Is Rapid Instructional Design Better Than Traditional Instructional Design?

 

by Oni T. Washington 

While developing this tutorial on copyright law for one of my grad school classes. I've realized that there are several milestones most instructional designers will reach as a result of their strategic planning. They are: 

• 1) IDENTIFYING THE TARGET AUDIENCE
• 2) DEVELOPING A STORYBOARD
• 3) BUILD AN E-LEARNING MODULE
• 4) WRITE MEASUREABLE AND EFFECTIVE ASSESSMENTS

Identifying the target audience 

Developing a tutorial of this nature allows for easy identification of the target audience. Since the main focus of the tutorial is copyright compliance regarding instructional designs, our audience is mainly instructional designers. ISD practitioners who are just getting into the field, or do not remember how to apply copyright law to their daily norms, as well as educators, and trainers who find the information relevant.

As a marketing teacher, I naturally follow traditional steps of finding a target market. Such as:

1) Define the purpose of the message

2) Analyze demographic information such as age, and interests

3) Reseach psychographics including attitudes, and behaviors

4) Conduct surveys and interviews from members of your target audience

5) Create target market avatars/personas - representations of the types of individuals that are a part of your target audience.

6) Refine & Validate: Continuously refine your understanding of the target audience based on feedback from customers, stakeholders, and owners.

According to Piskurich 2018, also analyze audience for characteristics such as self-direction, good listening skills, and ambition. This is especially true in a synchronous delivery.

Developing a storyboard

Developing a storyboard was challenging for me, and I think it's just because I'm a person who likes to freestyle or create things on the fly. Instead of a storyboard, I would just sit in front of the blank slides and let the story come to me, scene by scene. It's harder for me to preplan, but I am working on it. 

While attempting to improve my knowledge and skill level in this realm, my research unearthed some best practices when storyboarding for instructional design: 

1) Create a Logical Flow: structure the storyboard in a logical sequence that guides learners through the content smoothly from beginning to end.

2) Chunk Information: Break down content into manageable chunks to facilitate learning and comprehension.

3) Visualize Content:

Use Visual Elements: visual elements such as images, diagrams, charts, and multimedia to enhance engagement and understanding.

Storyboard Layout: Design a clear and visually appealing layout for each screen or slide, considering the placement of text, images, and interactive elements.

4) Design Interactivity:

Plan Interactions: Identify opportunities for learner interaction, such as quizzes, exercises, simulations, and branching scenarios, to promote active learning.

5) Specify Navigation: Define how learners will navigate through the course or module, including menus, buttons, links, and progress indicators.

Building an e-learning module:

Before building my first module, I had to first determine which LMS or authoring system would be right for me, determine the pricing for each program. It also helped to research each one and decide which one to start with. I say "start with" because as you go on and explore other programs, you will like creating courses in more than just one program. Currently, I like Canvas, and Articulate360. However, articulate is a bit pricey. I am still pondering paying for it, since I still think about its amazingly beautiful interface, after only using it to author one course. The process I've found most helpful during the journey to learn to build e-learning modules is to just jump right in and do it. The interface on the authoring tools I've used has made course creation pretty straightforward and easy. Just start clicking around and have fun with it. You'll eventually get the hang of it.

Writing measurable and effective assessments

During this process of tutorial creation, I've found many great resources to create assessments easier and quicker. Tools like ICEV which we use at my school in the Career and Technical department. Tools such as Quizziz, Quizlet, and Google Forms also offer great options for question types and are relatively easy to create and use subsequent score data.

In general, I've found the better aligned my assessment questions are to my original learning objectives, the easier it is to measure progress. So, I make sure each question is addressing at least one objective. 

I also enjoy using Bloom's Taxonomy to create my learning objectives and ensure the use of measurable verbs. Many of my previous classes have required the use of Bloom's to create the objectives. Often having to use more than one of the six levels, which include: Remembering, Understanding, Applying, Analyzing, and Evaluating. Every single learning objective contained in my tutorial begins with a verb from Bloom's and is aligned to the assessment questions included in the tutorial. I also am utilizing different question types to assess various cognitive abilities. 

Rapid Instructional Design Model

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Considering the steps within a traditional design framework, is rapid ISD even better? After all, most of us are busy professionals with families, jobs, and hobbies. We do not have time to spend hours on our course designs. I did a deep dive into the concept of rapid instructional design to determine if it was something I wanted to begin using.

Here's what I found:

Using the Rapid Instructional Design framework, there is an emphasis placed on rapid prototyping. During practical application, the instructional solution is being built at the same time learner needs and objectives are being determined. Rather than before the prototype is built. The model is not linear in its approach but does begin with analysis as its first step. However, the "steps" occur in an overlapping fashion. Rather than each process existing on its own, there could be several processes taking places simultaneously. With this approach feedback is given early and often. So, the implication is that updates and improvements can happen in real time, rather than after the course is administered.

When applying RID to your instructional designs, the prototype creation stage occurs right in the beginning of the process, rather than at the end. This particular framework is also known as "Rapid eLearning."

From a perspective of someone who likes to get straight to it, there is much to love about the RID model. Results oriented people want results quicker and with less effort. In general, this is the society we are currently living in. Everyone wants what they want, but they want it as quickly and easily as possible. For that reason, I do like the model. However, I do like the clear and organized way a linear model would be applied as opposed to a non-linear model. I will probably use the rapid model to finish designing the tutorial I am currently working on. From there I'll determine which model to keep using.

Have you ever employed "rapid prototyping" into your designs? Do you feel one is superior to the other?

References

Benscoter, B., King, M., Rothwell, W. (2015). Mastering the Instructional Design Process: A Systematic Approach. As retrieved by: http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/capella/detail.action?docID=4205818.

Dirksen, J. (2016). Design for How People Learn (2nd Edition). Pearson Learning Solutions. https://capella.vitalsource.com/books/9781323472262

Piskurich, G. M. (2015). Rapid Instructional Design: Learning ID Fast and Right, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. ProQuest EBook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest. com/lib/capella/detail.action?docID=1895845.