Instructional Design

Instructional Design

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Instructional Design

Instructional design is a systematic process designed in order to develop education and training programs in a consistent manner. These instructions are used to enhance the possibility of students to learn fast and understand class contents deeply as well as making them acquire knowledge and skills efficiently. In designing the instructional materials, the designer should find out the interests of the target group, their skills and experience, their attitudes and their main objectives. He or she should also familiarize with the learning concepts so that they can refer back incase of intricate design problems.

There are four distinct characteristics, which help learners in their studies. They include, physiological, cognitive, social and affective. The characteristics of the intended learner groups are important at the time of planning the assessment approaches and training. They include, cognitive skills and experiences of the learner, age, their interaction with the learning environment, motivation of the learner, previous learners’ experience, learning techniques and preferences and cultural backgrounds and needs of the learner.

The main goal of this manual is to provide the guidelines for the instructional design classes and to help make typical classroom assignments easier and effective. It will contain five strategies, which instructional designers use in their design work. It is the duty of the instructional designer to familiarize with those strategies, know their advantages, and discover which strategy is appropriate for their work. There are five evaluated instructional strategies recommended for use and the various theoretical models supporting them. They are,

1. Planning
2. Chunking
3. Explaining Example
4. Signaling
5. Advance organizers

The training manual also helps designers to select the strategy that they think would be of use to them. The use of the training manual makes it easier for them to choose the strategy and evaluate it. The evaluation process enables them to organize their designs in order to provide the appropriate information required to make students` learning effective. The strategies also contain instructional analysis, which identifies what a learner must remember and what he or she must do to perform particular tasks. In addition, the designer gets to know the performance objectives, which describes the condition and behavior of the learner. Each of these strategies is analyzed and assessed on target achievement under the following the listed bases:

• What it is (description of the strategy)
• When to select and use (conditions of use)
• Reasons for its selection (research on the effectiveness of the strategy)
• How it is best utilized
• How the strategy is designed and
• Related research and references

Chapter One:  Planning

The planning process involves the organization of required activities to achieve a desired goal. Planning in instructional design is helpful as it aids in identifying students goals and objectives. Students require open and clear methods to assist in mastering crucial class basics such as compositions, sentences and paragraphs. Learners need to train and acquire essential skills for creating and recording information to use in writing essays.

Objectives of Planning

Instructional designers will be able to

• Describe the planning concept
• Identify the appropriate planning time
• Explain the reasons for the use of the planning process
• Describe how to use the process
• Be aware of where it should be applied

Chapter Two: Chunking

Chunking is a strategy used by designers to break down theories into small absorbable pieces, which can easily be accumulated by the brain. The arrangement of material is essential in instructional designing. If these materials are not organized and arranged in a systematic manner, then it will be difficult for learners to understand the concepts. Sometimes study materials may contain too much information, which is unnecessary. However, chunking makes this easier as it filters the unnecessary material and arranges it from complex to simple. In situations where a book has lots of unrelated content, it is advisable to find ways to change that information into meaningful chunks.

Objectives of Chunking

With the use of the chunking process, instructional designers will be able to:

• Explain the chunking concept
• Know when to select the process
• Explains the reasons for choosing the process
• recognize how to use chunking and
• Recognize where is should be applied

Chapter Three: Explaining Example

Students often find it difficult to understand complex concepts. The instruction manual should make learning less difficult and at the same time make students understand those complex class concepts. Tutors can help students’ perform well by teaching using real life examples. Examples make class assignments and assessments easier for students to evaluate

Objectives of Explaining Example strategy

The use of this strategy enables instructional designers to:

• Describe the explaining example concept
• Know when to select it
• Give details why they prefer to use this concept
• Identify how to use explaining example
• Identify where it should be used and
• Design instructional material using explaining example

Chapter Four: Signaling

Signaling is a strategy used to draw emphasis on the main ideas and information in a book and make it easy for the reader to locate it. When main points are highlighted, readers find it effortless to absorb the contents and retain it for a long period. Signaling helps students to know the important information thus filtering the unnecessary content. In the situation of long contents, instructional designers can make subheading and summaries to indicate the places where the necessary information can be found.

Objectives of Signaling

This strategy enables instructional designers to:

• Identify signaling
• Define the signaling conditions of use
• Show the effectiveness of the signaling strategy and
• How best it can be utilized

Chapter Five: Advance organizers

This strategy is important as it helps students to construct significant understanding of the topic of study. It can be a preamble to a new topic with the aim of giving students an overview of what they will be studying. It is also helpful in making learners orient to the topic so that they can know where any particular bit of information fits in and know how it brings a connection of what they already know. Advance organizers can be study guides, handouts or an anecdote.

Objectives of Advance Organizers

Advance organizers strategy enables instructional designers to:

• Describe advance organizers
• Recognize the effectiveness of this strategy
• Know how best it can be utilized and
• Identify advance organizers use conditions