Instructional Systems Design (ISD)

Instructional Systems Design involves a systematic process for the assessment and development
of training solutions, designed specifically for the purpose of formal training delivery. There are
two widely recognized instructional design models in use today by both educational institutions
and corporate training functions. The most traditional is the ADDIE model, of which there are
several variations. The second is the Agile model, whereby there are several variations,
including Rapid Application Development, Rapid Content Development, and the Successive
Approximation Model.

Instructional design (ID), also known as instructional systems design (ISD), is the practice of
systematically designing, developing and delivering instructional products and experiences,
both digital and physical, in a consistent and reliable fashion towards an efficient, effective,
appealing, engaging and inspiring acquisition of knowledge.[1][2] The process consists broadly
of determining the state and needs of the learner, defining the end goal of instruction, and
creating some "intervention" to assist in the transition. The outcome of this instruction may be
directly observable and scientifically measured or completely hidden and assumed. [3] There
are many instructional design models but many are based on the ADDIE model with the five
phases: analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation.

Instructional Systems Design: Basic Principles

In their landmark book, Improving Adult Literacy Instruction: Supporting Learning and
Motivation (2012), the National Research Council of the National Academies states clearly
the goal of all learning: expertise. Instructional Design, therefore, they point out, must be such
that learners develop ‘conceptually rich and organized representations of knowledge that
resist forgetting, can be retrieved automatically and can be applied flexibly across tasks and
situations’.

Those who design instructional systems, therefore, must keep that goal in mind as they create
their system. Let's explore some basic principles of effective Instructional Systems Design (ISD).

1. Instructional Design Should Proceed At An Efficient Pace

Since students need many hours of practice in a skill to achieve expertise, an instructional
program should teach material efficiently, encouraging students to practice every chance
they get. This goes for eLearning as well as on-site programs.

Getting students quickly to a place in which they can begin to put their knowledge into
practice is essential to effective Instructional Design. Efficiency, point out the book’s authors,
is the best way to achieve that goal.

Consider Students’ Backgrounds As You Design Material

Look at the students’ background to develop materials that challenge them without
overwhelming them. This will help them learn at the fastest rate possible for them.

Include Supplementary Material

Offer supplementary material for students whose backgrounds or abilities allow them to learn
more quickly than the rest of the class. This is especially true for uni eLearning, where extra
material in a field about which they are passionate can inspire them to take even more
coursework in that field—even to consider graduate-level work or a career in that field.

Add Remedial Material For Struggling Students

As you design your course, include some extra material that can help bring struggling
students up to speed. Step-by-step explanations in more simplified language, as well as
lessons that involve multiple senses, can help guide these slower learners to true
understanding.

Use A Clear, Organized Format

An important ingredient in efficiency is the format in which you design the system. Use
terminology in plain English—no jargon or complicated wording. Keep the format simple so
the material itself is the challenge. Organise the material in a logical sequence that makes
sense, depending on the material. For instance, for a history course design, the sequence
might be chronological, while for literature themes might make better sense. Save tangential
information for enrichment material. Irrelevant information can distract the student from the
main focus of each lesson. Infographics and other visual and audio aids should be easy to
see and easy to understand.

Provide Structure

As the material builds in complexity, always relate new material to previously learned
material. Point out how the new material relates to the old—and how it points to what’s
coming in later lessons. Use outlines and tables to organize hierarchical structures and
diagrams to illustrate more complicated relationships among various components of the
material.

Use Small Units To Speed Up Learning

It may be counterintuitive, but people learn better in small chunks than if you ask them to
digest a lot of material at once. You might have presented a lot of material, but that portion
of the material that the students actually internalize is larger when you use smaller chunks.

2. Instructional Design Should Contextualise Information

When students can relate new information and theories with that which they already know,
they can learn faster. Not only that, but they can also apply it better in real life through more
situations and tasks.

Use Multiple Examples

Since not all of your students’ backgrounds and experiences will be similar, a wide range of
examples will help get information across. If you are aware of your students’ backgrounds,
you can pull examples from situations they might find familiar. For example, if you are
teaching French, and you know that a couple of your students are chefs, you can use
examples from food culture, such as ‘bon appetit’ to teach the meaning of good (bon) or
‘au jus’ (with juice) to teach the multiple meanings of the preposition ‘au,’ which can mean
‘to the,’ or loosely in English, ‘with.’
Use Varied Formats

Some students learn better from written material; others from infographics and yet others
from videos. As time allows, design your instructional format to include a wide range of
formats to better speak to learners’ unique learning styles.

Use A Variety Of Meaning Contexts

Without overwhelming your students at one time, teach how the same material may take on
different meanings in various contexts. Manners, for instance, can demand one type of
behavior in one context, while another in a different situation. Likewise, vocabulary words,
such as ‘stop,’ may have one meaning to a driver, while it takes on a whole other meaning
to an organist, who uses ‘stops’ to change the tone quality of the music he plays.

Vary The Types Of Practical Applications You Offer

When you design a section of a course that contains new vocabulary words, have the
students read, speak, and write the new words. Similarly, for a new section of music, have the
students repeat it from rote by imitating the teacher’s movements over the instrument (or the
vocal technique), and the next time, have them perform the same section of the piece from
the written score.

Link Theoretical Concepts To Practical Experiences

When you create a section of your curriculum in which you present a set of directions on how
to do a task, don’t just have them memorize the steps. Have them practice the skill as you
teach it. Make sure you explain to them that it’s OK to mess up, at least at first.

As one figure skating coach said to his frustrated beginner students who fell time after time as
they attempted the difficult Axel jump, ‘That’s good. If you’re not falling, you’re not learning’.
Even if it’s awkward at first, students internalize concepts better when they utilize more
senses. A philosophy professor, when teaching how to detect certain fallacies, would be wise
to pass out several popular adverts to their students to see if they can put their theoretical
knowledge to work. Memorizing truth tables and lists of informal fallacies is one thing. Putting
them to work in real life makes that knowledge memorable.

Build New Knowledge On The Foundations Of Existing Knowledge

Leverage your students’ life experiences to teach new skills and knowledge. If, for instance,
your students are learning how to roll thin, see-through sheets of baklava and they have
already learned to roll out plain pie pastry, build on that skill to teach the more difficult skill of
rolling out baklava sheets. Similarly, if your students know some Spanish words and are
learning French, use the common Latin roots in both to teach new French vocabulary words.
Everyday experiences, too, can become powerful tools to help students understand new
principles. If they’re learning about the emotional and philosophical implications of a story in
literature, have them relate the story to similar real-life experiences.

3. Design Your Course To Be Learner Community-Based

Learning doesn’t take place in a vacuum. The learning community, even in an eLearning or
uni eLearning situation, plays a valuable part in the learning process, say the authors of the
Hungarian Online University’s book Basic Principles and Models of Instruction Technology.
Peer Feedback Is A Huge Part Of Learning

Peer feedback not only helps those evaluated better internalize the material, but it helps the
evaluators as well. For example, a law student learning how to apply a certain statute in an
argument before a judge. If his/her classmates, as well as the professor, evaluate the
strengths of his/her argument, they will learn to apply those principles to their own argument.
In fact, the professor can point out which parts of the peer feedback are valid, which are
not, and why. Everyone—not just the person being evaluated—will learn from the
experience.

Most Real-Life Positions Require Teamwork

On the job, when your students will have to apply the knowledge they gained from your
course, they will need to learn how to function as a part of a team—and as a part of the
larger community inside the organization or business. They’ll need to learn how to cooperate
with each other, learn from each other, and teach each other if the team is to succeed.
They will need to learn how to present their ideas with confidence and apply their
knowledge as a part of the team. Furthermore, they will need to be able to divide tasks up
among themselves as they put their knowledge to work. Learning how to parcel out the steps
in performing a task quickly and efficiently is as much a part of mastering the ability as it is to
do the task by oneself.

Provide Space For Student-Student Connections

In an eLearning situation, it may be more difficult to connect students with one another—but
it’s essential to expand one’s learning. Encourage online chat with one another, as well as
meetups for those who live near another student. Conversations about the material taught
and its practical applications often bear much fruit when it comes to internalizing facts and
concepts. Not only that, but a course whose design includes such opportunities can forge
connections that help students expand their professional networks to find more job
opportunities and the chance to advance in their respective fields.

4. Include Opportunities For Students To Produce Original Content

A course that only requires students to remember information to spit back in a tightly
controlled environment, such as a multiple-choice test or fill-in-the-blank, does its students a
disservice. Instead, within the lesson structure, include opportunities for students to produce
original content.

Reaction Papers Or Oral Presentations Help Students Organize And Understand Issues

After a reading assignment, video assignment, or another task, ask the students to write their
reaction to the positions presented in the assigned reading. As they discuss the material in
their own words, they will internalize the principles presented—even if only to refute them. Do
not, however, allow students to produce non-supported gut reactions. Require them to use
reasoned arguments combined with the facts they have learned to write their reaction
paper or speech. Such opportunities will prepare them for on-the-job situations in which they
must make their case for doing a task in a given manner to maximize efficiency.
Encourage Students To Put Their Newfound Knowledge Or Skills To Work Outside Of Class

In a cooking course, for instance, have the students prepare dishes for their families or
roommates. In a political science course, include a requirement that they participate in a
campaign or otherwise take part in the political process. Some of these efforts may, like all
beginnings, be awkward at first, but producing original work while using the skills they learn in
the classroom will pay off huge dividends in the working world.

Incorporate Critical Thinking Exercises In Course Material

Teach students to look for contradictions, explanations, and resolutions. Critical thinking is
one of the most transferable skills for today’s workforce. Problems that come up usually arise
because of contradictions at the core of an argument or at the heart of a theory about how
something works. Critical thinking helps students look for those anomalies, discover why
something isn’t working, and figure out a way to make it work.

Teach Students To Look At A Problem From Multiple Points Of View

Often a problem can unravel when one takes a different perspective. Shifting perspective
will develop cognitive flexibility, which can benefit students greatly when in the workplace.
Arguing a point from both a pro and con viewpoint can open up students’ minds to find a
third way that avoids the problems inherent in the standard positions, or theories about a
given problem. It wasn’t until Einstein learned to ‘think outside the (standard) box’ that he
could come up with his theory of relativity.

Create Courses That Teach Students To Become Lifelong Learners

The adage “teach a person to fish, and you’ve fed them for a lifetime” is never so true as in
Instructional Design. Incorporate tried-and-true learning strategies within your course. Teach
them to ask questions—never accept the status quo. Pique their curiosity. Once that pump is
primed, students will never be the same. They will develop a thirst for knowledge that will
keep them at the forefront of their field for a lifetime. Teach them to love the word ‘why’.

5. Create Fair, Well-Thought-Out Evaluation Tools Administered At The Proper Time

The old model of cramming a lot of material into each lesson results in students who cram for
tests. This, in turn, relegates the information and skills to short-term memory, and so they are
promptly forgotten when the exams are over. That doesn’t sit well with modern employers,
who want workers that have internalized the skills, principles, and facts they have learned in
their coursework. Instead, provide students with material presented and tested at a pace at
which they can internalize the knowledge for a lifetime.

Space Out New Material And Evaluations

Allow plenty of time and opportunities for students to digest new material before you do any
large-scale evaluations. Smaller, less-formal evaluations, such as reaction papers,
demonstrations, or quizzes spaced out over the course of each topic work better than
presenting a large amount of material and then testing students on those huge chunks.
Test Your Tests

Course design is fluid. If a testing instrument (or some of the components of a given test) are
not working, change them. Evaluate student test and quiz results to see if you’re missing
something either in your presentation of the material, or if certain questions are unfair or
unclear. See if spacing out the material in smaller chunks over time will help the students
better understand. Look carefully (and ask your students and fellow teachers to do so as
well) at your questions to see if rephrasing them might produce better results.

Provide Helpful Feedback

A simple score tells a student little about how to correct a thought process that led them to
the wrong answer. Teachers should provide comments that help the student identify the
point where she went off the right track. Commend the student for strategies that are
innovative and logical but locate the point at which they went off the track. Partial credit for
‘wrong’ answers that demonstrate some command of the material can help to encourage a
student. A calculus professor, for instance, whose student used the right strategy at every
step but made a typo or an elementary arithmetic mistake could issue partial credit because
that student has a better grasp of the material than one who made no arithmetic errors, yet
failed to show his work or took shortcuts.

Provide Immediate Feedback

Instructors are some of the busiest people on earth. Piles of papers to grade and records to
keep combine to cause some to delay grading papers or issuing feedback. Instead, design
courses to have shorter, yet more effective assessments to keep a handle on the workload.
Students learn better from feedback soon after the assessment, while the work is still fresh on
their minds. Immediate feedback allows students to correct their thought process before it
becomes ingrained in their minds.

With a course design that keeps moving at an efficient pace, puts the learning into a
practical context, involves the learning community, encourages students to create original
content, and provides appropriate, thoughtful feedback, instructors and committees can
provide relevant courses that will produce students who can confidently take their place in
their chosen field.

ISD or ADDIE may be defined as the systematic and iterative method for creating
learning experience that develop and enhance skills and knowledge.

In the past, ISD or ADDIE was often referred to as a Systems Approach to

Training(SAT), (U.S. Department of Defense, 1975; Department of the Army, 2011).

ISD can be thought of as a roadmap that helps to ensure the learners and their
organization achieve their learning and performance goals through formal,
nonformal, and informal environments.
 Why Instructional System Design and ADDIE?

Instructional System Design (ISD) is often referred to as ADDIE, which is the acronym
for the five phases of ISD:

1. Analysis
2. Design
3. Development
4. Implementation
5. Evaluation.

6. Instructional design is a technology for the development of learning

experiences and environments which promote the acquisition of
specific knowledge and skill by students.[1]
7. And instructional design theory is theory that offers explicit guidance on
how to better help people learn and develop. The kinds of learning and
development may include cognitive, emotional, social, physical and
spiritual…There are two major aspects of any instructional situation: the
conditions under which the instruction will take place and the desired
outcomes of the instructions. [12]
8. Instructional design is a technology which incorporates known and
verified learning strategies into instructional experiences which make
the acquisition of knowledge and skill more efficient, effective, and
appealing. [1]
9. Instructional Design is the art and science of creating an instructional
environment and materials that will bring the learner from the state of
not being able to accomplish certain tasks to the state of being able to
accomplish those tasks. Instructional Design is based on theoretical and
practical research in the areas of cognition, educational psychology,
and problem solving.[2]