Reflection 4: Instructional Courseware Design (ICD)

In this week entry, I am going to talk about my reflection on the topic Instructional Courseware Design (ICD). ICD is a process of designing and developing instructional courses or materials that bring greater appeals, efficiency and effectiveness for learners to acquire skills and knowledge. ICD and Instructional Design (ISD) are interrelated and are comprised of the mixture between behaviourist (deals mainly on learners’ behavior towards the given stimulus) and constructivist learning theory (learners build their knowledge on specific subjects based upon their prior knowledge).

Therefore, in order to design an instructional experience, it is necessary for designers (teachers/educators) to figure out the needs of the learners, define the learning objectives and create some intervention for learners to achieve the objectives. From what I’ve learnt, I understand that in order to know learners’ need, needs analysis through syllabus, survey or even observation need to be done before we could outline the learning objectives.

INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN (ISD) & INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN IN CALL

PLATO

ISD involves creation of syllabus, planning of lessons, material selection and adaptation as well as planning of implementation and intervention to instruct learners in designated lessons. ISD requires learners’ needs and learning outcomes to ensure unified objectives could be achieved at the end of the lesson. From the lesson, I’ve learnt that in CALL, ISD is used to help in creating computer courseware for learning. However, it is also important to remember that the courseware merely accts to support the lessons, not complete replacement of teachers or lessons in class. 

Historically, PLATO (1960- 2006) is the first computer assisted instruction system that programmed logic for automated teaching operations back in the early years. Although it is very expensive, it can be programmed to teach any course; ranging from scientific to linguistic related subjects.

PLATO being used by students

ADDIE MODEL

From what I’ve learnt, I’ve understand that course design is a cyclical process; the most well-known model is referred to by its acronym: ADDIE, A (Analysis, where we need to identify learners’ needs and learning outcome) D (Design, where we need to outline instructions for activities and assessments in the courseware based on learners’ needs and learning outcomes) D (Development, where we start creating and assembling the content based on the outline in designing phase) I (Implementation, procedure for learners and facilitators to use the courseware is developed) E (Evaluation, where we evaluate the impact of courseware through formative and summative evaluation).

Overall, ADDIE is a framework for the developmental of instructional coursework. It provides a research driven and systematic approach for the designers to design the courseware for respective learners.

Summary of ADDIE 

All in all, ICD revolves around ISD which depends heavily on the learners' needs and learning outcome. Therefore, in order to design a courseware properly, it is suggested that we use ADDIE model to framework our work from the beginning until the end. As informative as this lesson was, I wish that we could have a practical hands-on lesson on how to implement the model to design our own courseware. That way, I think, I'd be able to not only understand more about this topic, but also know how to use it in my daily endeavor.  

Until next time. Ta!