Instructional design

Instructional design (ID) is the systematic approach to designing, developing and evaluating training programmes. An instructional designer analyses learning objectives, audience and context, then chooses the format, structure and content that most effectively achieves the intended change in behaviour. Well-known models include ADDIE, SAM and the Dick and Carey model.

A great deal of training fails not on poor content but on poor design: too much information at once, the wrong format for the audience, no connection to the real demands of the task, no evaluation of results. Good instructional design makes training achieve what it is meant to achieve, which is changed behaviour on the work floor.

In industry, instructional design works differently than in office environments. The audience often has no office background, works shifts and learns best by doing. Good ID for industrial training starts with the task analysis, asking what the person has to be able to do, in which situations and under what conditions, and works from there towards the right combination of format, media and assessment. At STARK, every project starts with a Discover phase that runs exactly this analysis.