Real World Instructional Design

An Iterative Approach to Designing Learning Experiences

Katherine Cennamo, Debby Kalk

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351362245
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

An ideal textbook for instructional designers in training, Real World Instructional Design emphasizes the collaborative, iterative nature of instructional design. Positing instructional design as a process of simultaneous rather than sequential tasks with learner-centered outcomes, this volume engages with the essential building blocks of systematically designed instruction: learner needs and characteristics, goals and objectives, instructional activities, assessments, and formative evaluations.

Key features include a Designer's Toolkit that includes tips and approaches that practitioners use in their work; vignettes and narrative case studies that illustrate the complexities and iterative nature of instructional design; and forms, templates, and questionnaires to support students in applying the chapter content. With updated examples, this streamlined second edition presents a timeless approach to instructional design.

Chapter 1

Introduction to Instructional Design

Chapter Overview

Learning Outcomes

• Briefly discuss the history and evolution of the field of instructional design.
• List the key elements of instructional design and describe their interactions.
• Describe the phases of the instructional design process.
• Describe the collaboration cycle of an instructional design project.
• Identify situations where instructional design would and would not be appropriate.

Orientation Within the Design Process

This chapter introduces you to the field of instructional design and to the themes that pervade this book. We begin with a brief overview of the evolution of the field, the elements of instructional design, the phases of an instructional design project, and the need for collaboration and communication. These ideas are illustrated through a list of the activities and deliverables for each phase of design. We also describe common environments in which instructional designers are employed and provide an overview of the following chapters.

Introduction to Instructional Design

Imagine that you have contracted with a builder to construct your ideal house. Will the builder just start digging and nailing? Of course not! How will he know what you want in a house? Perhaps you’ll show him photographs of houses you like. You may have a blueprint that you’d like modified to meet your specific needs. You may have enlisted an architect to custom design your dream house. No matter how you initiate the building process, you begin with conversations and planning. You think through what you need, imagine what you’d like, and work with your architect and builder to explore how you can turn those needs and dreams into reality.

Instructional design involves a similar process. Your client wants a dream product— whether it’s a web-based course, a training video, or some other form of instruction. Often, your client has no experience in creating these kinds of products. One client might propose revamping a training course for web-based delivery but have no experience with similar courseware. Another client might propose creating a video to promote scientific inquiry but not know what it should include, how it should be designed or produced, or even if video is the best strategy for meeting her goals. As an instructional designer, you work with clients to translate their needs and desires into the design specifications that will yield a successful product.

Design is at the heart of many occupations: architectural design, industrial design, and graphic design, to name a few. Design implies that there is careful planning prior to development. The instructional design process is similar to the processes used in other design disciplines. The planning tools are similar to those used in the software development process. The storyboards are much like the blueprints an architect produces to communicate specific instructions to the builder. A learner analysis has a lot in common with the work marketers do to identify a target audience. Like these other designers, instructional designers engage in systematic planning before “breaking ground.” Where instructional design diverges from these disciplines is in its focus on learning. But the emphasis on planning, evaluating, and revising is common to all design-based disciplines.

Instructional designers are known by many different names these days. Learner experience designers, learning designers, learning architects, and a variety of other titles also are used to describe those of us who determine the needs of learners, develop design specifications for a product or experience to facilitate learning, and, ultimately, determine the effectiveness of that product or experience. Instructional designers use processes and tools that comprise a soft technology developed and refined over 70 or so years. There are many instructional design models,¹ each presenting variation in the sequencing and individual steps in the process. But the premise of every one of the models is the same: They all begin by trying to figure out the end. In other words, what does the instruction need to accomplish? What knowledge, skills, or attitudes do the learners need? What will a successful learning outcome look like? Once the instructional designer has determined this, he or she is ready to go back and figure out how to achieve that goal.

As a discipline, instructional design has its roots in World War II.² Tens of thousands of soldiers and civilian workers had to be trained quickly. Many psychologists joined the military initiative to develop effective training materials. After the war, several of these psychologists, including Robert Gagné and Leslie Briggs, continued to work on improving the instructional process by considering instruction as a system. One development was programmed instruction. Mager’s classic Preparing Objectives for Programmed Instruction (1962) and Bloom and colleagues’ Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (1956) popularized the use of behavioral objectives. Criterion-referenced testing gained acceptance. In the mid-1960s, Gagné published one of the most influential books in the field of instructional design, The Conditions of Learning (1965). His ideas of various domains of learning outcomes, instructional conditions for different domains of learning outcomes, and specific events needed for instruction to be effective remain influential today. When the former Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite in the late 1950s, the U.S. government responded by providing extensive funding to develop math and science materials. Unfortunately, many of these materials were developed by subject matter experts (SMEs), not teachers or instructional designers, and were not particularly effective. This highlighted the need for effective evaluation, so formative evaluation tools and methods were refined during this period.

These ideas, worked on throughout the 1950s and 1960s, were solidified in instructional design models during the 1970s. The influential models of Dick and Carey (1978), Gagné and Briggs (1974), Kemp (1971), and others were published during this period. Interest in instructional design flourished as the military, business, and industry embraced instructional design methods to enhance training. Instructional design models expanded to include needs assessment.

The introduction of personal computers in the 1980s further spurred the demand for instructional design skills. These new computers were adopted in educational and training environments, spawning the need for instructional designers and developers who could create effective, replicable instruction for computer-based delivery. As computers became more powerful, they were able to support color, graphics, audio, and video, allowing the creation of multimedia-based instructional products. Developments in cognitive psychology began to supplement and supplant the behaviorist underpinnings of earlier instructional design strategies and practices.

During the 1990s, the field was challenged by several new developments (Gustafson & Branch, 1997; Reiser, 2001). The performance technology movement led corporate training departments to address performance problems with non-instructional interventions, such as online help and job restructuring. Individuals who ascribed to a constructivist view of learning harshly criticized the use of behavioral objectives and other methods and strategies that served as foundations for the field. Despite these challenges, the demand for instructional design skills continued to grow. Distance education became prevalent, and the use of the Internet for knowledge dissemination exploded. This created new demand for specialists with systematic design skills who also could understand users. Situated learning, cognitive apprenticeship, constructionism, postmodernism, and other ideas from educational psychology that can be roughly classified as constructivist continued to influence the refinement of instructional strategies and practices. Instructional designers, in response to corporate interest in performance support systems, began to create resources to provide “just-in-time” information as well as training.

As a relatively new discipline that seeks to apply principles of educational psychology and communications theory to improve learning, instructional design continues to evolve in response to new developments in instructional theory and practices. Several developments shape the way instructional design is practiced today. The nature of instruction itself has changed. Ubiquitous technology, both personal and professional, provides free or low-cost access to extensive knowledge resources. Increasingly, learners are now in control of their own knowledge acquisition. À la carte, self-directed learning solutions encompass mobile apps, augmented reality, blogging, collaborative learning, communities of practice, games, digital curation, gamification, interactive video, podcasts, social media learning, and more.

The move toward more self-directed learning has increased the need for well-developed learning resources where learners can pursue their own learning goals. This demand for “anytime, anywhere” instruction has fueled the need for instructional designers and developers who can quickly translate ideas into effective learning materials and experiences. Designers are as likely to create online courses as individual classroom lessons and are as likely to create organized knowledge banks and resources as specific instruction. There is not only a need for well-designed materials that the student may complete independently but also for well-designed group activities that can be completed in a collaborative, blended, or face-to-face setting. Interest in delivering content, developing skills, and engaging learners through the creation of learning games remains strong.

Yet, the expense of creating e-learning, games, and other multimedia materials requires that instructional solutions be imagined and tested early in the design and development process, before extensive time and resources are committed to a final design. Fortunately, e...