Becoming a model instructional designer

Possibly Benjamin Franklin or maybe Winston Churchill said that "If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail". This is the kind of apocryphal quote the internet is full of, but it does seem to make sense. Especially when applied to the areas of teaching and instructional design. When I initially did my training as a TEFL teacher, we learnt all about lesson plans and how to set out objectives and appropriate evaluations. Ever since then, I have however very rarely written formal lesson plans and instead prefer to work to a rough guideline and my experience of what has worked in the past. Leaving this room for flexibility also allows me to react spontaneously to my students, for example, going into more depth on something that is of particular interest or slowing the pace down if a concept needs more explanation.

Somewhere along the way I started adding online content to my teaching and when the Corona pandemic started online was the only teaching option I had. I became familiar with the ADDIE model which I used to help create elearning material.

The ADDIE Instructional Design Model (Own illustration)

Of course, I was aware that there were other models for instructional design but I hadn't really examined any of them in detail until this course, when I was introduced to the ASSURE model.

The ASSURE Instructional Design Model (Own illustration)

My experience has shown that a good model to base your learning design on is vital. When a student is learning on their own, I am not there to answer their questions or react spontaneously if they have trouble understanding something. Elearning platforms aren’t intelligent enough (yet) to replace human teachers but if I can design my elearning as well as possible, I can make sure that potential problems are dealt with in advance and the students have a clear idea of what it is they are expected to do.

I especially like the ASSURE model because it forces me to focus on the activities that the learners should be doing. It emphasises that learning is not just a one-way process where I pour knowledge into an empty jug. Instead learners need activities to test out their new knowledge, to interact with their classmates and to be sure that they have really understood. This new perspective is one of the big wins for me from the course and something I will be trying to including in all of my future instructional design.