Basic Understandings of Instructional Design

What is Instructional Design?

Learners may need interesting learning materials that encourage them to find and study more about topics they learn. They may expect fun learning activities that keep them awake and learning in easier ways. They may also demand good quality learning programs that lead them to increase their productivity or get a job when graduate. Those are common things needed by learners in various institutions.

If you are a school manager, instructor for corporate training, or teacher in a high school, you surely need good instructional designs to bring success of your students. But what is instructional design?

Instructional design is design that help people to learn and develop, not only in schools, but also in workplaces and homes; within groups or individual, and use instructor-led or independent activities. Kinds of learning and development may include cognitive, emotional, social, physical, and spiritual. Learning and development activities should be carefully planned and designed in order to learners realize what their goals and what they will study, reach their goals, get knowledge and understandings, able to perform skills or specific skills, and have alternatives of instructional strategies.

3 Basic Considerations of Instructional Design

Three basic considerations of instructional design include conditions, desired outcomes, and methods of instruction.

Conditions

When thinking about conditions, we could ask and answer questions as the nature to be learned (this is about what knowledge or skills are learned; different knowledge and skills need different ways to learn), the nature of the learner (prior knowledge, learning strategies, and motivations), the nature of learning environment (independently at home, in a group of students at a school, in a small team business, and the nature of instructional development constraints (how much time and money you have for planning and developing the instruction).

These conditions may influence which methods will work best to attain the desired outcomes.

Desired Outcomes

The second basic consideration of instructional design is level of effectiveness, level of efficiency, and level of appeal.

When level of effectiveness concerns with how well the instruction works, as indicated how well (to what degree of proficiency) the learning goals are attained; level of efficiency concerns with level of effectiveness of the instruction divided by the time and/or the cost of the instruction. For example, how long learners could reach the criterion of effectiveness.

Level of appeal is also considered as important since it gives standard and information about how learners enjoy the instruction and want to learn more about the topic.

Methods of Instruction

The main characteristic of instructional design is prescriptive, and it is clearly shown by methods of instruction. Methods of instruction are identified and suggested based on the situations of instructional (conditions and desired outcomes) in order for learners be able to attain the goals of instructional activities.

“Theory One” generated by Perkins of Smart School gives good examples of instructional methods. It says when we need to foster cognitive learning, the instruction should provide clear information (descriptions and examples of the goals, knowledge needed, and performances expected), thoughtful practice (opportunity for learners to engage actively and reflectively whatever is to be learned-adding numbers, solving word problems, writing essays), informative feedback (clear, thorough counsel to learners about their performance, helping them to proceed more effectively) and strong intrinsic or extrinsic motivation (activity that are amply rewarded, either because they are very interesting and engaging in themselves or because they feed into other achievements that concern the learner (Perkins in Reigeluth, 1998, p. 5-6).

Instructional methods can be broken into more detailed component methods, for example, the components of clear information may include identification of goals for the students, monitoring and signaling process toward the goals, giving abundant examples of the concepts treated, demonstration, linkage of new concepts to old ones through identification of familiar, expanded, and new elements, legitimizing a new concept or procedure by means of principles the students already know, cross checks among representations, and compelling logic (Perkins in Reigeluth).

Methods of instructional are rather probabilistic than deterministic, which means they increase the chances of attaining the goals rather than ensuring attainment of the goals. When methods are carefully identified, learners have more chance to be successful.

As conclusion, this article suggests teachers, instructors, or instructional designers to consider at least three main points of designing instructionals, which include learning and learners condition, desired outcomes, and best methods of instruction to bring success of learners.

More details about Methods of Instructional would be publish on the next posting.

Source: Reigeluth, C. (1998). Instructional Design Theories and Models, Vol. II: A New Paradigm of Instructional Theories. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, Pub.