Systematic Instructional Design

Our course text, Instructional Design (Rothwell & Kazanas, 2003), talks about "defining efficiency and effectiveness" (Defining efficiency). Normally these would be talked about in a mechanical business but we go on to learn that they also apply to education. In the field of instructional design, we want our courses to be as efficient and effective as possible; that is, we want to make certain that we are teaching precisely what we intended to teach (both explicitly and through our actions in the classroom), and that we are teaching this is the most effective way in terms of time and resources. As Instructional Design puts it, we want to be both "doing things right" and "doing the right things" (Defining efficiency, para 1-2). In this paper I will talk about how this systemic or business-model approach to instructional design is useful and how I plan on using it in the classroom when I begin my educational career.

Although there are times for spontaneity in instruction, for those most part instructional materials and methods should be thought about, discussed, and decided upon ahead of time. At the spur of the moment, there is not much time to think about what the effects, efficiency, or necessity of any given instruction would be. For this reason, teachers plan out their lessons, discuss with other teachers, get approval from their departments etc. In English departments of universities, where I plan to work at some point in the future, this is no different. While there are general policies about what should be covered in terms of preparing students to write at the college level, individual lessons are often left up to teachers. For example, teachers may be told that controversial subjects or movie-book comparisons may be used to motivate students to write on a topic, but the individual topic choices decided upon by each teacher. They may be told to use peer review, but the actual process may be done at the teacher's discretion. These are some of the types of choices I will have to make when designing my instruction.

Besides consideration of what needs to be taught, I will also need to think about the needs and motivations of the learners in my class. Ruth Small (2000) talks about the ARCS model: attention, relevance, confidence and, satisfaction. I want my lesson to be a topic that gets the students' attention (no basic boring lecture), something relevant to their lives (no generic model used time and time again), something which will increase their confidence in the subject area (nothing too broad), and something which makes them feel satisfied about their learning once the lesson is over (nothing too minute).

In summary, systematic instructional design should be used for all courses and teachers should consider many factors about the individual classroom environment and needs of the learners. While we should think about instruction in terms of input and output (Rothwell & Kazanas, 2003) as we would any mechanical environment, we also need to keep in mind that a classroom is never a fixed environment like an assembly line. Reevaluation and changing of strategies may be appropriate if what has been planned is not working. Constant modification and amelioration of teaching techniques and lessons, in consideration of the way students learn most effectively, are what make a class or a teacher great. This is what makes our profession both challenging and rewarding.

References
Rothwell, W. & Kazanas, H. C. (2002). Instructional Design. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Small, R. (2000). Motivation in instructional design. Teacher Librarian, 27(5), 29-31.