Domain of Instructional Development

“Development is the process of translating the design specifications into physical form” (Seels & Richey, 1994, p. 35). This process is also done in phases. Depending on the scope of the project the designer may be working alone or they may have a development team producing materials. The first phase is a rough draft that can be produced at low cost which can be used for formative evaluation. Materials can be developed on a micro level and a macro level. Micro development could be an instructional module developed for a specific course or training.. Macro level develpment could be an entire curriculum deveopment for a school system or a training program developed for an organization. The type of development will affect the designers choice of models for development. For instance, for a micro developmet project such as an instructinal module you may call for the Open Learning Environments (OLE) model. This model is appropriate for micro level developmet because it is student centered which is classroom based. on the other hand, a macro development project such as designing a curriculum may call fo the Designing Constructivist Learning Enviroments because it is intended to foster problem solving which could be applied throughout a curriculum.

There are four subcategories in the Instructional Development domain:

• print media
• audiovisual media
• electronic media
• integrated media

Although the media selection has taken place in the design phase, there are several types of media that may be chosen depending upon analysis. Print media includes materials in hard copy form such as books, photographs, pamphlets, etc. Audiovisual media includes audio tapes, video tapes, DVD’s, etc. Electronic media includes Computer Based Instruction (CBI), Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI), Web-based instruction, CD based instruction, etc. Integrated media is any combination of the other three types of media.

The choice of media is based upon the analysis of the learners and environmental characteristics. For example, a training project for a large cooperation that spans several cities might choose a computer based self instructional module for employees instead of having the expense of traveling them to a central location for face to face instruction with print materials. Designers have a choice of models for media selection. Examples of these models include Reiser and Dick (1983) or Rapid Prototyping.