In today’s globalized economy, companies don’t conduct every aspect of their business themselves, collaboration with third-parties, vendors, and outsourcing some of the work to other companies is crucial so that businesses can take-off their shoulders some of the everyday tasks and focus on their product and core business. However, it is not as easy as it sounds, effective communication with vendors and their parties is important to avoid mistakes and misunderstandings, and this is where design instructions play a vital role as a way of communication. In this article we will discuss what instructions design is, and what is the role of an instructional designer.
What is instructional design?
Instructional design is what it seems: designing instructions. It is a fully-formed, stand alone professional discipline of creating learning experiences to support long-term learning. It involves analyzing, designing, developing, and evaluating any instructional experience based on learning theory.
Instructional design was first used in the United States during World War II. During this time, the whole country was mobilized, and most recruits did not have the technical skills to create effective weapons and aircraft. Recruits needed critical thinking skills related to war time strategies to minimize troop losses. In addition, the military needed to be able to train the troops very quickly. Experts, such as Robert Gagne, influenced the way these accelerated training materials were developed by creating processes based on theories of learning and human behavior. After the war was over, these scientists continued to work on instructional problems, and applied the theories and techniques that were used to train soldiers in the war in the civilian workplace.
In the context of business, instructional design is a way to deliver your company’s knowledge and experience to third parties, so they can understand your approach, culture, process and goals. This will help them effectively understand your needs and achieve them. This can be mainly via training materials and training sessions.
The instructional materials could be both physical, or digital. They have to be developed in a consistent and reliable fashion towards efficient, engaging, and inspiring knowledge acquisition.
What is The Difference Between a Teacher and an Instructional Designer?
Instructional designer is not a fancy word for a teacher. Both are completely different things as each has its own purpose. The role of a teacher is to provide instructions, manage learning space, prepare lesson plans, deliver personalized instructions, and follow curriculum. However, an instructional designer conducts market, audience, and topical research. They collaborate with SMEs (Subject Matter Experts), content creators, and stakeholders to define learning outcomes and develop detailed plans. They research and recommend technology and learning resources, they evaluate results and iterate.
Instructional designers focus on creating learning opportunities for a specific audience of a demographic, and they may not have direct contact with the learners using the courses they develop. Unlike teachers who focus on facilitating learning experiences directly with students to meet individual students’ needs.
What are the three types of instructional design?
Now that we understand what instructional design is, let’s know its types.
Instructional design has different models mainly divided into: traditional models, modern models for dynamic training, and eLearning based models.
Traditional models of instructional design have been used since WW2. These models were used in accelerated training of soldiers in the military and business. There are well-known traditional models such as ADDIE and SAM models, and they are still being used to this day. On the other hand, there are models that focus on engaging learners and maintaining motivation. Here we will discuss some of these models:
ADDIE Model
ADDIE is a traditional and very popular instructional design model, it stands for Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation. These represent the 5 phases of instructional design in this model as it is used for developing e-learning courses.
It is one of the most popular types of instructional design, it is a cyclical model where the outputs from one phase feed into the next as inputs. This makes it flexible and ideal for feedback gathering.
It emphasizes a step-by-step process, starting with analyzing learner needs and goals, designing the content, developing materials, implementing the training, and evaluating its effectiveness
SAM Model
SAM stands for Successive Approximation Model, it is one of the traditional models, it emphasizes iterative development, rapid prototyping, and collaboration. SAM is a simplified and more agile alternative to ADDIE.
SAM begins with the Preparation phase. During this rapid phase, designers collect background information on learners, assess their strengths and weaknesses, and establish overall project goals. Because it is an iterative process, it involves multiple rounds of design and development.
The 4MAT Model
The 4MAT model is a framework for understanding the way individuals and groups move through the process of experiencing, assimilating, acting upon and integrating knowledge through four phases: Why? What? How? What if?
It encourages addressing different learning preferences and engaging learners at emotional and cognitive levels.
The 4C Model
The 4C model is based on dynamic learning experience as it has 4 main components: Connection, Concept, Concrete Practice, and Conclusion.
It provides a structured approach for designing educational programs that focus on teaching complex skills or professional competencies.
The 4C model aligns well with current trends in education, emphasizing the development of complex skills, transferability of knowledge to new situations (including the workplace), and lifelong learning.
What are the 5 steps of instructional design?
Instructional design involves five steps:
- Research
- Creation
- Delivery
- Feedback and impact
- Updates
The research stage of the instructional design process sets the foundation for your entire training course and material. This helps you understand not only your business and training objectives, but also your various types of learners, technology you’re using, expectations, and more.
After research, you will begin developing the education content itself. You will decide based on your research whether the content should be video-based, or face to face learning. Then, you will start building a storyboard, then get approval for the prototype that was developed.
After you finish developing the educational materials, you will need to store them somewhere! This is the delivery stage of instructional design where you’ll need to host your new training materials on your LMS, Google Drive, company intranet, or other mediums.
After you have launched your instructional course, it’s time to measure the impact it has had. You’ll want to gauge its effectiveness from both a quantitative and qualitative approach.
Finally, instructional designers can take the feedback and evaluations from the previous step to make data-driven decisions for improvements on future corporate training programs.
In conclusion, instructional design is closely related to education; however, it is totally different from teaching, as The main purpose of instructional design is to systematically create educational materials, courses, and experiences that optimize learning. Jobzella can help you hire the best instructional designers out there to help with your company’s success!
