The Teacher and Instructional Design

As a  teacher, we see the classroom as a series of lessons that we have worked to create in order to transfer information to our students.  The lesson is designed with information via lecture, activities, and assessments to make sure that our goals are being met.  These actions, combined, are what we can call instructional design. 

Instructional design is our ability to plan out what we want students to learn and how we want it to be learned.  Within the goals of instructional design it requires that the user do a lot of evaluation.  It is important that goals are developed, the need of the learner is evaluated, strategies are outlined for how those learners will be reached, and after the teaching has taken place evaluate if the goals were met through assessment.

Instructional design lends itself to the systematic approach.  When taking a system based approach to designing instruction, it helps the designer to be more efficient and effective with the instruction that will be provided to the student.  This means that the designer, many times the teacher, need to take part in a series of steps.  The teacher will identifying the objectives and goals before writing the lesson, develop the information that is to be presented, create activities to enhance learning, decide what materials will be used, then present the information, and finally assess or evaluate what students learned or how the instruction went for potential future revision.

It is important that when taking part in instructional design that the student is the focus, the instruction is designed to be goal or objective based, the real-world has been taken into consideration, and that outcomes can be measured through some for of assessment.  Instructional design has some basic steps that must happen: analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. Start by analyzing your class for the type of learner, what do you want to accomplish, and any roadblocks that could come about.  Next design how the information will be presented when it comes to content, presentation, activities, and assessments.  The development phase is where the materials and activities themselves are decided upon and prepared for usage.  Implementation of the instruction is the execution of what was prepared during development.  Once implementation is complete then evaluation is necessary to discover if students have met the objectives and goals that were established.

Instructional design really has the student at the center of its basis.  It is important that teachers engaging in instructional design start by setting goals and objectives for the students before just jumping into a lesson.  The end result is always student performance, so it is important to have a detailed plan for how to help students reach the results we want.