Mary Miller EDIT 6170 July 29, 2002 ID reflection :  My view of the design process II

When the summer began, I honestly thought (thanks to several sessions during EDIT 6100, Introduction to Instructional Technology) that I had a pretty good understanding of the instructional design process!  HA!  Looking back, I realize that I knew what A-D-D-I-E stood for (Analysis, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate) but that was about it! All my understanding of the instructional design process was from the outside (this is something I'll never really need to do) looking in (oh, look at what those folks are doing - how quaint!).

Having worked my way through the design process (twice, more-or-less: once while writing the Instructional Design Analyses and again while reconfiguring them into the Design Portfolio), I now believe that I have made good progress toward constructing a robust mental model of the instructional design process. I now have seen, and begin to understand, instructional design from the inside out!

I have read with great interest the articles questioning the validity of instructional design. My own experiences with ID have produced a high level of respect for the process, accompanied by some misgivings about its potential for misapplication. As Diane Gayeski asked, "Who could argue that instructional program development should not follow the Analyze, Design, Develop and Evaluate sequence?" (Zemke and Rossett, 2002).  I have been somewhat baffled by those who view the emphasis on sequential steps as part of a "lock-step mentality" (Gordon and Zemke, 2000) that weakens the potential of ID.  These critics seem to feel that an inflexible adherence to ordered steps makes it more likely that the ultimate goal will be lost in the process. As I see it, the opposite is true. The analysis phase begins with an examination of desired outcomes, and everything else comes from that.  It would seem to me that beginning anywhere other than analysis would be the kiss of doom for a design process.  Reeves and Hedberg (forthcoming, p. 269) wrote of research methodology choices: "Tools should only be selected once goals and tasks are clear."  I believe this maxim holds true for instructional design as well.
 

In my current occupation, I am occasionally called upon to train colleagues and those I supervise.  I now realize how heavy handed and vague my past training has been.  I recall many instances of backpedaling, of beginning a training step only to realize that I had not laid a proper foundation.  In the near future, I will be implementing the training my team and I have developed in our Design Portfolio.  The value of task analysis is clear to me and I am certain to implement this portion of instructional design, if not the entire process, in my other future training activities.

 

Since I have never studied educational psychology, and have no teaching experience, I have had a lot of blank space to fill in my mental concept map of the learning process.  The value of analyzing a given task in terms of the types of learning outcomes the task will require is clear to me.  Gagné's suggestion that each lesson contain nine "events of instruction" (Smith and Ragan, 1999) at first seemed excessive to me, but I now see the merit in following this pattern.  My enhanced understanding of the learning process should make me a better trainer.

 

When I began this class, and at many points throughout this class, I found the design process to be excruciating in its attention to minute detail.  As a cataloger, I have to care about commas, semicolons, field delimiters, and a myriad of details, so it's really something when I find something to be TOO detail oriented.  Looking back, though, I recognize the value of each step, however tiny it may have been. In all honesty, if there were an advanced instructional design class being offered this fall, I'd race to sign up for it.  I will finish developing and implementing the instructional project that was the focus of my work for this class, and I would love to have the oversight and feedback of an experienced designer as I work my way through the process.

 

If the class schedule and protocols had allowed for it, I would have liked to have gone back and revised many of my Instructional Design Analyses.  As I moved through the consecutive steps of the design process, I learned things that I wish I had known when doing the initial parts of the design.  I realized things about the instructional problem that motivated me to want to revise my goal statements, instructional strategies, and so forth.  I will make these changes following the end of the class and before proceeding with further development of the instruction.

References Gordon, J. and R. Zemke (2001). "The attack on ISD," Training, April 2000. Reeves, T. and J. Hedberg (forthcoming). Interactive learning systems evaluation. Smith, P. and T. Ragan (1999). Instructional design. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Zemke, R. and A. Rossett (2002). "A hard look at ISD," Training, February 2002.

Last update: July 29, 2002 Comments to: Mary Miller mlmiller@arches.uga.edu Created for Dr. Janette Hill's & Dr. Joi Moore's' UGA class EDIT 6170, Summer 2002 URL=http://arches.uga.edu/~mlmiller/idr1.html