ADDIE
From military training to the private sector, ADDIE has been a standard model for instructional design across disciplines since the 1970s.
Background photo by Francesco Ungaro
ADDIE's Strengths
ADDIE's highly structured approach would work well for higher education courses that must meet standard criteria.
Perhaps there's a measurable competency that must be met in a foundational class across a state university system. This allows for consistency across all universities with professors using the same ADDIE created and tested material.
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ADDIE keeps program's goals in mind through all five stages. As every university course is part of a major curriculum, it must fit within the broader scheme of departmental requirements. ADDIE is about systematically reaching a course objective and closing a knowledge gap. Meeting major requirements would fall into closing a broader knowledge gap. Students work toward meeting the institution's criteria toward a bachelors or masters degree. ​
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ADDIE would help make this cohesion possible by systematically identifying objectives per course and fitting them into a larger organized system towards a major.
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ADDIE's Weaknesses
At times in higher education, the knowledge required is hypothetical or theoretical rather than practical or real world. Evaluation of results, in a sense, resides outside the institution, in the real world. Thus it's hard to ascertain whether professionally-oriented objectives were met.​
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Higher education also has a reputation of being like ADDIE, slow in development, rigid, and resource-intensive when it comes to change. Adept at imparting foundational principles but slow in incorporating updates, technological tools, and market demands, higher education's branding comes at a steep price.
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Nowhere is this contrast as clear as on Coursera, a popular purveyor of online courses for professionals hoping to upgrade their skills. Google competes with Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, with one to three professors teaching UX design or project management. On the Google side, a whole team teaches a series of competencies related to each member's job description and daily practice. There is an immediacy of learning's application and a sense that the course authors use a more nimble approach to updating content for an ever changing market and labor force. This is reflected in the diversity of people who are chosen to teach, some even without a formal education. They are adept at what they do and up to date with skillsets in demand in technology. AGILE Scrum is the workflow model used by Google, which its courses illustrate well.
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Dick & Carey
A more systematic, scientific approach to instructional design, the Dick & Carey approach breaks down instructional design tasks to smaller components. Analysis, design, and development are more heavily emphasized and intertwined with revisions from any stage incorporated into the mix, allowing for greater flexibility.
Dick & Carey's Strengths
The Dick and Carey model is a comprehensive system. When used in higher education, it supports thorough analysis of learning objectives, assessment strategies, and learner characteristics ​
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Creating a learner-centric, objective-driven instructional design suits higher education in preparing students for various professions. Becoming critical thinkers is always a common thread in objectives.
It allows for a simultaneous deep dives and focus in considering:
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learning context (available resources)
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content to teach (considering content topic's unique characteristics in design)
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learner behaviors (making learners active participants) and considering diverse student population
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instructional strategies (media selection, delivery modes)
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Alignment: Further, because materials, objectives and assessments are aligned, learning and assessment work cohesively in tandem.
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Continuous refinement: Each semester and even during the design and be improved and refined accoring to feedback and assessment results.
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Flexible framework: t's also a framework that is flexible, working with various subjects.
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The features of ongoing development, strong analysis, and alignment make for a well-crafted, learner-focused learning experience.
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Dick & Carey's Weaknesses
Dick and Carey is currently often used in higher education. That explains how thorough and well-aligned courses are to the broader departmental objectives. However, it can be overly complex and resource-intensive due to the level of analysis required.
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And because it's heavy on analysis, it's less agile for the rapid development required by technological breakthroughs and job market fluctuations. These forces really are critical to students. The recent growth of artificial intelligence has upended current practices in multiple fields.
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Dated: It may also contribute to college's reputation for being slow in keeping up with the times. These projects need to be implemented faster than the model allows for.
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Due to the high cost of college, students in the Gen Z generation and their parents are looking for return on their investment when it comes to college tuition.​
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Universities need to have representation in professional fields as they are being practiced today and implement instructional design practices that are more agile.
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Understanding by Design (UbD) Model
UbD works backwards to ensure learning outcomes include transfer of knowledge to the real world. This is particularly critical in higher education as students prepare for future careers and potential leadership roles. Toward this end, well-defined goals with aligned assessments and learning activities are critical for both academic and professional success.
Understanding by
Design (UbD) Strengths
In higher education, it is critical that students develop higher order thinking skills, something that's baked in UbD.​
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Focus on learning outcomes​
Higher education is considered a learning investment and so it's important to prioritize intended outcomes in designing courses. UbD offers a robust framework that considers learning's application beyond the walls of the educational institution. It deeply considers education's final takeaway: student-centered learning so that enables understanding, knowledge and skillsets that's transferable to the real world.
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Real world results and context
Ensuring deep comprehension for the real world is key to student transition toward professions.
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Current use
UbD is currently in use to design syllabi, assignments, and assessments on conceptual topics. Course content with UbD aligns with major and course learning objectives. It further fosters critical thinking through analysis. Students demonstrate understanding through essays and projects large and small across a major's progression.
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Applicable to various subjects
UbD has relevance no matter what the subject is, as the main goal is starting with transferrable results, which looks like many things depending on the subject.
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As a product of a liberal arts education and a former instructor at a more trade school type of art university, I can see how a lot of course mainstays in the curriculum roster could use a refresh with UbD.
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Supporting the bigger picture
Exploring what the takeaway for each course is is elemental in understanding and justifying why certain courses are foundational pre-requisites for others in major subjects.
This can further support a school's philosophy on what education is and why certain subjects are required in order to be an educated citizen of the world in the 21st Century.
Understanding by
Design Weaknesses
The reverse engineering required of UbD design might be too advanced for newcomers in instructional design. One may need to understand how to do it forward prior to doing it backwards.
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As a former instructor in higher education, my digital techniques course was always real world project driven. I had perhaps inadvertently created a backward design in thinking about the sort of products, moodboards, concept boards, and branded collateral the students would need to know how to make by the end of the course. It was very much skills based and something that could get them a job after one course. It was also a required course that fit part of a larger curriculum, a more hands-on supplementary course through which the students could applying their acquired knowledge of marketing techniques. Therefore perhaps UbD is more helpful for theoretical leaning courses that need a reminder of a real world context. Perhaps courses in more liberal arts leaning institutions would need this to know what the takeaway would be, especially when the knowledge is more conceptual.
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Resource-intensive reverse engineering
Though much needed in higher education for results-driven curriculum, UbD design may slow down improvements in updating content to meet market demands.
Faculty may get lost in the bureaucracy of finding the resources for this systematic sort of change, particularly if courses are interconnected and require universal changes. Assessments to measure this deeper knowledge in and of itself can present a challenge.
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However much UbD spells out processes, additional instructional strategies may be needed to supplement its framework.
Rapid Instructional Design
Rapid Instructional Design shows promise of keeping Higher Education up to date with the continuous user feedback loop from both professors and students. Having highly developed institutional learning assets, content need not be built from scratch but rather updated with the times. However, when anything's rushed, quality tends to be sacrificed to meet market demands.
Rapid Instructional
Design Strengths
Iterative nature keeps subject matter relevant with the times.​
Rapid instructional design also offers responsive solutions to in demand electives that address student interest.
Stakeholder collaboration
Further, professors as subject matter experts can dialogue with their onsite target audience, the students, to keep the content relevant and engaging.
Easy conversion to online environment
Rapid prototyping enables institutional learning assets (subject matter content) to be easily converted to online learning. SMEs and students can visualize the course online and easily populate the templates with existing content.
Learner engagement
Testing prototypes with students enables feedback on preferences. Text or lectures can be converted to video or microlearning content. Artificial intelligence may enable a some responsive design.
Easy updates to meet regulatory or curriculum requirements.​
With a templated library of online courses, universal updates meet a streamlined workflow when it comes to meeting regulatory or curriculum requirements. Templates provide a blueprint where one change can be a prototype for universal change.
Adaptability to meet modern expectations
Rapid Instructional Design enables responsive online learning that's adaptable to different outputs such as mobile devices, laptops, and desktops. Learners expect accessible, intuitively navigable information.
Rapid Instructional
Design Weaknesses
Iterative means works in progress
With new content and rapid prototyping on the front end, breadth and depth is lost along with thorough analysis. On the one hand, students who take the initial course may have a more "rough draft," glitchy experience. On the other, they may have a hand in co-authoring improvements and troubleshooting solutions.
Assessment less robust
Off the shelf quizzes may not truly effectively assess learner understanding.
Neglect learner needs
Lacking front end learner analysis, course design may overlook actual learner needs. Customization for different learner styles may need to be bypassed in the interest of time.
Limited interactivity
With limited time and resources, immersive, interactive learning may need to be bypassed resulting in less engagement.
Agile with changes, not complexity
The complexity required of many higher learning courses may not be met by Rapid Instructional Design. They would require more development and customization.
Successive Approximation Model (SAM)
SAM offers a fresh way to present classic higher educational content while keeping ensuring that SMEs and stakeholders keep up to date with the latest technology and industry standards.
Successive Approximation
Model Strengths
What comes first, the chicken or the egg? Will the most iterative, agile, and collaborative model make SMEs and stakeholders the most up to date or vice versa? Either way, social pressure and context will keep the content fresh with this model, particularly in higher education, where the professors may be well be of the pre-Millennial generation.
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Relevance
SAM provides a model of innovation and quick integration when it comes to the latest in industry standards. Even if it's not the industry that's fast changing, the innovation can be in delivery methods to the next generation of learners, who grow up on visually rich video games.
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Higher education maintains its cultural relevance and its capital through the most up to date mechanism we've explored so far.
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Inclusion and Learner Focus
SAM offers the flexibility and responsiveness of AGILE models found in UX design. It gives access to students with diverse learning styles and disabilities. And if the price tag is lowered for online learning, it provides access to a broader range of socio economic classes and regions in the world.
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Obtaining feedback from diverse students further allows for greater inclusion and keeps designers aware of their cultural assumptions biases.
Successive Approximation Model Weaknesses
A concerning feature of an over efficient perfected model may be the disappearance of the professor as arbiter of knowledge and information.
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This is something that I struggled with when I wrote an online course for higher education that became the standard prerequisite. Once complete, it belonged to the school, a template of knowledge that I didn't have much presence in thereafter. Doesn't field experience count for anything?
It's an existential crisis, we encounter again with artificial intelligence.
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Learning Curve
As stated before, there may be quite a learning curve for established, tenured professors, who may not be incentivized to take on the latest technological tools for learning.
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Resource Heavy
With understaffing and academic budget cuts, this resource heavy model may not be the right fit for institutions attempting to justify their spending. This is particularly the case when their graduate students are underpaid.
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Scope Creep
The challenge with onboarding current topics may be the extent of agreed coverage. How much content and what subtopics are to be covered? With SAMs ongoing iterative model, it's easy to lost sight of what NOT to include.