[00:00:00] Devlin: Developing your instructional design knowledge and skills won't just make it easier for you to land good opportunities in the field, but it will also help you make a bigger impact on the job. We're going to cover all of the instructional design models, theories, and principles that you typically learn about in a Master's program.
[00:00:15] But we're going to do it here, so grab a notebook and enjoy the ride.
[00:00:18] Okay, so before we get too deep into it, what is instructional design? A simple way to put it is that it's the process of designing, engaging, and effective learning experiences. That essentially sums up the instructional designer's job. But another big part of it is identifying appropriate solutions for the need at hand.
[00:00:34] You might design the most engaging learning experience ever, but if you didn't properly analyze the problem and if the learning experience doesn't help solve that problem, then you're not going to be better off than where you started, so we'll of course get deeper into that. But instructional designers also use technology to help people learn more effectively.
[00:00:51] Especially recently, technology is a very integral part of most instructional designers jobs. Not all instructional designers, but a [00:01:00] a lot of IDs are using tech to help people learn more efficiently and more easily. Alright, so before we get into like the models, let's make sure that we're all comfortable with how people learn, which is where the learning science comes.
[00:01:13] So if you're going to be a learning professional, you should at least have a working understanding of how this stuff works. So there are a few main bodies of research or knowledge when it comes to learning science.
[00:01:25] Behaviorism, you've probably heard of this one. You learn via reward and punishment. This is like classical, classical conditioning, and it does get a little bit complex with like reward schedules and stuff. But the main thing you need to know is that when people get rewarded, they'll do more of a behavior. When they get punished, they'll do less of, of a certain behavior. It's probably somewhat familiar to you. And it's kind of intuitive.
[00:01:48] Constructivism. This is a slightly more modern one, I would say, but this one is where people learn by experiencing the world around them. They kind of form their own conclusions about the world. Everyone has their own [00:02:00] running reality essentially. So this is very big on like learning by experience, learning by doing, putting people in these situations and just kind of having them like figure it out and they're going to learn things along the way. We're not going to get too deep into constructivism.
[00:02:12] Cognitivism is the big one. This is underpinning a lot of like the modern instructional design, like learning theory or at least a lot of the popular instructional design models and theories. So we will get a little deeper into cognitivism. The idea here is that people learn like computers, like information comes in, we process it and then we store it in our long term storage essentially.
[00:02:31] And I'll break that down more because again, cognitivism is very important as an instructional designer. We're dealing with a lot of cognitive tasks. And then this is a newer body of knowledge: it's called connectivism, and this is kind of in response to the way that we use phones, the way that we interact with each other, like around the world.
[00:02:50] We don't just learn and store stuff in our heads, but we learn via external networks. So we're just like one node in a network. But books might be nodes in that network, like [00:03:00] different online resources and other people might be nodes in that network. So instead of just storing all of our knowledge in our head, connectivism kind of accepts that we can also access knowledge in these other locations.
[00:03:11] And of course it goes deeper than that. But you may want to read up on that if you are interested in that concept, but cognitivism is the main one we'll be focusing on.
[00:03:19] It may also be sometimes referred to as cognitive information processing, but this is the theory of how we process information and remember information, which if you're going to be helping people learn, that's an essential process.
[00:03:30] So... here's how it works. I'm going to, hopefully this doesn't get too technical, but it should give you a good idea. First, there's some sort of sensory input and it's stored very briefly in our sensory memory. So for example, like my sensory memory might be holding a ton of information right now about like the temperature on my hands, about like how this feels on my face, about the sounds that are coming in through my ears.
[00:03:52] But it's too much for me to actually process like consciously, which is where attention comes in. So the things that [00:04:00] we attend to wind up going to our short-term memory, for example. So if I'm like, "yeah, let me attend to these words on the screen," I'm going to try to remember that I can keep it in my short-term memory and I can access that.
[00:04:11] Another example is like, if I like clap, it's going to like draw my attention to the clap or to someone else's clapping. And that's an example of how something might get from sensory memory into our short-term memory. Again, hopefully I'm not getting too complex, but our attention is basically how we like decide what to actually process further.
[00:04:30] So attention plays a very key role. That's why a lot of these models you'll see attention getting people's attention plays a core part of it because if people aren't attending to something, the road ends there. They're not, they're not learning whatever it is you want them to learn or whatever they would want to learn.
[00:04:45] So short-term memory of course you're all familiar with that. You need to rehearse things to keep it there. So imagine trying to like remember a phone number or something very quickly just to get it from like the piece of paper you read it from to putting it into your phone, for example.
[00:04:57] So that's your short-term memory. Again, [00:05:00] probably familiar to you all. But then from there, to get it from short-term memory into long-term memory. And this is important. People need to encode it into long-term memory. That's the language of cognitive information processing. And the way to do that is to connect the stuff that you're holding in your short-term memory to information that you already hold in your long-term memory.
[00:05:19] So maybe you're like categorizing that information, maybe you're imagining visuals to go along with that information. And as you're pulling stuff out from your long-term memory, it makes it easier for you to encode that stuff from your short-term memory into long-term memory. You're essentially forming connections, you can think of it as, between the new information and the information you already hold.
[00:05:37] So that's the idea here. It's like, you know, we have to attend to something. It's in our short-term memory. We have to connect that to information that we already have in our memory, even if it's just categorizing that information.
[00:05:48] Or just saying like, "oh yeah, you know, I've, I was already familiar with short-term memory," for example. "Oh yeah. You know, I already have that pulled up. Now I can see how it goes one step further to long-term memory." and, you know, just an example of how that might look. So, [00:06:00] That's how it works. But again, in a lot of these models, you're going to see the idea of like stimulating prior recall or like getting people to drum up information that they already have about a certain topic.
[00:06:11] And again, the reason for that is because if people do that, it's going to be a lot easier for them to move stuff from short-term memory into long-term memory because they're pulling up information they already have in long-term memory. Another fun fact about this from this theory is that long-term memory is like unlimited and infinite.
[00:06:27] You don't run out of storage space. You can kind of store infinite stuff in there. If you can't like pull it up on a moment's notice. Like me, I can't pull stuff outta my memory like super easily. That just means that you're having trouble recalling it, but it is still in there.
[00:06:40] It doesn't just disappear. It doesn't get overwritten. So that's interesting.
[00:06:43] Next up we are going to get into models so you have an idea of how people learn. Now let's take a look at all of these different models that instructional designers use to guide their workflows and guide their decision making.
[00:06:54] And speaking intelligently about these is going to make a very big impact for you in the job search. And also you [00:07:00] can use this to guide your decisions on the job, especially if you don't already have a process of your own. So let's get into it. Some models guide the entire instructional design process from start to finish. So there are these like overarching models that tell you what you should be doing every step of the way.
[00:07:14] Some of them only apply to designing the learning materials. So some apply to like, yeah, if we already know we need like a face-to-face learning session, basically like we need to design a workshop. Let's use this specific model to to design that workshop. Some models are like that, and then some apply only to evaluation or very specific parts of the process.
[00:07:34] So keep that in mind. These models aren't all like interchangeable, but I will give you details about like when to use which.
[00:07:41] So the first model, again, you're probably already familiar with this but the first model is ADDIE. This is a waterfall model when it was first designed.
[00:07:50] This is kind of like the first instructional design model and framework. And as such, it is kind of the most popular framework in the field. ADDIE is an acronym. So it stands for analyze, [00:08:00] design, develop, implement, and evaluate. Each one of these steps, like Analyze, used to have like 10 steps of its own. Design used to have 10 steps.
[00:08:07] That's back when the military was using. But now it's kind of much more general and it's kind of like first do some analysis, then do some design, then development. And if you're not familiar with these, analyze is where you're essentially gathering information and drawing conclusions about that information.
[00:08:23] Like who's in your audience, what do they need to accomplish, that sort of thing. And we'll dive deeper into it. Design is where you designed the instruction itself. It's where you're actually like working on the content, you're writing the learning objectives. Yeah, you're essentially developing that content to close people's knowledge and skill gaps.
[00:08:41] Develop. That's when you actually develop the final products that people are going to need to engage with. Like it's where you might develop a self-paced eLearning experience. You might develop like a facilitator guide for a face-to-face session. That sort of thing.
[00:08:54] Implement is where you actually deliver it to people. So if it's a face-to-face experience, the implementation [00:09:00] is where the person is actually in front of the audience, delivering the presentation to the audience that needs it. If it's a self-paced eLearning, it's when that eLearning gets put onto the learning management system and people get enrolled in the experience.
[00:09:12] So that's the implementation phase. And then evaluate, of course, that's where you actually evaluate the effectiveness of the program. Now, people don't usually follow this to a T anymore. Again, it is kind of restrictive because it does go in order. So if you get to that implementation phase, Before doing any, any evaluation, you might need to redo a lot of work in the earlier four phases.
[00:09:33] So again, this is a good overview of what instructional designers do, each of these five phases, but it's generally not followed to a t.
[00:09:42] A couple of notes: analysis cannot be overlooked or understated. This is where you gather information so that you can design an appropriate solution if you skip analysis, and some instructional design teams are doing this and it's costing companies millions of dollars a year.
[00:09:58] If you are not [00:10:00] doing any analysis, but you're just saying, "yeah, I think this eLearning solution will will be a good fit. I think people need a course on information security," for example. If you're just like guessing at what people need or if like a non-instructional designer says, "Hey, we need a course on this, can you build it for us?"
[00:10:15] And your answer is just like, "yes, I can do that." You're not going to be very effective, most likely, because if you don't do the upfront work and the analysis to figure out what the actual problem is and what might be causing that problem, then you don't want to design a solution. A common metaphor is like if you go to the doctor, they're going to try to diagnose you and ask you questions and figure out what's wrong, what's actually the problem, instead of just prescribing you some sort of medication.
[00:10:41] If you're like, "oh yeah, I think I have an infection." The doctor's probably not going to be like, "oh yeah, great, here are some antibiotics." They're probably going to be like," well, let's do some tests and figure out what's actually going on here." It might be something very different. That's the mindset you want to get in as an instructional designer, if you want to make a real impact on the job.
[00:10:58] So different types of analysis. [00:11:00] You can analyze the need. So it's like, yeah, what do we actually need to happen here? Do we need these people to sell more products? Okay... What's stopping them from selling more products? Maybe they don't have some knowledge or skills that they need, which we could help resolve with an eLearning course.
[00:11:14] Or maybe the software that they're using is like super glitchy and they're not actually able to help people in the way that they should be able to on the sales floor because their software glitches. So you could throw tens of millions of dollars of training at that problem. But if their software doesn't work, they're not going to see any improvements in the sales.
[00:11:33] Sometimes training isn't the answer at all, and that's where the needs analysis comes in. You can also analyze the audience, so you want to learn more about your audience's needs. Like who are they? Are they comfortable with technology? For example, what kind of technology are they comfortable with? If you have an audience who has never even touched a computer before, you're not going to want to design like a series of like computer based eLearning courses because there's going to be a lot of friction there.
[00:11:58] You'll want to analyze [00:12:00] context. So which context are people going to actually be doing the job in, and which context are people learning in? So for example, if people are doing the job on a sales floor and all they have access to is a mobile phone, you're not going to want to design again, like a super big desktop learning experience because they're not going to be able to actually engage with that.
[00:12:18] And the list goes on. Again, I have a full video on these different types of analysis. But just want to give you an idea of the types of information you want to be collecting and if you don't have that information, it can have some very bad consequences for the effectiveness of your project.
[00:12:31] So methods to get this information include interviews, surveying, direct observation. We're actually watching people try to do the job reviewing existing data, existing documents, existing training programs, etcetera. So there are a lot of different methods here. But this is very worth it, even if it's having some conversations with your client or some subject matter experts to try to get their impression of this information.
[00:12:52] Some sort of analysis is necessary if you want to be effective. And then of course, based on that data, you would use that to guide the [00:13:00] solutions you design, the solutions you recommend and so on and so forth. So, wanted to highlight analysis just because it is often overlooked and it could be hard to get how this works if you're a new instructional designer.
[00:13:12] Alright, so SAM is another model here. So it's an iterative approach to learning design. SAM, the SAM creators, were like, "yeah, ADDIE is kind of too restrictive. It's, you know, this waterfall approach. It doesn't work for modern teams. It's wasting a lot of time and money. We need something more iterative, more agile, and that's why this is very popular in like tech settings in these like more fast-paced kind of environments."
[00:13:34] The idea with SAM is that you build and test prototypes to move closer to perfection. So they know there is no perfect solution. But essentially you're starting the first prototypes in like a piece of paper, just sketching things out or like a very, very basic simple online, you know, examples, maybe, maybe even built with like PowerPoint, but that's the idea here.
[00:13:55] And it's primarily used to design eLearning, but you could probably use this prototyping approach [00:14:00] for any kind of learning solution. And then the general simplified process is evaluate, design, develop, and then rinse and repeat and evaluate. Here is kind of used synonymously with analyze.
[00:14:11] So it's like, gather some information from, from people. Design some possible solutions. Develop those solutions, put them in front of people and continue evaluating them, getting people's feedback, seeing if it's helping us move closer to our business goals, that sort of thing. So similar, you know, we have evaluate, which serves as evaluate and analyze and design and develop.
[00:14:32] So you're probably already starting to see that there is overlap between these models and I'll comment on that more in a bit.
[00:14:39] Another popular one. This one is covered quite heavily in academic programs and probably because it is such like a systems oriented approach. But this is the Dick and Carey model, and I'm going to give you a brief overview.
[00:14:50] So it starts with identifying your instructional goals. So at the highest level, what is our goal of even doing something like this, what's the point of us designing this [00:15:00] solution? What are we trying to accomplish? From there, we do some analysis. So we analyze the instruction. We basically say, "yeah, do we need instruction that's going to help people like learn new, like physical motor skills?
[00:15:11] Do we need instruction that's going to help people like memorize some, like basic information? Like what type of knowledge or skill do we need people to attain from this?" And then we're analyzing the audience, like I said, like who is our audience? How old are they? How comfortable are they with, with technology?
[00:15:26] The more information we can learn about our audience, the better. From there we're writing performance objectives. You may also commonly hear this referred to as like learning objectives. This is where we're writing the very specific objectives that we want people to be able to achieve when they're going through this learning experience and all of these objectives will add up to the overall instructional goal, if that makes sense.
[00:15:47] From there, as soon as we write those objectives of what we want people to be able to accomplish, we're developing assessments. So we're going to say, "okay, we know what our objectives are, this is what we want people to accomplish. How are we going to assess whether or not they've achieved those [00:16:00] objectives?"
[00:16:00] And that is very important. We're going to dive deeper into learning objectives in a bit. But the, that's the unique thing about this model that you should remember. It's instead of writing the learning objectives and then writing like all the content that's going to come with it and the activities, instead you write the objectives, you immediately write the assessment because then, you know, here's where we need people to get.
[00:16:20] Here's the test we're going to use to see if people are actually able to get there. And in many cases, especially in like a corporate eLearning environment, that assessment is a series of multiple choice questions, like a final exam of sorts, you could think of it as. And then once you have that assessment, that is when you develop your instructional strategy materials.
[00:16:39] This is where you identify what activities you need, what approaches you're going to use to help people achieve those objectives and perform well on that final assessment. So it's a little switched, right? Like a, a common approach is objectives and then just like go chronologically until people get to the end and do the test. With the Dick and Carry model, it is objectives, [00:17:00] assessment, and then you kind of fill in the gaps to make sure that everything you're including is helping support people doing well on that assessment, which in turn would mean that they've achieved the performance objectives.
[00:17:10] I hope that makes sense. This is a very good model to get comfortable with. And then it's a series of evaluation.
[00:17:16] Formative and summative evaluation, which you should know the difference between those two, and I'll cover soon. A couple other things about this model, yeah, changes in any one of these pieces is going to result in changes to the others, right? If you change the assessment, it's probably means that there's been a change to the performance objectives, which again, it just kind of cycles out to the other pieces.
[00:17:35] So it all impacts each other. It's a very like systems approach. And then if you get, get some data during the evaluation, you might need to go back and, and revise your instructional goals, you know, deeper analyze the audience, that sort of thing. So keep that in mind. This all influenced, each step influences the other steps.
[00:17:52] Okay, so the, the types of evaluation, you may see this referred to as a lot. You should know the difference. Formative evaluation is conducted while [00:18:00] you're still building the learning program that you're working on. So, for example, maybe we're working on a specific lesson we're going to include. We would probably have like a pilot group or some test audience, so to speak.
[00:18:11] We might want to put this in front of them and say, "hey, yeah, let me watch you go through this learning experience." That might be some good data to get during your formative evaluation. If it's a live face-to-face session, the facilitator may be asking questions to gauge the audiences understanding or see, yeah, how well the audience is following along.
[00:18:28] If it's clear that they're struggling, that's going to be a good data point. If they're doing well, then that again is good data. So basically anything you're doing while you're building the program to like put this, put this learning experience in front of people and like test its effectiveness...
[00:18:41] That is formative evaluation because then you're able to make adjustments based on that data pretty quickly because you're still building the program. If formative evaluation, a good way to remember it is like you're conducting it while you're still "forming" the learning program, right? Kind of self-explanatory there.
[00:18:57] And then summative evaluation. You [00:19:00] conduct this once the program is complete and delivered to its intended audience. So once you've conducted formative evaluation along the way, you roll out the program, you deliver it to its intended audience, and then you're going to see: how well are these people doing on the assessment?
[00:19:14] Are they using what they learned on the job? Is this making a difference to the on-the-job metrics? Like how effective is this program overall? If it's not effective, we might need to kind of take this back to the drawing board. So summative evaluation is like, okay, this is the, this is like the sum of all of our results.
[00:19:31] The program is complete, let's put it out there. And then when you're evaluating after that point, it's summative. So that's the difference between those two types. It's common language in the instructional design space.
[00:19:42] And then writing objectives. We need to do this justice because this is perhaps the most, if not the most important, then one of the most important instructional design skills.
[00:19:52] So Bloom's Taxonomy is a great place to start. It's what most instructional designers are working with when they are writing objectives, [00:20:00] and the main thing to remember here is that we want to ensure the objectives are meaningful and measurable.
[00:20:07] But we want to make sure that, yeah, people achieve this objective. It's actually going to make some kind of like material difference in that person's life or on the job. Like what's the point? We don't just want to include objectives for the sake of objectives. And the part that's a bit more trickier is: we need to make sure that the objectives are measurable.
[00:20:24] So for example, we don't want to start our objective with the verb, like "understand." So it's like "by the end of this lesson, students will be able to," as like the general stem, "students will be able to," and then you'll have your objectives. Imagine if you have "understand instructional design."
[00:20:41] Okay. Now if we want to assess that objective, if we want to say, "okay, we need to design some sort of assessment to see whether or not people understand instructional design," what might that assessment look like? It might be a multiple choice question that says, what do an instructional designers do? Or it might be an assignment that says, "okay, build a learning [00:21:00] solution to solve this like in-depth performance problem. You have six months to do it."
[00:21:04] "understand" is very vague. That's the problem with "understand." Instead, you can use verbs, like if you want to see how comfortable someone is with like the different instructional design theories, one of your objectives might be to "list five instructional design models."
[00:21:19] That might be fine or "explain how the Dick and Carey model differs from the ADDIE model. Like by listing at least three points." It gets more in depth. I have a full video on writing objectives that people have enjoyed. It has some quiz questions in it and everything. So check that out if you want to learn more about this.
[00:21:37] But this is so important because once you have the objectives down, everything else that you do in your learning experience needs to directly tie back into those objectives. All of the information you include, all of the practice questions and activities, and all of the final assessment questions. If they aren't directly based on one of the objectives you've identified, then you don't want to include that thing in your learning experience.
[00:21:59] [00:22:00] Another thing you'll see here is like we don't want any frivolous or irrelevant information. So if it doesn't support the learning objectives, it's essentially irrelevant and frivolous.
[00:22:11] So this is Bloom's Taxonomy.
[00:22:12] You'll see words like, "understand," and "remember." These are kind of like the general classifications for these different types of objectives. But if you look at the verbs on the right, these are great verbs to start your objectives with. Like at the bottom, for example: "define" instructional design.
[00:22:28] You know, "list" five, instructional design theories, "memorize," each of the tiers of Bloom's taxonomy. So those are some examples there. And then SAMe thing as you get up the objectives allegedly become like higher-order thinking processes. I think that's like kind of debated, but generally the lower-tier verbs here will be easier to assess with multiple choice questions.
[00:22:49] As you get further up, you're going to need some more creative, or hands-on assessment methods, is one way to put it. Like you're going to be reviewing projects or discussions or, or things like that, or [00:23:00] essays instead of just seeing, you know, looking at someone's multiple choice question. Something I will say about this, like I've had clients, and you may run into this too, as an instructional designer, clients will be like, "yeah, I want this eLearning course that teaches people how to like design good eLearning."
[00:23:14] And it's like, "well, we're not really going to be able to assess whether or not they've like designed an effective eLearning solution because it's completely self-paced. So we need to look at the lower level Bloom's taxonomy verbs." because that's what we're actually going to be able to assess in an eLearning environment.
[00:23:29] You might want them to learn this knowledge to support them doing good instructional design projects. Kind of like what I'm doing here with you. But you don't want to be having people achieve objectives that you can't actually assess meaningfully. I hope that helps because you want to be able to give people feedback.
[00:23:45] We're going to get deeper into it, but hopefully this helps get you started with objectives.
[00:23:49] Okay, now we're moving on to another model. This one has become more popular, like "design thinking." it's in the same camp as "human-centered design." I think people who can speak intelligently about this, do [00:24:00] quite well in interviews and the like.
[00:24:01] And it is quite similar to formal instructional design processes. So the first step in design thinking is to empathize, and it's essentially empathize with your audience. Learn more about them, sit with them, learn what their struggles are, similar to like learner analysis in the ADDIE model.
[00:24:17] Define the problem. So you need to define yeah, what, what the problem is here, what's the situation, right? Why it doesn't need to be a change. From there, you would idea how you might solve the problem, so you're coming up with potential solutions. From there, you prototype a few possible solutions, and then you test the prototypes with your audience to see which solutions are best.
[00:24:40] So it's a five step process. If the prototypes don't work, you might go back to the empathize part and then you might continue going through it again. So it's iterative in that nature. The idea here is that empathy is front and center. You want to really know what your audience is going through.
[00:24:56] You want to connect with them and you want to design some really [00:25:00] creative, but compelling solutions to the problem at hand. And then again, yeah, repeat as needed.
[00:25:06] So are you seeing parallels between these models? Right? They often overlap. You've heard us talk about analysis in so many of these models.
[00:25:14] Design and development are crucial to all of these models. Evaluation is here with all of them. So a lot of people, especially newer instructional designers, like get intimidated. They're like," how do I know which model to use?" As you're probably seeing, just pick one and, and run with it, because they're all going to work.
[00:25:33] And the thing is you'll likely develop your own unique process over time. So as long as you're conducting the analysis, doing the design and development and testing it with your intended audience to see if you're getting closer to your goals and it's actually effective, that's what you need to do as an instructional designer.
[00:25:48] So no matter which order you're doing those pieces in, people have their different preferences, some approaches work better for certain organizations see some teams will follow one model to a t. I haven't seen that [00:26:00] exactly, but yeah, more often than not, teams are kind of using an amalgamation of models to have all of the right elements, they might not be following a specific model a hundred percent.
[00:26:11] So hopefully that alleviates some pressure. And just know, yeah, you will develop your own style.
[00:26:16] Okay, so these models we're getting into now are more particular to specific parts of the process. So first up, we have Kirkpatrick's model of evaluation.
[00:26:25] This is the most popular evaluation model in the field. It's, it's made up of four levels and the, people will kind of talk about it colloquially, like, "oh yeah, we're going to, we need to do like a level two evaluation on this." So that's referring to Kirkpatrick's. So level one evaluation is reaction level data.
[00:26:42] So how did the audience like this experience? What was their emotional response to it? Level two is learning data. So what did people actually learn? So this is where you would look at the assessment data and you would say, "oh yeah, you know, coming in, they didn't know this stuff. Now they know this stuff." Yes, they successfully learned [00:27:00] something.
[00:27:01] Level three is at the behavior level. So did people's behavior change? Because in a sense, instructional design is the, is the science of behavior change. We don't want people to learn stuff just for the sake of like holding it up there in their minds. We want people to learn stuff so they can actually do something with that information and make a difference in their lives or on the job. So, yeah, are they actually doing something different as a result of the experience?
[00:27:24] And then level four, the highest level of learning or of evaluation is at the results level. So what results did this produce for the organization? Right? We don't want people's behavior to change just for the sake of it.
[00:27:37] We want their behavior to change, to make some sort of difference for the company. Again, it's a little different in the education space, but in the corporate space especially. Yeah. Is this producing a result for the organization? And a cool way to go about this and how they recommend using this now is to work backwards for best results.
[00:27:54] So essentially, when you're working on a new instructional design project, you ask yourself, "what results do we want or [00:28:00] need this project to produce for the organization?" Right? "What results are we trying to impact here?" Once you have an idea of what results you're trying to produce, then you would say, "okay, what behavior do we need to change in order to bring these results about?"
[00:28:14] And then from there, "okay, for that behavior to change, what do people need to learn in order for their behavior to change in this way? And then how do we need people to react to this learning experience in order for them to engage with it and actually learn something?" So that's the line of questioning you can use at the beginning of a project to kind of keep evaluation in mind from the beginning.
[00:28:31] Because if evaluation is just an afterthought, it's not going to go well. A lot of teams do that and it's not effective. They're like, "yeah, let's roll this out, you know, without talking to anybody or getting any feedback. We'll put it up on our learning management system and we'll just collect feedback once a year, and then when it comes time to actually collect the feedback," it's like not...
[00:28:49] "So yeah, let's review. We can make a couple of easy changes and then just move right along." So that's not effective. You want to think about evaluation from, from the very beginning of your projects to make sure that you're doing it justice. [00:29:00]
[00:29:01] All right. The next one we're getting into is Gagne's nine events. This is a great one. It's just like so easy to use, kind of. You may already be familiar with it. Essentially you would use these nine events to design like a comprehensive learning experience. So it does deal specifically with that design part of the process. You're not going to be using this like conduct analysis or evaluation or anything like that.
[00:29:23] So these nine events, which Gagne says make up like a comprehensive learning experience, are first, gain attention, and these don't have to happen all in order. These are just like the necessary elements. So gain attention because again, if you don't have people's attention, they're not learning.
[00:29:36] State the objectives. So this is where you like let people know what it is that they're going to learn to kind of help prime them for that learning. I will note, when it's state objectives here, it doesn't need to be like formal learning objectives that you developed as an instructional designer. It's kind of like what I said at the beginning of this, it's like, "Hey, we're going to dive into all the models, theories, and principles that you've covered in a master's program, I'm giving you an idea of what you're going to learn." Instead of saying like, "by the end of this [00:30:00] lesson, you'll be able to list these theories and you know, so on and so forth." That's going to make people's eyes glaze over and put them to sleep.
[00:30:05] Stimulate recall. So again, is this ringing any bells? Stimulate recall? That's where you're going to want to bring up people's past knowledge. And again, the idea here is because once you bring up their past knowledge, it will make it easier for people to connect new information or knowledge to it. So a way I could have done that at the beginning of this video, for example, is like, "all right, so which theories about instructional design are you already familiar with?
[00:30:27] Like, go ahead and write them down. Or like, what do you think an instructional designer does? Go ahead and write that down." or, or even "reflect on it, or, you know, take some questions from the class." That sort of, or it could be a multiple choice question in a self-paced eLearning experience, like a little pretest kind of thing.
[00:30:40] That's the way, again, to get people's, you know, prior existing knowledge from their long-term memory into their working memory so that it can be more easily integrated with the new stuff they're about to learn. Present content, that's self-explanatory. Provide guidance: that's just like some helpful, like pneumonics and, and study suggestions, things like that.
[00:30:59] [00:31:00] How, you know, giving people guidance to help them actually learn the material better. Elicit performance is another way of saying like providing practice opportunities. This is essential. It's one of my favorite instructional design strategies because of how effective it is, and it is paired very closely with providing feedback, right?
[00:31:16] You want to give people feedback so that they know if they're like doing well or not. You don't want them to practice doing the wrong thing. Assess performance. This is essentially, yeah, the assessment, the final assessment. You want to like see whether or not the program was, was effective and then enhance transfer and retention.
[00:31:33] This one sounds confusing to people at first generally, but it's basically you want to help make it easier for people to transfer what they just learned in this formal learning experience onto the job or into the real world. So one way to do that is by giving them like a job aid that they can take with them and like reference for like a quick overview of what they had just learned.
[00:31:50] Another way to enhance transferring retention is to kind of like let people know, "okay, you learn this stuff. Here are some examples of how you can use that in the real world." Or ask them, "okay, you learned this. How do you think you [00:32:00] might be using this on your job in the next week?" So those are just a couple of strategies.
[00:32:04] Again, I have a full video on Gagne's nine events, but you can probably see how effective referencing these nine events would be if you are designing like a face-to-face learning experience or virtual instructor-led experience for example.
[00:32:18] Next up we have the ARCS model. And this is, this one deals particularly with motivation. So again, you, you want people to be motivated, you want them to take it upon themselves to continue learning and to actually apply what they've learned on the job. And John Keller created this model to help you with that. So you're going to see very similar things here. So attention, you want to get and keep people's attention.
[00:32:41] You want to make sure, you want to show people how what they're learning is irrelevant to their lives or to their job. You want to help people build their confidence with what they're learning by giving practice opportunities that they can. To increasingly well on, and you want to increase people's satisfaction by showing and providing a clear path for them to use what they've learned on the [00:33:00] job in a way that's going to make a difference in their lives or on their performance.
[00:33:03] So again, I have a full video on this, but just know there are models to help with motivation design that are quite effective.
[00:33:10] Okay, so those are all of the models. So this is kind of like a little intermission because from here we're getting into the ID concepts and principles. If you're coming from, from education, especially if you're teaching children, you may get asked a lot about like, "which adult learning principles do you apply?"
[00:33:26] This, some of these are adult learning principles, so you'll use these concepts and principles to guide your design process. So again, this isn't analysis or evaluation or eLearning development. This through actually designing where you're like writing scripts or writing storyboards or writing what the lessons will actually be.
[00:33:43] And again, yeah, you can refer to some of these as adult learning principles. These are the types of principles you'll be applying to design effective learning solutions.
[00:33:53] All right. First up is chunking. This is pretty self-explanatory. It's where you chunk relevant information or content [00:34:00] together into smaller chunks.
[00:34:02] You're breaking stuff down into smaller, more manageable chunks. That's one way to think about it. It makes it easier for people to process information because it makes it easier to hold it in a short term memory. Yeah, less cognitive load, which we'll get into in a bit. Essentially do this every opportunity you can.
[00:34:16] So here's a common example. Looking at like a series of numbers or letters or just a series of like information and then chunking it out to make it a bit easier to remember. This is the thinking behind like all numbers. It's kind of like organized into these different chunks again, because the idea is that it's easier for your short term memory to work with like three distinct groups of information instead of 10 distinct numbers or letters.
[00:34:43] I hope that makes sense. Again, break things down in smaller chunks. It makes it easier to engage with. The way that this is often applied is like breaking down like a 60 minute eLearning lesson, which like used to be really popular to now people are breaking it down into, yeah, like two to 10 to 15 minute lessons.
[00:34:59] So you might have like [00:35:00] a bunch of two minute lessons, a bunch of five or 10 minute lessons. It really depends on the content, but you're, yeah, the smallest like logical chunk of content. If you're like, yeah, this has its own learning objective and it's kind of self-contained, you might be able to deliver that as a standalone learning experience.
[00:35:18] It's often referred to as "microlearning," if you see that term. So chunking goes hand in hand with microlearning.
[00:35:25] Next up we have scaffolding. It kind of goes hand in hand with chunking as well because you do want to like chunk things down to their most basic like learning objectives essentially. But you, you provide support for new or difficult material and give less and less support over time.
[00:35:40] So it's like, "we're going to do something challenging here. Here's a bunch of support, here's a bunch of guides, here's some, here's some practice. And maybe it's, here's some easy practice." But then as the person progresses and builds their confidence, they're going to get less support and more difficult challenges over time.
[00:35:55] So it's kinda like, "we're going to build you up and like lift you up here and we're going to take the [00:36:00] training wheels off." That's one way to think about it, over time. So again, activities start easy and get more difficult over time. You're giving people training wheels before, slowly taking them off. That's good to keep in mind.
[00:36:10] You don't want to start with like super difficult stuff, but you also don't want to say, "oh, this person's a beginner. They're not going to be able to do that difficult stuff." They likely can. They just need a little bit more support and guidance in the beginning to help them get there.
[00:36:21] Next up, practice and feedback. This one is pretty simple and self-explanatory. Practice and feedback make perfect and feedback was the only thing missing from that saying. But What this means for you as an instructional designer is to provide practice opportunities whenever possible and offer feedback so that people can adjust.
[00:36:38] Again, if people are practicing on their own with no feedback, they might be practicing in the wrong way. Imagine if you're like practicing, like throwing a baseball or something, but you're like throwing in a way that's like damaging your arm. If you don't have a coach there to give you that feedback you're going to be hurting yourself and it's not going to be effective in the long run.
[00:36:54] The same goes with any kind of practice you're giving people in your instructional design efforts. The feedback can be [00:37:00] self-paced. The most common example is like a self-based eLearning experience. If you click on the wrong choice, you're going to get some feedback saying, "Hey, this is wrong for this reason, try again."
[00:37:10] Most likely, and of course, it goes deeper than that, but you don't have to have a person giving feedback, to give feedback, is what I mean.
[00:37:18] All right, cognitive load. Again, this is from cognitive, cognitivism or cognitive information processing. Very, very crucial concept to understand and get comfortable with. So you don't want to overload someone's working memory with too much information at once.
[00:37:32] The idea here is like people's short-term memory or working memory, it's the SAMe thing, can only hold so much information. And if you, if you're trying to have them hold some information in their working memory, they're not able to process as much new information because they're using some of their attention to like, you know, recall and rehearse what's already in their working memory.
[00:37:53] Again, hope that's not too complex, but this has a lot of practical implications for what you'll be doing as [00:38:00] an instructional designer. One very simple example here is like, don't include answer choices on a separate screen from the question. Like, I've seen this before, not often, but it will like ask a question and then you have to go to the next screen to see the answer choices because the question is like too long or something.
[00:38:15] Imagine, yeah, trying to read and process those answer choices when you're still trying to like keep the question in your mind, like that is an example of like cognitive overload. It's not going to be a good experience for people. So, a good practical way to like avoid this is to follow the multimedia principles.
[00:38:33] I'm not going to get too deep into cognitive load here. We could do a whole video on that, but that's the general idea. Don't overload people. Make it easy for people to engage with your content and with your activities.
[00:38:42] So the multimedia principles. They are commonly referred to as Mayer's principles or Mayer's multimedia principles.
[00:38:49] They're particularly suited for multimedia learning. So if people are learning via TV or a computer or an audio podcast or something like that, these principles shine. But they also have [00:39:00] implications for non-multimedia learning, I guess you could say. So they essentially help you design more effective instruction.
[00:39:06] That's a good way to put it. Here are a couple of my favorite examples. So one of them is the personalization principle. People learn best from a conversational, informal tone. So again, this is such a common mistake I see on the job. People use like a very like academic or professional tone in their learning experiences.
[00:39:23] It makes people's eyes glaze over. Scientifically proven to be less effective at actually helping people learn. So if it's more conversational and informal, people learn more effectively from it. And then the coherence principle remove unnecessary or relevant details and information. So this has come up and a lot of these different theories.
[00:39:42] Now you're probably seeing this as like a recurring principle. Again, the only information you should have, the only activities you should have is should all support the learning objectives. If it doesn't get rid of it, even if it's fun and like memorable and like engaging. We don't want people to memorize that like fun, engaging activity if it doesn't support the learning objective.[00:40:00]
[00:40:00] And that, and there is a multimedia principle about it. So there are at least 12 of these principles. Again, I have a full video on them if you want to check it out, but these are a couple of my favorites. And just to give you an idea of like what these kind of principles look like.
[00:40:12] All right. Next up, I think this is the last principle I have on here, is Self-Directed Learning. So again, especially if you're an educator and you're kind of coming into the adult learning space, this is even more heavily emphasized for adults. People want to be in charge of their own learning, so let people make their own choices. Don't take their freedom away from them. That will hurt learning.
[00:40:34] It will make them not learn as effectively, which is counterintuitive to your goals. So don't force people to take courses to go through content in a specific order. Don't force them to like listen to every last second of narration on a slide before they can continue. These are all very common mistakes in our field.
[00:40:51] Companies do it for compliance reasons. They're like, "if we can prove that that person listened to all 20 seconds of narration before pressing continue, then our bases are [00:41:00] covered. You know, they took this compliance course," but it's not actually helping people learn. It's just frustrating people and it's actually making them learn less effectively.
[00:41:06] So forcing people to take a mandatory course yeah, those types of things don't go over well, but what you can do on the flip side, the positive side, is to look for ways to give people more freedom within a learning experience. So, so something I always like to do if the like knowledge or concepts didn't directly build on themselves when I was designing eLearning is to like get people like a table of context contents and let them like, explore different topics or areas at their own pace.
[00:41:30] And then when they come back to that main menu, they'll see like which ones are in progress, which ones are completed, and maybe which ones are locked because like they need to actually complete a couple before seeing those more complex ones. So taking opportunities like that to give people more freedom or to give people the choice, "Hey, we just launched this new learning course about how to do this.
[00:41:48] You know, this could help you serve, serve your customers way better. Like check it out." Those things will help learning versus hurt it.
[00:41:57] Okay, so, thanks for bearing with me through all of [00:42:00] those. Now I'm going to go into like some book recommendations, some course recommendations, some other stuff that you may be interested in if you're new to instructional design.
[00:42:06] But that's all like the technical like theory and models and all of that. Let me know if you have any questions about that stuff. Odds are, I probably have a video on it. You could, you could even, if you want to learn more about one of those things, you could just like type it into YouTube and add Devin Peck after it, and you're probably going to see a video about it.
[00:42:21] Book recommendations. "Design for How People Learn." I think this is the first book that a lot of people read when they're new to instructional design because it is so accessible. So check it out. It's the first ID book I read. It probably covers, yeah, it's like very basic, but it is very accessible, so it's a good read.
[00:42:38] "How People Learn," by Nick Shackleton-Jones is maybe the opposite. It's like not very basic, but it is very like profound and it will definitely shift your perspective on how people learn. So one of my favorite ID reads and the second edition like just came out of this one. So check that out.
[00:42:54] "Map It" by Cathy Moore. That's probably the number one ID book I read just because it gives a very like accessible [00:43:00] approach to performance improvement and designing good practice activities and like scenario based learning. Again, maybe not the first ID book you read, but should be one of the first few ID books you read, I'd say.
[00:43:11] Michael Allen's "Guide to eLearning." Michael Allen has been, and his team and his company have been doing eLearning for a long time and they've kind of laid a lot of like foundations for some of this, some of this stuff. So that's a great read. If you are looking at specializing in eLearning, for sure.
[00:43:25] And then I'm going to be, I'm working on a book for new instructional designers. I just put together like a beta reading group, but I'm going to dive into some principles, maybe how to become an ID. I'm still working out the fine details of what will be covered, but if you want to follow along with that I'll add a link in the description to join the mailing list. But that will be coming sometime this year, I would say.
[00:43:46] Other skills to learn. So writing and communication skills will take you a very far way. They're kind of necessary for everything we covered in this video. You're going to need to be communicating with people in the intended audience, with the subject matter experts, with your team, and you're going to need to be [00:44:00] like writing content for the actual, for the actual training solution.
[00:44:04] So, super important. eLearning development skills are very in-demand in the industry right now. I would say the most in-demand instructional designers excel at this upfront stuff. They have a really good big picture of the instructional design process, but they're really good at working with subject matter experts and like writing the actual content, like the storyboards and scripts, and they can then take this step further and actually develop the project into its final form, with the eLearning development skillset.
[00:44:30] If you can do the design and the development, you are in very high demand. That's what let me build a very successful business back in 2017, and it seems that these people are even more in demand. So, you don't have to be super skilled in both, but if you are, you are going to have a very good time finding opportunities in this space.
[00:44:47] Visual design maybe goes hand in hand with eLearning development, but again, teams want the materials to look polished and professional. So if you have a hard time creating something that looks professional, it is going to, it's not [00:45:00] going to be good, right? Because people, it hurts credibility if something doesn't look polished and professional.
[00:45:04] So that's a skillset that it seemed very intimidating to me when I, when I got started in this space. But there are resources out there. I have a whole playlist on the channel to help with that. It's definitely not impossible. And that's coming from someone who like was starting at square zero with that stuff.
[00:45:19] And then LMS management. You don't need very advanced skills with this. But odds are if you're doing eLearning, you're going to need to actually upload those projects to a learning management system and maybe do some light work in there. I dive way deeper into this, into my full guide of how to become an instructional designer.
[00:45:33] It kind of overlaps nicely with this one, so I will link that in the description as well. If you haven't already seen my full guide to becoming an Instructional designer here on YouTube.
[00:45:41] All right. Courses. Some people want to do courses. They don't want to piece things together from YouTube. They want to, yeah, they want to learn from something a bit more formal.
[00:45:50] I will say, just a disclaimer, like formal education is definitely not required. If you have a bachelor's degree, that is all you need. If you want to work in the corporate side of instructional [00:46:00] design, if you want to work in government or higher education, a master's degree would probably be a good idea. But it's definitely not necessary in the corporate space.
[00:46:08] You definitely don't need like certificates. Your portfolio is going to be what, what takes you the furthest. But I will include some links in the description if you want to explore some like courses and certificate programs. If you decide that is right for you, I have some resources to guide you through like dozens of them.
[00:46:24] And then I will say I am building out the ID Project Lab, which is where you're going to apply all of these different like theories and models and analysis that we just talked about, but to real world projects that we've kind of simulated for you. So it's going to be really cool, it's going to be very practice oriented and it, you're going to end up with some projects you can use for your portfolio and some tools that you can actually use to make an impact on the job.
[00:46:45] So that presale is starting next week. So if you're on the mailing list In just a few days, we're starting that presale and then we're going to close it down until later in the year when it's actually all built out and, and ready for the general public. Alright, and that's all I have for you. So if [00:47:00] you enjoyed. please subscribe because I do have plenty more theory content coming and especially if you are interested in this type of content.
[00:47:07] But yeah, there's more content to come. Thank you for making it to the end, and I will see you in the next one.