Instructional Designers Decisions and Priorities: A Survey of Design Practice

Abstract

For a number of years there has been a continuing debate on the degree to which instructional design models are used in practice. A study was conducted to determine if and how practicing course developers include instructional design activities in their projects. A survey was distributed to 73 practicing course developers who were asked to indicate how often they used eleven instructional design activities in their design projects and, as appropriate, to indicate why an activity was excluded from some projects. Survey findings indicate that in practice design activities occur on an irregular basis, with some activities occurring most of the time and others more infrequently. Almost no one used all “model design activities in all of their projects. Reasons given for omitting a design activity varied, but several factors were prominent. In short, practitioners regularly use some instructional design activities in their projects but do not complete any number of other design activities in doing so. The utility and adaptability of ID models to meet practitioner needs is discussed in light of survey results. Summary In general, the results of this study confirm that practicing instructional designers do not complete all ID activities for all projects. Indeed, a designer may omit any number of ID activities from a project for any number of reasons. These findings suggest that no single ID model with a pre–set list of activities can accommodate all design and development projects. Rather, a more appropriate and practical approach would select only those activities that are matched to the situational requirements and constraints surrounding a given project. The theory of instructional design and development will benefit from research which contributes to an understanding of situated ID practice.

A review and new framework for instructional design practice variation research

“…Further corroborative support for the varying ways in which ID can be approached and executed is demonstrated by a number of classic empirical studies of variation in ID practice (Kirschner, van Merriënboer, Sloep, & Carr, 2002;Rowland, 1992; e.g. Tessmer & Wedman, 1992;Visscher-Voerman & Gustafson, 2004;Wedman & Tessmer, 1993).…”

“…Respectively, Tessmer and Wedman (1992), Wedman and Tessmer (1993), and Holcomb et al (1996) found it to be the least and second least frequently performed planning and analysis activity. While Winer, Vasquez-Abad, and Tessmer (1994) rank it near the middle, planning and analysis tied for the fifth least performed activity out of eleven total activities.…”

“…For instance, needs assessments are conducted infrequently. An initial set of findings from Tessmer and Wedman (1992) and Wedman and Tessmer (1993) found that only 29% of designers reported that they always conducted needs assessments (p.48).…”

“…In regard to the use of various types of evaluation in the field, only Wedman and Tessmer (1993) and Winer, Vasquez-Abad, and…”

“…This task, drafting objectives, is the most commonly activity performed by instructional designers (Mann, 1996;Tessmer & Wedman, 1992;Wedman & Tessmer, 1993;Winer, Vasquez-Abad, & Tessmer, 1994). In each of these studies, this activity was reportedly always performed by the largest percentage of respondents, 66%, 82%, and 76% respectively.…”