What I Have Learned About Instructional Design

Designing instruction is not completely new to me. As an educator, I designed instruction on a daily basis as I prepared lesson plans each day. Fourteen years ago, I moved from the classroom into the Technology Department as an Instructional Technologist with one of my main focuses on training teachers on technology infusion. However, I never had put a name to the process that I would go through as I designed these lessons/trainings. 

In this instructional design course, I learned that the process is called the ADDIE process. As I looked back over my previous attempts at instructional design, I realized that I did basically go through these steps. From surveys and observations, I was able to see where weaknesses existed. From those findings, I would then begin to design and develop the training. One thing that I did learn in this class is that the more planning that goes into the design, the easier it is to develop the instruction. Taking the analysis, building the goals and objectives, and developing the activities are so closely related to each other that the more you include in the first two areas, the easier the process is in the development stage. Another new idea that was presented in the course was to list the needs of the participants and the instructor. This is something I have never done before. I see how looking at the needs of the participants can help guide the designer in the types of activities to include.

From the evaluation, I learned several things. First, when I had the client look over the job aid, she found a couple of areas that did not make sense to her. Normally I am creating trainings where I am the instructor as well. When creating for someone else, it is so important to be clear in all of the instruction steps. Also, in looking at the feedback provided by the participants, I found that they were all enlightened by the training. The main concern was that they thought they needed more time on the activities in order to fully develop the artifacts for each activity. After looking back over the design, I could see that adding more time would be a good update to this module for future trainings. 

I believe that this process of designing instruction is going to improve the quality of the trainings that I provide in the future. I will pay closer attention to the details up front to ensure that the training runs smoothly. I do not know that I will design instruction for others, but I do know that I will provide numerous trainings each year for teachers as we continue to build our one-to-one program in our district.