September 22, 2004
Don't blame poor Aunt ADDIE
cogdogblog: Beautiful, Textbook Instructional Design... I Yawned All the Way to the Post Test
This is an older entry I meant to comment on last week but the dissertation proposal work took up my time.
As David Miller alluded to in his follow-up, poor misunderstood Aunt "ADDIE" is not to blame for bad design. For example, I would question whether a multiple-choice exam is the best way to test outcomes on a driving safety CD! Even if a multiple choice test does effectivley measure the intended outcomes (and yes, these are outcomes "imposed" on us by an external source), a simple pre-test allowing Alan to demonstrate his knowledge on the topic and forgo the rest of the boring training should suffice - if the test is a true measure of the intended outcomes. In a sense, this is what Alan did when he skipped ahead and took the test and passed without going through the last three chapters.
While it would be great to have adaptive, exploratory, multi-path instruction for everything we have to learn, it is just not economically feasible in our current state. Training serves many purposes and one of those purposes, whether we like it or not, is to "check the box" to make sure all people in a given situation have seen the same information in the same way. Is this the best thing for individual learners? No, but it is efficient and serves its pupose.
Another point is that sometimes we just have to learn stuff that we are not very motivated to learn simply because it is a required part of our work. I did not enjoy having to take a course on expense reporting but filling out that paperwork is something I have to do. No amount of interactive, multiple path, sensory overloading role-playing gaming would have made the course more palatable. In that case, I preferred to simply have the simple milk-and-cookies objectives, core content and my test.
Sometimes going over to visit old Aunt ADDIE is a chore but there is also a certain comfort in knowing that she is there to provide us with some sage advice. Even if it might seem out of favor with today's trends, it is often later when we look back and realize the full meaning and wisdom of what she was trying to tell us.
Posted by Rovy at September 22, 2004 8:25 AM