Instructional Design

 The Dick and Carey Systems Approach Model
(The model was originally published in 1978 by Walter Dick and Lou Carey in their book entitled The Systematic Design of Instruction)

I am currently working as an instructional designer. I find design a fascinating area to work in. For me it is the borderland between i) materials and technology, ii) use and iii) meaning/representation. I have been working in this job for 5 months now and I am starting to feel more confident regarding processes for creating instructional media and the thinking that goes behind it. My area is high-end medical technologies.

I would like to record here some of my early ideas regarding instructional design.

Strategy: “employing whatever resources are available to achieve the best outcome in situations that are both dynamic and contested” (Freedman)

Dick and Carey made a significant contribution to the instructional design field by championing a systems view of instruction, in contrast to defining instruction as the sum of isolated parts. The model addresses instruction as an entire system, focusing on the interrelationship between context, content, learning and instruction. According to Dick and Carey, "Components such as the instructor, learners, materials, instructional activities, delivery system, and learning and performance environments interact with each other and work together to bring about the desired student learning outcomes". The components of the Systems Approach Model, also known as the Dick and Carey Model, are as follows:

• Identify Instructional Goal(s): A goal statement describes a skill, knowledge or attitude (SKA) that a learner will be expected to acquire
• Conduct Instructional Analysis: Identify what a learner must recall and identify what learner must be able to do to perform particular task
• Analyze Learners and Contexts: Identify general characteristics of the target audience, including prior skills, prior experience, and basic demographics; identify characteristics directly related to the skill to be taught; and perform analysis of the performance and learning settings.
• Write Performance Objectives: Objectives consists of a description of the behavior, the condition and criteria. The component of an objective that describes the criteria will be used to judge the learner's performance.
• Develop Assessment Instruments: Purpose of entry behavior testing, purpose of pretesting, purpose of post-testing, purpose of practive items/practive problems
• Develop Instructional Strategy: Pre-instructional activities, content presentation, Learner participation, assessment
• Develop and Select Instructional Materials
• Design and Conduct Formative Evaluation of Instruction: Designers try to identify areas of the instructional materials that need improvement.
• Revise Instruction: To identify poor test items and to identify poor instruction
• Design and Conduct Summative Evaluation

With this model, components are executed iteratively and in parallel, rather than linearly.