Following several years in the US Army, I entered the instructional development/design business. I've accumulated 20+ years developing instructional products ranging from lesson plans to self-study texts, to computer-based training. One of the most interesting things about developing training products is the diversity of content to which I'm exposed. I've developed training on military radio systems, environmental compliance, prevention of shop lifting, aviation maintenance, lawn irrigation systems, emergency medical dispatch, homeland security, immigration enforcement, and religious education.
For the last several years, I have managed the enrollment and retention efforts of two US Government online training efforts, building up an online student body of over 200,000 students over the last five years (averaging over 100 new enrollments per day). This entails managing the necessary customer service operations, product management functions, quality assurance operations, and the software engineering efforts. That's another great thing about this field--working with great people.
Agile Methodologies and Instructional Design
My current research interests are focused on the application of Agile methods (e.g., XP and Scrum) to the processes of instructional development and classroom management. My software engineering team introduced me to eXtreme Programming (XP) and I'm a Certified ScrumMaster.
What's the Difference Between Instructional Design and Instructional Development?
I wish to use this space to address Instructional Development not Instructional Design. Charles Reigeluth describes Instructional Development as follows:
Instructional development is concerned with understanding, improving, and applying methods of creating instruction...The result of instructional development as a professional activity is ready-to-use instructional resources, lecture notes, and/or lesson plans ... (Reigeluth, 1983, p. 8)On the other hand, Reigeluth describes Instructional Design as:
... concerned with understanding, improving, and applying methods of instruction ... it is the process of deciding what methods of instruction are best for bringing about desired changes in student knowledge and skills for a specific course content and a specific student population. (Reigeluth, 1983, p. 7)Reigeluth's distinctions are quite useful from an Agile perspective. Instructional Design is the application of Instructional Theory, whereas Instructional Development refers to producing instructional materials and actually getting the work done.
Consider the analogy of a software engineering team. The team will choose to develop solutions in different architectures or frameworks, based upon the customer, the delivery environment, and the tool sets available. They will apply their skills to coding practices and patterns to ensure that the final product meets the customer's requirements. Just as in Instructional settings, the distinctions between Design and Development are often quite subtle.
For example, when a software engineer develops unit tests, does this constitute Design or Development? On one hand, the unit tests certainly constitute working code; however, the unit tests represent decisions that will guide the development of coded products. Similarly, when a training developer produces instructional objectives or test item specifications, is he designing or developing? What do Agile methods lend to this distinction? This is one of the questions I hope to explore within this space.
One thing is certain, however; in both instances (whether developing software or training products) successful development teams must organize to accomplish their tasks, manage work flow, and get the job done with the resources at hand. This is, in my opinion, the first point to which Agile methods may be applied to Instructional Development.
Why Apply Agile Methods to Instructional Development?
The systematic design and development of instruction (i.e., ISD) is time consuming, expensive, and difficult. Make no mistake, ISD (in one form or another) is still the best solution to ensure that instructonal solutions are effective. But all too often, in my experience, by the time instructional solutions are ready for use they are no longer needed, out of date, or otherwise irrelevant. This has proven to be especially true when the solutions attempt to leverage more complex technologies (e.g., video, computer-based training, or even text-based materials).
Often, in attempting to shorten the delivery cycle, quality is often the first casualty. Unfortunately, by the time the customer comes to that realization, precious training budgets have been squandered. On the other hand, misplaced emphasis on "quality" often makes perfection the enemy of good enough. Attempting to find that middle ground where training development efforts provide maximum value to the customer, rapidly, reliably, and consistently is something else I wish to explore within this space.
Conclusion
Over the last few years, a good friend of mine has convinced me that when properly applied, Agile methods deliver working software much more responsively than alternative approaches. You can visit his blog at AgileJedi. His software engineering team employs eXtreme Programming (XP) quite effectively. I am certain the Agile methods can do the same for Instructional Development.
References
Reigeluth, C. (1983). Instructional Design: What Is It and Why Is It? In C. Reigeluth (Ed.), Instructional-Design Theories and Models: Vol. 1. An Overview of their Current Status (pp. 3-36). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates.
I predict that one of the common misconceptions about Agile Instructional Development is that is another name for rapid prototyping. That movement died a largely unheralded death because it was not effective. Tripp and Bichelmeyer (1990) quoted in Brown and Green (2006)identified the main disadvantage of Rapid Prototyping as its "tendency to encourage informal DESIGN (my emphasis) methods which introduce more problems than they eliminate."
ReplyDeleteI am applying AGILE development practices in a class I am teaching on Corporate production methods. We use Brown and Green in a few of our courses. One student asked me about whether AGILE was similar to Rapid Prototyping. I answered that it was not. Rapid Prototyping goes right to development and shortcuts design. AGILE development must be informed by an adequate analysis and a thorough design that includes the development of instructional objectives and a bank of test items. I will have more on this later.
To say that Agile bypasses design, is not correct. Agile stresses "emergent design". In Agile one designs those products that are most valuable to the customer and that can be delivered within a short time frame. How short? In software development, the goal is to deliver functioning code within 30 days or less. In fact, the trend is to deliver in half that.
ReplyDeleteWhat Agile recognizes is that you should only design so far in advance. Once the customer gets the product, the requirements invariably change.