Interrelationships of Instructional Design Principals

We’re excited to welcome another guest contributor to the community. David Goodrich is an Instructional Designer from Spring Arbor University. He’s a musician, writer, blogger, and all-around cool guy.  You’d like him.  He’s also working on his Master’s in Instructional Design from Capella University.  Find out more in the Contributors page.  Welcome, David.

To approach instructional design in a systematic fashion like that of an assembly line where each key principal is viewed in isolation to the other and in the end a final product is made that is deemed good or bad is becoming a faulty framework for imagining the essence of the instructional design process. Irlbeck proposes that “a modern interpretive dance would be a better representation, as all the elements needing to be considered are interwoven and impact other parts of the system, yet are bounded by an outside framework or set of parameters” (2006).  There is a need to see instructional design as an evolving, complex, three-dimensional, organic, and dynamic system that has key principals which “interact spontaneously, even randomly, and are shaped by social processes of a natural alignment of the concepts for learning and dynamic group behavior” (2006).

For instance, if the needs assessment is neglected during the process then imagine how this would effect the other key elements of the design. How would it help to know all about the learners, instructors, learning environments, curriculum, resources, and greater organization goals if there was a lack in pointing out the clear needs of the instructional design and if they can even be met by an instructional intervention? The ramifications of neglecting one or multiple key principals of the instructional design process would dramatically impact the effectiveness of the instructional intervention and would suffer the consequences of poor design.

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Irlbeck, S., Kays, E., Jones, D., & Sims, R. (2006) The phoenix rising: Emergent models of instructional design. Distance Education, 27(2), 171–185.