NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Instructional design

Instructional design is the practice of arranging media (communication technology) and content to help learners and teachers transfer knowledge most effectively. The process consists broadly of determining the current state of learner understanding, defining the end goal of instruction, and creating some media-based "intervention" to assist in the transition. Ideally the process is informed by pedagogically tested theories of learning and may take place in student-only, teacher-led or community-based settings. The outcome of this instruction may be directly observable and scientifically measured or completely hidden and assumed. The know-how that goes into a given medium. ...

As a field, Instructional Design is historically and traditionally rooted in cognitive and behavioural psychology. However, because it is not a regulated field, and therefore not well understood, the term 'instructional design' has been co-opted by or confused with a variety of other ideologically-based and / or professional fields. Instructional Design, for example, is not Graphic Design although graphic design (from a cognitive perspective) could play an important role in Instructional Design. Preparing instructional text by E. Misanchuk, and publications by James Hartley are useful to informing the distinction between Instructional Design and Graphic Design.

History

Much of the foundation of the field of instructional design was laid in World War II, when the U.S. military faced the need to rapidly train large numbers of people to perform complex technical tasks, from field-stripping a carbine to navigating across the ocean to building a bomber. Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki TÅjÅ Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000...

Drawing on the research and theories of B.F. Skinner on operant conditioning, training programs focused on observable behaviors. Tasks were broken down into subtasks, and each subtask treated as a separate learning goal. Training was designed to reward correct performance and remediate incorrect performance. Mastery was assumed to be possible for every learner, given enough repetition and feedback. After the war, the success of the wartime training model was replicated in business and industrial training, and to a lesser extent in the primary and secondary classroom. ^[1] Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 _ August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist and author. ...

In 1955 Benjamin Bloom published an influential taxonomy of what he termed the three domains of learning: Cognitive (what we know or think), Psychomotor (what we do, physically) and Affective (what we feel, or what attitudes we have). These taxonomies still influence the design of instruction. ^[2] Benjamin Bloom (21 February 1913 - September 13, 1999) was an American educational psychologist who made significant contributions to the classification of educational objectives and the theory of mastery learning. ... For the science of classifying living things, see alpha taxonomy. ...

During the latter half of the 20th century, learning theories began to be influenced by the growth of digital computers.

Many Instructional design theorists began to adopt an "information-processing" approach to the design of instruction. David Merrill for instance developed [Component Display Theory (CDT) http://tip.psychology.org/merrill.html ]. Component Display Theory concentrates on the means of presenting instructional materials (presentation techniques)^[3]. Later in the 1980s and throughout the 1990s cognitive load theory began to find empirical support for a variety of presentation techniques.^[4]

Cognitive load theory and the design of instruction

Cognitive load theory developed out of several empirical studies of learners as they interacted with instructional materials ^[5]. It is emblematic of the historical roots of cognitive psychology in Instructional Design. Sweller and his associates began to measure the effects of working memory load and found that the format of instructional materials has a direct effect on the performance of the learners using those materials ^[6] ^[7] ^[8] Cognitive Load is a term (used in Educational psychology and other fields of study) that refers to the load on working memory during problem solving, thinking and reasoning (including perception, memory, language, etc. ... John Sweller is an Australian educational psychologist who is best known for formulating an influential theory of cognitive load. ...

While the media debates of the 1990s focused on the influences of media on learning, cognitive load effects were being documented in several journals. These effects it seems were based on the design of instructional materials, as opposed to the media being used. Finally Mayer ^[9] asked the Instructional Design community to reassess this media debate, to refocus their attention on what was most important – learning.

By the late 1990s, Sweller and his associates had discovered several learning effects related to cognitive load and the design of instructional materials (e.g. the Split attention effect, redundancy effect, and the worked example effect). Later, other researchers like Richard Mayer began to attribute other learning effects to cognitive load ^[9]. Mayer and his associates soon developed a Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning ^[10] ^[11] ^[12]

In the past decade, Cognitive load theory has begun to be internationally accepted ^[13] and begun to revolutionize how Instructional Designers view instruction. Recently, Human performance experts have even taken notice of cognitive load and begun to promote this theory base as the Science of Instruction, with Instructional Designers as the practitioners of this field ^[14]. Finally Clark, Nguyen and Sweller ^[15] published an important text describing how Instructional Designers can promote efficient learning using evidence based guidelines of Cognitive load theory.

Learning Design

The IMS Learning Design ^[16]specification supports the use of a wide range of pedagogies in online learning. Rather than attempting to capture the specifics of many pedagogies, it does this by providing a generic and flexible language. This language is designed to enable many different pedagogies to be expressed. The approach has the advantage over alternatives in that only one set of learning design and runtime tools then need to be implemented in order to support the desired wide range of pedagogies. The language was originally developed at the Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL), after extensive examination and comparison of a wide range of pedagogical approaches and their associated learning activities, and several iterations of the developing language to obtain a good balance between generality and pedagogic expressiveness. IMS Learning Design (IMS LD) is a specification for a metalanguage which enables the modelling of learning processes. ...

Instructional design models

Perhaps the most common model used for creating instructional materials is the ADDIE Model. This acronym stands for the 5 phases contained in the model: The ADDIE model is the generic process traditionally used by instructional designers and training developers. ...

Most of the current instructional design models are variations of the ADDIE model. A sometimes utilized adaptation to this model is in a practice known as rapid prototyping. Proponents suggest that through an iterative process the verification of the design documents saves time and money by catching problems while they are still easy to fix. This approach is not novel to the design of instruction, but appears in many design-related domains including software design, architecture, transportation planning, product development, message design, user experience design, etc.^[17] ^[18] A rapid prototyping machine using Selective laser sintering. ...

Instructional theories also play an important role in the design of instructional materials. Theories such as behaviorism, constructivism, social learning and cognitivism help shape and define the outcome of instructional materials. Behaviorism (also called learning perspective) is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things which organisms do â€” including acting, thinking and feelingâ€”can and should be regarded as behaviors. ... For other uses, see Constructivism. ... Observational learning or social learning refers to learning that occurs as a function of observing, retaining and replicating behaviour observed in others. ... In psychology, cognitivism is a theoretical approach to understanding the mind, which argues that mental function can be understood by quantitative, positivist and scientific methods, and that such functions can be described as information processing models. ...

Influential researchers and theorists

Lev Vygotsky Lev Semenovich Vygotsky (Ð›ÐµÐ² Ð¡ÐµÐ¼ÐµÐ½Ð¾Ð²Ð¸Ñ‡ Ð’Ñ‹Ð³Ð¾Ñ‚ÑÐºÐ¸Ð¹) (November 17 (November 5 Old Style), 1896 â€“ June 11, 1934) was a Soviet developmental psychologist and the founder of the Cultural-historical psychology. ... Burrhus Frederic Skinner (March 20, 1904 _ August 18, 1990) was an American psychologist and author. ... Benjamin Bloom (21 February 1913 - September 13, 1999) was an American educational psychologist who made significant contributions to the classification of educational objectives and the theory of mastery learning. ... Jean Piaget (August 9, 1896 â€“ September 16, 1980) was a Swiss philosopher, natural scientist and developmental psychologist, well known for his work studying children, his theory of cognitive development and for his epistemological view called genetic epistemology. He created in 1955 the International Centre for Genetic Epistemology in Geneva and... Seymour Papert Seymour Papert (born March 1, 1928 Pretoria, South Africa) is an MIT mathematician, computer scientist, and prominent educator. ... Robert M. GagnÃ© (1916â€“2002) is best known for his Conditions of Learning. GagnÃ© pioneered the science of instruction during WWII for the air force with pilot training. ... Jerome S. Bruner (b. ... Constructivism, an area of learning theory, is an approach to teaching, which values developmentally appropriate practices where the learning is child-initiated, child-directed and where the teacher plays a supporting role in the learning. ... Roger Schank (* 1946) is president and CEO of Socratic Arts, and a leading visionary in artificial intelligence. ... Blended learning refers to using multiple approaches to teaching. ...

See also

Since instructional design deals with creating useful instruction and instructional materials, there are many other areas that are related to the field of instructional design.

For article assessment policy on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Article assessment. ... Educational animations are animations produced for the specific purpose of fostering learning. ... Educational psychology is the study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations. ... Educational technology is the use of technology in education to improve learning and teaching. ... This article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article. ... An electronic portfolio, also known as an e-portfolio or digital portfolio, is a collection of electronic evidence assembled and managed by a user, usually on the Web. ... This article is about characterizing and appraising something of interest. ... // History of instructional technology Instructional technology was born as a military response to the problems of a labor shortage during WWII in the United States. ... Instructional theory is a discipline that focuses on how to structure material for promoting the education of humans, particularly youth. ... A learning object has been defined as the following: Any entity, digital or non-digital, that may be used for learning, education or training [1] Any digital resource that can be reused to support learning [2] Web-based interactive chunks of e-learning designed to explain a stand-alone learning... The learning sciences is a program of interdisciplinary study that works to further scientific understanding of learning and teaching as well as engage in the design and implementation of learning innovations. ... M-learning, or mobile learning, now commonly abbreviated to mLearning, has different meanings for different communities. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with e-learning. ... An Instructional Design Coordinator is a person who is responsible for overseeing the implementation of instructional design techniques, usually in an academic setting or in corporate training. ... Storyboarding is a seven step structure used to focus any topic. ... Training refers to the acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies as a result of the teaching of vocational or practical skills and knowledge that relates to specific useful skills. ... Interdisiplinary teaching is a method, or set of methods, used to teach a unit across different curricular disciplines. ... A rapid prototyping machine using Selective laser sintering. ... This article is considered orphaned, since there are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ...

External links

References

^ http://www.bfskinner.org/Documents.asp
^ http://www.officeport.com/edu/blooms.htm
^ http://tip.psychology.org/merrill.html
^ http://www.leaonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/S15326985EP3801_1?cookieSet=1&journalCode=ep
^ Sweller, J. (1988). "Cognitive load during problem solving: Effects on learning". Cognitive Science 12 (1): 257-285.
^ Chandler, P. & Sweller, J.. (1991). "Cognitive Load Theory and the Format of Instruction.". Cognition and Instruction 8 (4): 293-332.
^ Sweller, J., & Cooper, G. A. (1985). "The use of worked examples as a substitute for problem solving in learning algebra". Cognition and Instruction 2 (1): 59-89.
^ Cooper, G., & Sweller, J. (1987). "Effects of schema acquisition and rule automation on mathematical problem-solving transfer.". Journal of Educational Psychology 79 (4): 347-362.
^ ^a ^b Mayer, R.E. (1997). "Multimedia Learning: Are We Asking the Right Questions?.". Educational Psychologist 32 (41): 1-19.
^ Mayer, R.E. (2001). Multimedia Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-78239-2.
^ Mayer, R.E., Bove,W. Bryman, A. Mars,R. & Tapangco, L. (1996). "When Less Is More: Meaningful Learning From Visual and Verbal Summaries of Science Textbook Lessons.". Journal of Educational Psychology. 88 (1): 64-73.
^ Mayer, R.E., Steinhoff, K., Bower, G. and Mars, R. (1995). "A generative theory of textbook design: Using annotated illustrations to foster meaningful learning of science text.". Educational Technology Research and Development. 43 (1): 31-41.
^ Paas, F., Renkl, A. & Sweller, J. (2004). "Cognitive Load Theory: Instructional Implications of the Interaction between Information Structures and Cognitive Architecture". Instructional Science 32: 1–8.
^ Clark, R.C., Mayer, R.E. (2002). e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Proven Guidelines for Consumers and Designers of Multimedia Learning. San Francisco: Pfeiffer. ISBN 0-7879-6051-9.
^ Clark, R. C., Nguyen, F., and Sweller, J. (2006). Efficiency in Learning: Evidence-Based Guidelines to Manage Cognitive Load. San Francisco: Pfeiffer. ISBN 0-7879-7728-4.
^ IMS Learning Design webpage
^ Saettler, P. (1990). The evolution of American educational technology.
^ Stolovitch, H.D, & Keeps, E. (1999). Handbook of human performance technology.

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