Strategies for
instructional design generally involve a choice of techniques, media and
organization grounded in a theory of instruction. Many strategies
familiar to you might be those grounded in a theory called Behaviorism,
but current instructional design practice generally looks to the
theories such as Constructivism as a basis for design. It places the
emphasis on active learning by the student and calls for authentic and
performance-based assessment.
Constructivism
starts with a very basic idea. We construct our own knowledge in an
active and engaged manner throughout our lives and each person has a
personal role in the process of their own learning in a social context.
With this emphasis on the individual learner in society Constructivism
recognizes that everyone has a different approach to the world. It
encourages us as designers to use a number of different perspectives and
techniques to present knowledge and to embrace problems and complexity.
It is also concerned with questions such as the transferability of
knowledge and the need to put learning in a context where students take
an active role in their own education. For you as a designer it means
re-evaluating current strategies for instruction, such as how you
present information, place it in context and take into account what the
learners see from their multiple perspectives. For more information on
the theories that make up Constructivism and that will support your
strategies you can look at our theories page.
Strategies
themselves can be fairly diverse. In many discussions on instructional
design strategies are centered on questions of technology or media use,
but keep in mind that the definition you use for this can be very broad.
Some strategies
can be relatively conventional and self-limiting. For example, you might
have determined that for a course in the sciences, such as physics, a
specific lesson on the principles of Newton’s Laws require a digital
video or an interactive graphical display to make them more
understandable. You might not want to do much more than that and
maintain a lecture format for most of your instruction. Conversely, you
might want to do a more dramatic change, taking Newton’s Laws and
situating them in an actual setting where students have to work on a
group project that puts the scientific principles into a realistic
setting, such as simulating how the laws are applied by scientists and
engineers in the real world and situating the learning in an authentic
context. You could, for example, create a situation where students have
to explore how the use of seatbelts for automobile safety is of itself
an application of Newton’s conception of inertia using a simulation of
automobile design. In the humanities you could explore history as an
actual historian would use primary sources and the like by introducing
digital representations in various media that simulate what an actual
historian using primary sources would do. Your strategy can be as broad
or as precise as you want it to be, but you should start with a theory
of instruction. The criteria are how it improves your meeting your
goals. To do this you need a method to evaluate your design.
