ADDIE Instructional Design Model

Overview

ADDIE is the most basic framework in instructional design. It consists of five phases: analysing what learners need to learn, designing objectives and strategies, developing materials, implementing the programme and evaluating its effects. It serves as a common language in corporate training, e-learning and lesson design.

The five phases

• Analysis: needs analysis (the gap between current and desired performance), learner analysis, task analysis and context analysis, including whether training is the right solution at all.
• Design: writing performance objectives, choosing assessment instruments, sequencing content and selecting instructional strategies and media. The output is a design blueprint.
• Development: producing materials, lesson plans and e-learning content from the blueprint and refining prototypes through formative evaluation.
• Implementation: delivering the programme in the real setting, preparing instructors and supporting operation and maintenance.
• Evaluation: formative evaluation throughout to improve the programme and summative evaluation at the end to judge its effectiveness and worth. Corporate training often adds Kirkpatrick's four levels (reaction, learning, behaviour, results).

Origins

Molenda (2003) concluded that the ADDIE label has no single original author and spread by word of mouth as a name for the whole family of systematic instructional design models. Its roots lie in the Interservice Procedures for Instructional Systems Development (IPISD), developed in 1975 by Florida State University's Center for Educational Technology with the US Army, whose five phases were analyse, design, develop, implement and control (Branson, 1978). Later systematic models such as Dick and Carey's can be seen as more detailed elaborations of the same phases.

Strengths and critiques

• Strengths: the phases are simple and logical, so novice designers can follow them, and clear outputs at each phase help collaboration and quality control.
• Linearity: a waterfall approach that finishes each phase before the next is criticised as slow and unresponsive to change. Iterative approaches such as rapid prototyping and the Successive Approximation Model (SAM) are used as alternatives.
• View of learning: ADDIE sits close to an objectivist tradition of predefined objectives and efficient delivery, so it is sometimes complemented with constructivist learning-environment design. Motivational design such as Keller's ARCS model can be built into the design phase.

See also: Gagné's Nine Events of Instruction

References

1. Branson, R. K., Rayner, G. T., Cox, J. L., Furman, J. P., King, F. J., & Hannum, W. H. (1975). Interservice Procedures for Instructional Systems Development (TRADOC Pam 350-30, 5 vols.). Fort Monroe, VA: U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command.
2. Branson, R. K. (1978). The interservice procedures for instructional systems development. Educational Technology, 18(3), 11–14.
3. Molenda, M. (2003). In search of the elusive ADDIE model. Performance Improvement, 42(5), 34–36.
4. Branch, R. M. (2009). Instructional Design: The ADDIE Approach. New York: Springer.
5. Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J. O. (2015). The Systematic Design of Instruction (8th ed.). Boston: Pearson.