ED5813 is the foundational methods course for instructional design — the course where systematic design processes, models, and core strategies come together. Students apply the full ADDIE cycle (or its Agile counterpart SAM) to real design problems, developing competence in every phase from needs analysis through summative evaluation.
ADDIE vs SAM: comparing the major ID models
| Dimension | ADDIE | SAM (Successive Approximation) |
|---|---|---|
| Structure | Linear/iterative phases: Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate | Agile cycles: Savvy Start → Design prototype → Development iterations |
| Best for | Stable, well-defined projects with clear requirements | Complex or ambiguous projects; collaborative stakeholder development |
| Revision cycles | Built in at Evaluation; major revisions are costly mid-cycle | Prototyping and iteration built into every cycle; revisions are expected and cheap |
| Stakeholder involvement | Primarily at Analysis and Review checkpoints | Continuous — stakeholders review prototypes in every iteration |
| Risk | Risk of late discovery of fundamental problems | Risk of scope creep without disciplined iteration management |
What ED5813 covers
Needs analysis is the first and arguably most important phase of the ADDIE model — and the most frequently skipped. A thorough needs analysis answers three questions: what is the desired performance or outcome? What is the current performance or outcome? And what is causing the gap between the two? The third question is critical: not all performance gaps are training problems. If an employee knows how to do a task but lacks time, tools, motivation, or a clear process to follow, training will not solve the problem. Performance analysis (drawing on Mager and Pipe's classic framework: "Can't Do or Won't Do?") distinguishes skill gaps (training problems) from motivation or environmental gaps (management or process problems). ED5813 develops the needs analysis skills to identify what kind of problem actually exists before prescribing a solution.
Gagné's Nine Events of Instruction provide a research-based framework for sequencing instruction that aligns with how human memory and learning work. Based on information processing theory, Gagné's events — gaining attention, informing learners of the objective, stimulating recall of prior learning, presenting the stimulus (content), providing learning guidance, eliciting performance (practice), providing feedback, assessing performance, and enhancing retention and transfer — map to phases of cognitive processing that each lesson must address to produce lasting learning. ED5813 applies the Nine Events as a design checklist: each event serves a specific cognitive function, and omitting events (common in poorly designed instruction) produces corresponding learning gaps. A lesson that goes straight to content without gaining attention or activating prior knowledge is working against the learner's cognitive architecture.
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Key topics you write about in ED5813
- ADDIE model: each phase in depth — analysis, design, development, implementation, evaluation
- SAM model: iterative design prototyping, Savvy Start, Alpha/Beta/Gold iterations
- Needs analysis: performance analysis, task analysis, audience analysis, context analysis
- Learning objectives: Bloom's taxonomy, performance-based objectives (condition, performance, criterion)
- Gagné's Nine Events of Instruction and their cognitive functions
- Instructional strategies: direct instruction, problem-based learning, case-based learning, simulation
- Formative evaluation: expert review, one-on-one evaluation, small group evaluation, field trial
Gagné's Nine Events of Instruction
- Gain attention — activate the learner's receptive state
- Inform learners of the objective — set expectations and motivate
- Stimulate recall of prior learning — activate relevant prior knowledge
- Present the content — deliver new information
- Provide learning guidance — scaffold processing and encoding
- Elicit performance (practice) — require active use of new knowledge
- Provide feedback — confirm correct understanding, correct errors
- Assess performance — evaluate learning against objectives
- Enhance retention and transfer — promote application in new contexts
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ADDIE design documents, needs analyses, learning objective writing, Gagné's events application, SAM prototype plans. Instructional design coursework done right.
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Frequently asked questions
ADDIE is the most widely known instructional design process model, describing five phases: Analysis (identify the learning problem and gather data about learners, context, and content), Design (specify learning objectives, assessment strategy, and instructional strategy), Development (create the instructional materials), Implementation (deliver or deploy the instruction), and Evaluation (assess both formative quality and summative effectiveness). While ADDIE is sometimes criticized as overly linear and slow for modern rapid development environments, it remains the foundational model because its phases identify the essential activities of systematic instructional design. Most Agile-influenced models (like SAM) are ADDIE variants that restructure the phases into iterative cycles rather than abandoning them. Understanding ADDIE is prerequisite to understanding any other ID model.
A well-written performance-based learning objective has three components (Mager's three-part objective): the performance (what the learner will do — a visible, measurable behavior using an action verb like "write," "calculate," "demonstrate," "analyze," not vague verbs like "understand" or "appreciate"), the conditions (the circumstances under which performance will occur — "given a patient case summary and access to a drug reference," "without use of notes"), and the criterion (the standard of acceptable performance — "with no more than two errors," "according to APA 7th edition format," "within 10 minutes"). Bloom's taxonomy provides a vocabulary for performance verbs organized by cognitive complexity, from Remember (recall, identify) through Create (design, construct), ensuring objectives target the intended cognitive level.
In instructional design, formative evaluation happens during development to improve the instruction before it is finalized. Dick, Carey, and Carey identify three stages of formative evaluation: one-on-one evaluation (testing the prototype with one or two representative learners to identify major comprehension problems), small group evaluation (testing with 8 to 20 representative learners to identify systematic problems), and field trial (testing in the actual delivery context with a full class or cohort to identify implementation problems). Summative evaluation happens after implementation to determine whether the instruction achieved its intended outcomes — did learners acquire the intended knowledge and skills, and did they transfer those skills to the job? Formative evaluation improves the instruction; summative evaluation judges its effectiveness.
Task analysis is a systematic process of breaking down a complex task or skill into its component sub-tasks and identifying the sequence, prerequisites, and conditions for each. Instructional designers use task analysis to ensure that all necessary components of a skill are taught and practiced, in the right sequence, and that prerequisites are identified and addressed before introducing more complex skills. Types include procedural task analysis (for sequential, step-by-step tasks — identifying each step, decision point, and contingency), hierarchical task analysis (decomposing a goal into sub-goals and further into operations and sub-operations), and cognitive task analysis (capturing the mental processes, judgments, and decision-making that expert performers use but may not articulate explicitly). Task analysis is particularly important for complex procedural skills and expert knowledge that is tacit and difficult to elicit.