Page 25 - Making Instruction Work

chap 3 3/11/97 4:45 PM Page 13

3

Strategy of Instructional

Development

Now that we’ve considered the big picture, it’s time to get
more specific. This chapter will present a brief description of
the phases of the instructional process, as well as a description
of the main techniques and procedures through which we
develop instruction that works. The chapters that follow this
one will describe each procedure in more detail, describe how
to carry out the procedure, and offer one or more examples.
Though some of the procedures may be new to you, the overall
strategy will be familiar, simply because it asks you to do in
your instruction what you already do in other aspects of your
life: decide what you want to accomplish, apply the tools and
techniques needed to accomplish it, and then determine how
well you did.

The Instructional Design/Development Sequence

The procedures through which instructional design and
development are carried out are often clumped into four
broad phases: analysis, design/development, implementation,
and evaluation/improvement. Some practitioners prefer to
clump the components into five or six phases, while others
prefer to think of them as fitting into three such “buckets.”
Don’t be distressed by these preferences. After all, there are any
number of ways to package a baloney; what matters is the
quality of the meat. No matter which general headings are