The Catacombs of Instructional Design

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     While touring Rome one spring I went into the ancient catacombs. Our guide was a very unusual - and candid - priest. When asked why soldiers did not pursue people into this dark underworld, his response was: "Too damn spooky!" Pursuing us into the catacombs of educational philosophy, beyond where the light of quantitative analysis yields any certainty, are the questions that plum the depths of our passion for teaching and understanding of ourselves. And they can be very spooky indeed. One of those questions concerns what instructional design method or methods will best serve our students while remaining true to our own deeply held beliefs about what education truly is. During this summer I have had the pleasure of studying instructional design models in some depth, while simultaneously turning a critical lens on how I presently teach. Over the months I have come to believe that there are a couple of key elements that must be present while drawing the blueprints for my classes.

Flexibility

     There are a number of instructional design models for educators to explore - ADDIE, Merrill's First Principles of Instruction, Understanding by Design, Universal Design for Learning, Gagne's Nine Events of Instruction, the Successive Approximations Model, and, of course, the venerable Bloom's Revised Taxonomy. Each comes at instruction from different angles and correlate differently with individual teaching and learning styles. The models that work best for me and, it would seem, many of my colleagues, are those that allow me a fair amount of flexibility. Teaching is anything but predictable, so any teaching strategy that is too restrictive will have very limited use. For me, the ADDIE model holds the most promise. 

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Though it is a bit too sequential for my tastes, various points of entry are possible in an interconnected wheel of teaching phases. The model is data driven, but the data is not limited to the quantitative realm. In fact, implementing this model most effectively will entail a fair amount of qualitative, formative assessment.

     "Understanding by Design", the popular approach based on the work of Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, is sequential in a way that I found unsettling at first. Central to their philosophy is the idea of "backward design" - first determining what you want students to know and be able to do at the end and then moving in reverse to make sure everything preceding the instructional curtain call works to achieve those ends.  They argue that the benefit of this is a lesser probability of instruction being out of synch with its intended goals. So, to put it less academically, "Understanding by Design" is a kind of front end alignment that is not unlike what you would do with the family Ford. This model also emphasizes transference of information as a goal via "big ideas" (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005) as opposed to bombarding students with facts (and failing to connect them). The model promotes activities that students find to be meaningful rather than rote, lifeless, and time consuming labor. As in the ADDIE model, flexibility is still possible, though I have argued previously that beginning with a set target - indeed, working backwards from it -  does not adequately take into account the unintentional goals and achievements that sometimes form the most memorable teaching memories.

     Other models also serve up flexibility - particularly the Bloom's Revised Model, which is less prescription and more a continuum of increasing levels of higher level thinking. Bloom did not ever say that the "lower" levels of thinking were unimportant, as some have erroneously believed, but rather that they should not form the majority of the instructional emphasis. We should always be pushing our students toward higher levels of understanding and application, while at the same time understanding that more basal, fundamental foundations for those levels must also be constructed.

     When reflecting on my own teaching under the light of flexibility, I must admit that I have been too rigid in my teaching, less willing to implement or even consider coming at my instructional objectives from a variety of approaches - linear and nonlinear. Some of this is no doubt a result of the teaching models that I have been exposed to in my own education, but the more likely culprit is my deeply ingrained tendency toward linear learning. As Khan found out in Star Trek II, this can lead to "two-dimensional thinking" and getting your ship blown out of the Mutara Nebula.

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Multiple Approaches

     

     A review of instructional design literature reveals loud and consistent support for multiple approaches to crafting one's teaching. No one model has carried the day and, in fact, a conclusion arrived at by many researchers is that a combination of elements of the best models, assembled according to student needs, results in the best learning. Perhaps we all like to plant our flag in pedagogies that have served us well or that our mentors have adhered to. To do so, however, short changes our students and our own professional skill and growth. Each instructional model that I studied has something that can enhance my teaching, because each addresses, at least in part, some aspect of the fluid dynamics that lie at the core of teaching. For example, while I might not proceed along the trail specifically blazed by M.D. Merrill, his call to confront students with authentic problems and tasks resonates with me and will be a more pivitol consideration in my lesson planning moving forward.

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     Having a well-supplied toolbox is especially important in a blended learning scenario where the strengths and weaknesses of face-to-face and online learning come together to present challenges and opportunities that call for a wealth of best practice skills. In the context of my own teaching this becomes more enticing and necessary as I make the transition this fall from teaching exclusively online back to my roots in traditional classroom instruction. As I indicated earlier, I have tended to be more one-dimensional in my instructional design habits, but I am now more aware that "mixing and matching" the best of the models that are out there will help to sharpen my own thinking while renewing my excitement when entering the classroom every day.

     In the end I am struck by what is perhaps an element of hypocrisy that I have been prone to. How can I expect my students to be open-minded, to seek multiple sources of information and application, if I am not equally, or perhaps more, committed to it myself? How can I teach my students to resist dogma and assumption in their varied forms if I, myself, do not turn back the barbarians at my own gates? These are sobering thoughts, but invaluable sources of light as I wander the catacombs of my own teaching and learning.

Reference:

Wiggins, G. & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design. New York: Pearson.