADDIE because it was one of the first design models. It is something that most of you probably have seen or covered already. But we start here because it is simple and appropriate, and most of all, cyclic and reusable in most situations.
As you may know, ADDIE is an acronym: Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate & Revise. Based on Dick and Cary’s original model, it is quite similar to the various design and development models used in business and industry and by software development companies. The Addie model is great for finding outcomes of behavior and knowledge of skills. However this model is pretty linear and does not account for concepts such as social skills and the environment that students live in. To fully implement ADDIE may be a drawback because you may think it is too systematic, too linear, too constraining, or too time-consuming to implement.
However, it can be very useful as a thought stimulus tool. So, we will approach it from what we refer to as ‘ADDIE Light‘ perspective.. It is in summary form to help you organize your thinking process.
Analyze
On your way to work, analyze how your yesterday’s class went and about what you can do to do to make it better. Examine the goals and objectives of the presentation and the nature of your students to try to determine the appropriateness of your design. How did the last session go? What stimulated your students? When did their eyes start glaze over, the yawns start, and the heads nod? Are you meeting their needs?
Design
Design is concerned with subject matter analysis, lesson planning, and media selection (more on this below as we discuss ASSURE). Recall the three objective domains, Cognitive, Psycho-motor, and Affective. Bloom’s taxonomy orders this Cognitive domain from the most simple,
–>Knowledge, –> Comprehension, –> Application –> Analysis, –> Synthesis –> Evaluation.
The Psycho-motor domain is concerned with gross and fine-motor skills looking at behaviors that can be determined through task analysis. If you are teaching driver’s ed or phys ed, for example, then you have to deal with an entire different circumstances.
The Affective domain deals with attitudinal behavior from simple awareness and acceptance to internalization as attitudes become internalized. Progress can be mapped utilizing Krathwohl et. al.’s five levels of: Receiving, Responding, Valuing, Organizing, and Characterizing.
- Objectives defined in terms of specific measurable objectives or learning outcomes.
- Skills, knowledge and attitudes to be developed.
- Resources and strategies to be utilized.
- Structuring, sequencing, presentation, and reinforcement of the content.
- Assessment methods matched to the learning objectives to ensure agreement between intended outcomes and assessment measurements.
Joyce and Flowers list seven instructional functions I often use; you may find these useful in determining how best to incorporate available technology into your presentations.
- Informing the learner of the objectives,
- Presenting stimuli,
- Increasing learner attention,
- Helping the learner recall what they have previously learned,
- Providing conditions that will provoke performance,
- Determining sequences of learning,
- Prompting and guiding the learning.
The choice of media is determined by contingencies of the participant’s needs and available resources.
Development
Development is a process of creation and testing of learning experiences and seeks to answer questions such as:
- Have the learning needs and characteristics of your students been accurately analyzed?
- Were the problem statement, the instructional goals and the instructional objectives appropriate for the learning needs of the participants?
- To what extent are the teaching resources, instructional strategies and the participant learning experiences successful in effectively meeting the instructional goals and objectives of the target audience?
- Is it possible to accurately assess student learning with the proposed course of instruction?
Implement
Negative responses indicate a need for revision. Implementation is the presentation of the learning experiences to the participants utilizing the appropriate media. Leaning, skills or understanding, are “demonstrated” to students, who practice initially in a “safe” setting and then in the targeted workspace. It may involve showing participants how to make the best use of interactive learning materials, presenting classroom instruction, or coordinating and managing a distance-learning program. The progress of the learning frequently follows cyclic patterns based on motivation and intention. Curriculum should be organized in a spiral manner such that the participant continually builds upon what they have already learned.
Evaluate
Evaluation is of two levels. The most important is to gauge the success of the participant obtaining and retaining the demonstrated skills and understandings. The second is to determine how successful the instructional design package was in facilitating effective participant learning. The final question becomes, How can I modify the package to improve its next presentation?
Ok ok now you’ve taken care of that part of the thought process. Now let’s get down to specific. How do you implement/execute your plan? Let’s call on Gagne for help here…..
Participant activation and motivation using Gagne’s Nine Events of Instruction
1. Gain attention – Start by gaining your learners’ attention using an analogy, anecdote, paradox, photograph, magazine article, demonstrations or any other media. Display an outline of your lesson plan in a visual form (eg. an illustration, a summary, a diagram, a map, or chart… ok ok here is one example of where multimedia come into play). This gives learners a framework into which they can organize subsequent content.
2. Inform learner of objectives – Describe what you plan to achieve, what they will be doing and what they may be using. State, “At the end of the lecture you will be able to”‘. Create expectancy via your objectives and description of the structure of the lecture.
3. Stimulate recall of prior learning – Relate your new lesson to situations or knowledge that your learners are already familiar with, e.g. the previous lesson.
4. Present stimuli with distinctive features – Describe the key points in your lesson, emphasizing distinctive features, using a variety of techniques if possible. For example, use photos, drawings, the real thing etc. Vary the format in order to maintain attention and to increase comprehension.
5. Guide learning – Present your instruction in small steps (chunking) leading from simple to complex.
6. Elicit performance – Involve learners in questioning, discussion and demonstration to confirm that they have learned from your instruction, to increase comprehension and to maintain attention through active participation.
7. Provide feedback – As learners respond to your questioning, provide them with reinforcement or remediation when necessary.
8. Assess performance – Use a quiz or assignment to confirm mastery of your objectives.
9. Enhance retention and learning transfer – Provide the opportunity for learners to apply the outcome of their training in a real world environment eg. realistic assignment using real data and equipment. Incorporate the full experiential learning cycle into activities so that students are encouraged to reflect on and analyze their experiences.
Boy oh boy.. cannot wait to be talking about how all of these steps can be aided by multimedia.. oh yes.. that is exactly what you are going to have to do here.. try to relate to one another how YOU think multimedia can create the proper environment to successfully implement any one of these steps….
The ASSURE Model
was developed by Heinich, Molenda, Russell, Smaldino, in Instructional Media and Technologies for Learning. It includes six steps:
- Analyze learners
- State objectives
- Select instructional methods, media, and materials
- Utilize media and materials
- Require learner participation
- Evaluate and revise
The ASSURE model is an ISD (Instructional Systems Design) process that was modified to be used by teachers in their classroom. The ISD process is one in which trainers are more likely to use to design and develop the most appropriate learning environment for their students. ASSURE is more in line with the outcomes and requirements of K-12 teaching. As a teacher, you can use this process in writing your lesson plans and in improving teaching and learning.
This does not mean an instructional designer would not use ASSURE.. but it IS something that both designers and classroom teachers can both agree on as being valuable.
Like ADDIE, it is simple to follow and recall. Like ADDIE , the ASSURE model incorporates Robert Gagne’s events of instruction. Its goals are to ensure the effective use of media in instruction.
Analyze learners
Before you can begin, you must know your target audience (your students). (Analyze phase in ADDIE? Relevance step in ARCS?) You need to note information about your students, including but not limited to::
- General characteristics – grade, age, ethnic group, sex, mental, emotional, physical, or social problems, socioeconomic level, and so on.
- Specific entry competencies – prior knowledge, skills, and attitudes.
- Learning styles – verbal, logical, visual, musical, structured, and so on.
State objectives
Once you know your students, you can begin writing the objectives of your lesson. Design in ADDIE?) Objectives are the learning outcomes, that is, what will the student get out of the lesson?
Here’s another acronym: ABCD’s of writing objectives:
- Audience (who are your students?)
- Behavior to be demonstrated
- Conditions under which the behavior will be observed
- Degree to which the learned skills are to be mastered.
Here’s an example: Fifth grade social studies students (Audience) will be able to name at least 90% (Degree) of the state capitols (Behavior) when given a list of states (Condition).
Select instructional methods, media, and materials
Once you know your students and have a clear idea of what they should get out of the lesson, then you are ready to select the:(three M’s):
-
- Instructional method that you feel is most appropriate to meet the objectives for these particular students.
- Media that would be best suited to work with your instructional method, the objectives, and your students. Media could be text, still images, video, audio, and computer multimedia.
- Materials that provide your students with the help they need in mastering the objectives. Materials might be purchased and used as is or they might need some modifications. You can also design and create your own materials for the students to use. Materials would be specific software programs, music, videotapes, images, but would also be equipment, i.e., overhead projector, computer, printer, scanner, TV, laser disk player, VCR, and so on.
Utilize the media and materials you have selected
Now it’s time to implement your lesson and actually use the media and materials that you have selected. You should always preview the materials before using them in a class and you should also use the equipment in advance to be sure it works and you know how to use it. If you use electronic equipment, don’t assume that everything will work.
Be sure to have a plan B. Hardware and software are created by humans. Humans make mistakes and so software has mistakes in it. Hardware can malfunction.
Don’t get discouraged if technology lets you down. Make sure that your instructional materials are suitable and working the best you can and then use it in the classroom.
Require learner participation
Remember, students learn best when they are actively involved in the learning. The passive learner has more trouble learning whatever we try to pour into his/her brain. Whatever your teaching strategy, you can incorporate questions and answers, discussions, group work, hands-on activities, and other ways of getting students actively involved in the learning of the content. It is up to you, the teacher, to make sure that all your students have opportunities to participate in the learning activities in the unit plan. Avoid lecturing for an entire hour. Listen to your students and allow them to become aware of the content. Allow them to learn as opposed to trying to “teach” them.
Evaluate and revise
This last stage is often neglected but it is the most important one. Anyone can develop a lesson and deliver it, but really good teachers must reflect upon the lesson, the stated objectives, the instructional strategy, the instructional materials, and the assessment and determine if these elements of the lesson were effective or if one or more of them need to be changed the next time the lesson is done. Sometimes a lesson may seem like it would be great, at least on paper. But then when you actually teach the lesson with a specific set of students, you might discover there were several things that did not seem to work. Your expectations might be too high or too low. The materials used might not have been appropriate for the grade level or the material might not be very motivating. The instructional strategy might not have got students interesting in participation or the strategy might have been difficult for you to manage. The assessment you used might have shown that students didn’t learn what you tested for. This might mean that you did not accurately test for the stated objectives, the method of assessment needs to be revised, or the lesson did not permit enough time for the students to master the objectives.
Digging Deeper
Here is a video that makes light of the ADDIE Model to teach you how to get a date… kind of corny but an example of someone else’s final project idea for a different course.
Here are some additional links for you to review: