The Footprints of Instructional Design in your Classroom

The question that a professor who teaches in a university, a lecturer who addresses college audience, a teacher who engages young school-going learners, and a trainer who conducts sessions for a corporate audience; all ask of themselves is – whether they should worry about instructional design? Do their jobs truly relate to instructional design or is instructional design something that only eLearning professionals should worry about?

I would prefer that the readers themselves be judge of the connection between their jobs and instructional design. In my heart I have a belief – a belief that I shall share with you at the end of this article. At the onset, however, I do not wish to burden you with my opinion. Instead I would like to present to you the ingredients of instructional design and assist you in recognizing them in classroom teaching.

I think it’s clear that the intended audience for this article is not the eLearning instructional designer, but the trainer, the teacher, the reader, the lecturer, the professor, who continues to wonder about this mysterious discipline called instructional design, that at one instance seems familiar and at another becomes a stranger!

Now that the goal for this article is established, let me begin with the simplest possible definition of instructional design, which is “to impart learning effectively.” This definition may seem very generic yet it is the correct definition of instructional design! Anything that enables the learner to learn what was promised through a course or a training session is part of instructional design.

Let us see how.

What Instructional Design Comprises?
If we review the physical components of instructional design, we will discover that the following two dominate:

• Theories of psychology as applied to learning &
• Models for designing instructional content

Thus instructional design is about understanding how learning takes place, and using certain time-tested models to develop instructional content that ensures that learning takes place.

The theories about how learning takes place explain the mechanisms of information absorption, information processing in the mind, and information retention. These theories also talk about the different types of learning and the levels at which learning takes place.

The models, on the other hand, use these theories to create a framework, upon which courses, lessons, trainings, and other learning materials and well as experiences can be built. These models provide us the framework upon which the learning providers can build successful learning experiences.

As a provider of learning, do you think these would help?

Connecting instructional design with classroom learning experiences:
For the purpose of this article, let us call all learning experiences that put the learner and the instructor together, a classroom learning experience. The classroom learning experience is characterized by the presence of a learning provider (teacher, lecturer, professor, trainer) and the physical presence of the audience. If you are one of instructors enumerated above, you know what I am talking about.

There are many arguments in favor of classroom learning, but most of these arguments favor the learner!
“It should be so, shouldn’t it?”
“The learner is important! There is so much of hullabaloo about learner-centric learning – the learner is the most important factor in the entire learning process.”

Well, I agree with you completely. You are so right when you say that the learner is of primary importance – and for this reason, it is important for you to understand the learner’s mind! What I meant by saying that most of the arguments favor classroom learning, was merely this – Though the learners can query and expect answers to their queries in real time, in classroom learning experiences, the instructor is often in a tight position! Learners are different – their needs, their attitudes towards learning, and even their respective motivations for learning are different. The instructor often walks the tightrope of having to cover the content in the given time, comprehending the queries, and answering the queries to the appropriate details! All this isn’t easy.

Instructional design works all the time. It begins working even before you enter a classroom. It works through the training material that was created to be used in class, the session/lesson plans, the last minute planning, the initial attention garnering…it works from the beginning of the classroom training to its end.

Let us see some instances of instructional design being used in classroom trainings.

The Instructor’s Guide:

As a classroom trainer, have you ever used an instructor’s guide (a guide that is used by the instructor to manage and conduct the session)? The instructor’s guide is created through copious use of instructional design.

Think about it. The instructor’s guide tells us about what kind of activities should be included in each session, what sort of examples should be given to explain different concepts, what other teaching aids should be used when during the training, how much time should be spent on each concept, and so on. How was this feat accomplished? What was it that made the creator of the instructor guide so confident about what would work in a classroom situation and what won’t? The answer is – Instructional Design!

Using the concepts of instructional design the instructional design outlined each example, activity, and exercise in the instructor’s guide.

The Student’s Manual:

The students too are given material in classroom trainings. The material includes content as well as the exercises and the assignments that the learner should complete.

Try to imagine the development of this manual. Someone somewhere had thought of the examples, about the language of the content, and the usefulness of the exercises in view of the learner’s requirements. How was this accomplished? What was the framework that guided the creation of this student’s manual or material? The answer is – instructional design!

The Implementation of the Training:

How is the training implemented? Now reflect upon a classroom session that you’ve conducted in the past. Let us rewind the clock to reflect the your entrance into your classroom.

You spent some time going through the instructor’s manual (if you are a professor, lecturer, or teacher,) thinking about the impending implementation of the lesson. Then you thought of your audience, you modify certain examples, which you felt would not be very effective for your audience. Immediately upon entering the class your body language changed. You also became more attentive – not just to the queries from the learners, but also to their body language. You continuously received signals and reacted accordingly. You walked up to the student who tried to stifle a yawn and spoke to him directly – yanking his mind back into the classroom. You shot a simple question to the couple that sat in the last row, to bring their attention back to the lesson!

What was all this?
You were designing instruction on the fly. You were extemporizing instructional design! The activities that you build to make your classes more effective and interesting; the questions that you ask to reinforce learning; the amount of work that you put into teaching one topic as compared to what you spend in teaching another; all these are examples of instructional design at work.

The Assessments:

Have you ever given a thought to the logic that goes into grading? Why should certain questions carry more marks than others? Why should the learner’s answer to a simpler question be graded for more marks than the answer for a more complex question? The answers to these questions lie not in intuition but in instructional design. It is the level of the main competencies of a course that determine the grading. You always felt that it was so but the concepts of instructional design give you reasons that cannot be disagreed with.

These were some examples of how instructional design is used in classrooms. Simply speaking, you’ve been designing instruction all along – though you were probably not very comfortable doing it. It is possible that each new implementation of classroom training makes you feel shaky at its onset. It is also possible that you don’t feel comfortable because you are worried about the impression you would make in the session; or that the learners will not learn effectively, or even that they would be bored and might doze off! Knowledge of instructional design concepts takes away this uncertainty – it leaves you confident that your classes will make an impact that the audience will never forget! It gives you the assurance that the learners will go home with the learning secured tight in their minds – and that they will await your next class eagerly!

Instructional design has its roots in classroom learning – it was only upon the advent of computers that it was adapted to eLearning. Instructional design is about “learning” – it isn’t about eLearning, blended learning, classroom learning, web-based learning – or any other specific type of learning. Instructional design makes all learning effective! If you are engaged in training or any other kind of classroom teaching, you are in a much better position to apply and perfect the application of instructional design; for unlike the eLearning instructional designer you implement the complete cycle of learning. Do you know what I mean? Think it over and you will discover! In instructional design – we call this approach to learning the constructivist approach!

If you’ve got the point…review your classes – find how you can ensure that learning is assimilated, retained, and applied more effectively by your learners! Use the concepts of instructional design to make each class that you conduct, a masterpiece!

Author: Shafali R. Anand