Instructional Design Framework For Your Online Courses: 5 Steps To Follow
You’ve just landed your new job as an Instructional Designer, and you’re ready to start producing some learning materials. With all the new technology and tools available today to create online courses, this is an exciting time for eLearning, and a great time to be in this industry.
But, before you start, it’s important to choose a framework that works best for your style and your training team. It’s important to understand how to create an online course, and to understand the criteria needed to maximize value. The right Instructional Design framework will set your eLearning project up for a successful outcome.
Why You Need An Instructional Design Framework To Create Online Courses
An Instructional Design model -or framework- is a tool to help design and create courses. It’s a systematic approach to developing training solutions. You’re probably thinking, “But I know what I want to teach and I’m ready to start creating content”. So, why is it important to pause and first consider a framework?
Let’s use the analogy of building a house. Before you start, you need to have a vision of what you want. Then, you work with an architect to draw up the plans: where the doors and windows are placed, how big the garage will be, the type of wood that will be used for the kitchen cabinets, the specific tile chosen for the bathroom, and the color of paint for the outside of the house.
Only then does the building process begin, as the contractor and team embark on executing those carefully considered plans.
Imagine if you started to create online courses without knowing who your audience is, what objectives you wanted to achieve, how you would measure the course effectiveness, how you would market it and other details such as which videos, and images, and colors, and fonts will be used.
Without a plan, you might waste a lot of time making decisions and adjustments as you go that could ultimately cause you to end up reworking the whole course.
Using a framework provides a step-by-step guide to help the Instructional Designer (like the contractor) organize the project, and ensure that all aspects of the project are covered along the way. This method saves time and builds an eLearning process that can generate ideas for the Instructional Designer. Additionally, the structure will help identify gaps within content and visualize training, so the design process can be laid out in easy-to-follow logical steps.
What Are Some Typical Instructional Design Frameworks?
The website InstructionalDesign.org identifies 25 Instructional Design frameworks, including:
- ADDIE.
Popular in business and organizational environments, the ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) model is a framework in which each phase is perfected before moving on to the next one. - Rapid Prototyping.
This model follows an iterative process to create online courses in a continual design-evaluation cycle. - SAM.
Like Rapid Prototyping, SAM (Successive Approximation Model) uses a process that enables analysis, design, and development to take place at the same time. - KEMP.
Consisting of 9 steps, the KEMP model [2] promotes a continuous cycle for the design and development process. It places emphasis on defining the instructional problem. - Dick and Carey.
Popular in schools and educational environments, the Dick and Carey model [3] starts by identifying instructional goals, and it ends with conducting a summative evaluation.
See the full eLearning glossary here.
Original article located at 5 Steps To Follow When Using An Instructional Design Framework For Your Online Courses – eLearning Industry
