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Instructional Design – Core Processes (John Stormes)

Subscriber price: $375.00, Non-subscriber price: $475.00
Estimated total study time: 9 hours 6 minutes [Enroll now]

This activity-based workshop takes you through the five stages of instructional design and shows you how to tie the products of each stage together, thus creating instructional programs that produce more effective learning. You will learn how both behavioral and cognitive learning processes support instructional effectiveness. You will practice applying the five core processes, Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation, employed by professional instructional designers. The activities include developing your own instructional products by applying the basic design process. You will have the opportunity to try out your work and evaluate the results.

The course objectives are to have you be able to do the following:

A recommended text for this course is: Donald J. Ford, Bottom-Line Training: How to design and implement successful programs that boost profits. Houston: Gulf Publishing, 1999 (1st edition). Or, Bottom-Line Training: Performance-based results. Training Education Managment, 2005 (2nd edition). Order through Amazon.com or www.trainingeducationmanagement.com

Lesson 1. Introduction: The Designer's Model & Needs Assessment

This lesson and the next provide a foundation for understanding the processes and principles you will learn about in subsequent lessons. They also introduce how instructional design procedures can be applied successfully to your work.

The roles and values of the instructional design profession are introduced and the basic development model many designers use is described.

The process is most effective when it begins with a needs assessment, a tool every designer should be able to apply to determine whether or not a performance problem has a training solution. At the conclusion of this lesson, your first assignment is to conduct a simple training needs assessment.

(Estimated study time: 1 hour 4 minutes)

Lesson 2. The ADDIE Processes and Designer Competencies

Instructional design is a disciplined approach to course development. A goal is set upfront, expected outcomes are specified early, and the work is focused on achieving the goal and the outcomes. If brilliant insights and creative solutions happen along the way, that is fine as long as they make a positive contribution to the goal and the outcomes. That is the essence of Instructional Systems Design (ISD) as it is called in some quarters, but more often called ADDIE by practitioners. The first part of this lesson introduces you to ADDIE.

ADDIE reminds people of all the development phases used in ISD, and is thus a constant reminder of the goal orientation we just mentioned: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation. Each term represents a core process that improves the chances of a successful course. Experienced instructional designers may not follow each process in measured fashion, but they are well aware of ways to limit the risk when taking shortcuts. New designers should consciously adhere to the processes until they have gained more experience.

In the second part of this lesson, you may evaluate your own training related experiences and how you might further develop your competence as a designer. A form is included to use for this purpose.

(Estimated study time: 56 minutes)

Lesson 3. Setting the Stage for Design with Learner &Context Analyses

This is the first of two lessons introducing three kinds of analysis that follow when a needs assessment has revealed a training need. They are learner analysis, context analysis, and content analysis. Building on information gathered during the needs assessment, these analyses organize the detailed information needed for the design and development of a training program. Hands-on practice opportunities to conduct these kinds of analyses are included in these lessons.

This lesson covers learner analysis and context analysis. The purpose of learner analysis is to document information about the interests and abilities of potential students. This information is needed to set the stage for motivating learners and communicating with them. It also facilitates selection of appropriate instructional methods for the intended audience.

The context analysis studies the conditions under which the training can be conducted. It identifies what facilities are available, what delivery systems are feasible, and conditions for delivering training.

Content analysis is covered in the next lesson.

(Estimated study time: 40 minutes)

Lesson 4. How Content Analysis Defines Instruction

Content analysis is the process of identifying what knowledge, skills, and attitudes need to be taught in order for learners to be able to perform well enough to close the performance gap (identified in the needs assessment). At this point, it is not necessary to document every last piece of information and every increment of skill but merely to identify the sources of information and sketch out how they overlay the job.

Much of content analysis in job training is tied closely to job descriptions and procedures performed on the job. We call these analyses job analysis and task analysis. The principles illustrated in these analyses can be extended to higher-order content analysis such as in problem-solving, interpersonal skills, and management skills; however, the discussion would have to be much more extensive. For this reason, we will limit ourselves in this course for the most part to job training.

(Estimated study time: 41 minutes)

Lesson 5. Goals and Objectives for the Course Blueprint

When the design phase begins, analysis is essentially over. It is time to get down to the business of creating course goals and objectives and the course blueprint. Goals and objectives are developed from the results of the needs assessment and content analysis. They lay down a sound basis for a training program. The central focus of this lesson is to teach you how to write satisfactory, and useful, learning objectives.

The lesson includes classification systems for objectives and recommends one that is especially appropriate for skills training. After this lesson, you will be ready to create the course blueprint, which is described for you in the next lesson.

(Estimated study time: 1 hour 15 minutes)

Lesson 6. Preparing the Course Blueprint

This lesson covers the main elements of a course blueprint. These elements help you convey to others the features and benefits of your course in a concise way.

The elements include:

  1. Title of the lesson
  2. Business goal of the lesson
  3. Summary of analysis results
  4. Learning objectives in order of instruction
  5. Sample test items derived from objectives
The lesson shows you where to obtain sample test items and how to organize the learning objectives in order of instruction.

You will have the opportunity to construct a sample course blueprint from the learning objectives and test items in preparation for the development phase.

(Estimated study time: 27 minutes)

Lesson 7. Introduction to Theories Applied to Instruction

The lessons and media that support them must now be created out of the analysis results and the course blueprint. This can be a very challenging part of course development. The instructional designer, alone or with a team, now blends the analytical thought processes involved to this point with genuine creativity. Both the appearance of the materials and the way the content is presented offer opportunities for creativity, yet the structure from the analysis and design must remain to enhance learning effectiveness.

The contents of the first of the following three lessons includes the psychological basis for effective learning and four architectures of learning explained in terms of psychological theories. This discussion shows you the range of creative opportunities you can employ and still remain focused on instructional goals. The remaining lessons in this section cover the selection and use of methods and media and how instructional materials are commonly formatted.

(Estimated study time: 43 minutes)

Lesson 8. The Design of Lessons

This lesson introduces a basic lesson plan for building up sections of the course blueprint so as to produce an effective course. The structure of this lesson plan is especially effective for technical knowledge, procedures, processes, and many other topics in general training.

This lesson explains the purpose of each of the twelve principal elements of the lesson plan. The choice of effective instructional methods for each element depends as well on the content of the lesson elements, on the learner, and the depth of learning required.

Criteria for the instructional media selected to support the instructional methods conclude this lesson.

The learning objectives for this lesson are:

(Estimated study time: 40 minutes)

Lesson 9. Materials for Training, Transfer Support, Diagnosis, & Remediation

Training materials handed over to students sometimes look like they have a rag-tag history. Unfortunately, if they look like scrapbooks assembled from old instructor's notes and hand-me-down copies of copies, some students may get the message that they and their training are not considered very important.

You want the materials handed out to students to be clear and useful to aid recall and application on the job. They need to have an appearance that students will value. In this lesson, you are introduced to instructional materials and some suggestions for giving them a professional appearance.

At the end of this lesson, we complete the discussion of the basic lesson plan by covering transfer support, diagnosis, and remediation.

(Estimated study time: 33 minutes)

Lesson 10. Implementation

In this lesson, you will learn how to prepare your program for delivery. You have completed the first three phases of course development—analysis, design, and development. You have probably tried out segments of the course with small samples of students during development. Now, you are ready to make final preparations to launch your program.

You are going to learn about these tasks that lie ahead of you:

These tasks comprise the implementation phase of the instructional design process.

(Estimated study time: 1 hour 8 minutes)

Lesson 11. Evaluation

Evaluation is an important part of implementation, having also supported your design and development activities. Evaluation is most important during tryout and for followup after the program has been placed in use. Evaluation is the quality assurance system that demonstrates how effective the training program is in improving employee performance both immediately after implementation and throughout the time the program is being offered.

This lesson covers the four levels of evaluation that have been traditionally used for both development and maintenance of programs. Suggestions for conducting evaluation at each level are included.

The lesson ends with a brief summary of the entire "Core Processes of Instructional Design" course.

The following is the learning objective for this lesson:

End of course objective:

This lesson concludes Core Processes of Instructional Design. The last section of the lesson is a summary exercise touching on the highlights of all you have learned from these eleven lessons.

(Estimated study time: 58 minutes)