Somebody once said:
Although e-learning began as a new way to deliver training, it cannot remain that way because it is no longer able to adequately support all the learning needs of individuals and organizations by itself - if it every was. E-learning has moved in a new, somewhat unanticipated direction that is not always reminiscent of an instructional framework. To be more influential, e-learning must be reinvented. While continuing to provide a viable instructional option in a formal learning setting, it must also move toward informational and collaborative solutions that focus more prominently on the specific jobs people do. It must move beyond courseware and classrooms and into work. To reinvent e-learning is, in many ways, to reinvent learning itself.
(Marc J. Rosenberg, Beyond E-learning)
In essence, this means transforming learning, so that learning activities and resources are situated around
- the learner
- their environment
- their tasks
enabling learners to construct their own knowledge in the context of what resources they need to carry out their activities effectively.
David Jonassen says:
In constructivist learning environments, technologies are used to situate learning tasks in a variety of contexts. With video, very rich and engaging contexts can be created.
He asserts that in the traditional organizational approach that
[u]nfortunately, most e-learning replicates the worst features of face-to-face instruction. So, it may be cheaper to "deliver" knowledge over the Internet, but it will not be more effective.
In the context of organizational development and workplace learning, this is commonly known as the systems-based approach to instructional design & development (ISD). A system is a set of elements or components that must integrate to perform a specific function. Every job in an organization is used by the organizational ecosystem to produce a product or output. The product or output is the means by which a organization generates its assets and remains self-supporting. In theory, this leads to the creation of a virtuous circle of continuous growth and development.
In learning and development, this systems-based approach is epitomized by the 
ADDIE conceptual framework, most notably refined by Dick & Carey in The Systematic Design of Instruction (1996).
The ADDIE approach has been one of the core tenets of instructional design for the best part of two decades.
I think ADDIE is a myth.
And I'm not alone in reaching this conclusion. In his article In Search of the Elusive ADDIE Model (2003), Michael Molenda undertook a Livingstonian attempt to discover the source for the original reference to the ADDIE model. Molenda’s research uncovered no original reference for the ADDIE model. This lack of an original reference led Molenda to write,
I am satisfied at this point to conclude that the ADDIE Model is merely a colloquial term used to describe a systematic approach to instructional development, virtually synonymous with instructional systems development (ISD). The label seems not to have a single author, but rather to have evolved informally through oral tradition. There is no original, fully elaborated model, just an umbrella term that refers to a family of models that share a common underlying structure.
(p.1)
My view is that ADDIE emerged from the principles of project management, and resemble the philosophy and practice to this discipline's methodology more than a pedagogy. Treating learning like a project leads to "training outcomes" equivalent to project deliverables.
While these training deliverables may have value in and of themselves, they have limited value for learners in the longer term. We could even say that the training outputs are valid; some of the objectives of the learning intervention designed according to the precepts of ADDIE may be met but
Our field of educational communications is founded on the premise that communicating content to students will result in learning. In educational communications, information or intelligence (in many different forms) is encoded visually or verbally in the symbols systems employed by each technology. During the "instructional" process, learners perceive the messages encoded in the medium and sometimes "interact" with the technology. Interaction is normally operationalized in terms of student input to the technology, which triggers some form of answer judging and response from the technology in the form of some previously encoded (canned) message. Technologies as conveyors of information have been used for centuries to "teach" students by presenting prescribed information to them which they are obligated to "learn."
(Jonassen, 2001)
So, can we re-invent e-learning?
___________________
References:
Dick, W. & Carey, L. (1996). The Systematic Design of Instruction (4th Ed.). New York: Harper Collins College Publishers.
Exclusive Interview with Professor David Jonassen (2001) IN: elearningpost [Internet] Available from: http://www.elearningpost.com/articles/archives/
exclusive_interview_with_professor_david_jonassen [Accessed 12th January 2007]
Molenda, M. (2003). In Search of the Elusive ADDIE Model. [Internet] Available from: http://www.indiana.edu/~molpage/
In%20Search%20of%20Elusive%20ADDIE.pdf Accessed 12 May 2008
Rosenberg, M.J. (2001) What Lies Beyond E-Learning? learningcircuits.org e-zine [Internet] Available from: http://www.learningcircuits.org/2006/March/rosenberg.htm Accessed 14th April 2007
5 comments:
Hi Michael,
I don't belive ADDIE is a myth. ADDIE is just another term for ISD that was developed by Florida State University for the U.S. military for developing large training programs. I have some of the history and references at ADDIE. I have also listed some of origins of the ADDIE Acronym.
ISD or ADDIE is NOT ID (Instructional Design). Jeroen van Merrienboew's "Training Complex Cognitive Skills: A Four-Component Instructional Design Model for Technical Training" (1997) writes that, "ISD models provide guidelines and directions for performing the activities that form part of each of the phases." Thus, it is is more a planning and management tool. He continues, "ID models are less broad in scope and focus on the first two phases of ISD models (i.e., analysis and design)." Thus, you use a good ID model, such as his 4C/ID model, in conjunction with ISD. It would basically look like this.
This gives you the best of both worlds -- A tool for planning and management and a specific ID tool to design the learning program so that as you wrote, " learning activities and resources are situated around: the learner, their environment, and their tasks."
Of course you do not have to use every tool that is in the ISD toolbox, just as I would not use every tool in my workshop to fix a leaky pipe. But having the tools and the knowledge and skills to use them allows you to tackle a broad set of performance problems.
Hi Donald,
Thanks for taking the time to read my post and contribute your remarks. I guess I'd better clarify here; in a previous life I was an anthropologist, and when I used the term "myth" it was intended in the folklore/cultural sense of "embodying beliefs, concepts, and ways of making sense of the world," (OED) rather than in the more commonly-used (and perjorative) interpretation of a "collectively held belief that has no basis in fact" (Websters). A myth then, is a "sacred song" (Plog & Bates, 1990. Cultural Anthrpology 2nd Ed.) or narrative that contributes to and expresses systems of thought and values.
I would assert that the this is how the concept that we currently call ADDIE emerged. To quote Michael Molenda:
"The origin of the label itself is obscure, but the underlying concepts of ISD can be traced to the model developed for the United States armed forces in the mid-1970s. As Branson (1978) recounts, the Center for Educational Technology at Florida State University worked with a branch of the U.S. Army to develop a model, which evolved into the Interservice Procedures for Instructional Systems Development (IPISD), intended for the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps. Branson provides a graphic overview of the IPISD (p. 13), which shows five top-level headings: Analyze Design, Develop, Implement, and Control. This model is referenced in virtually all subsequent historical reviews of instructional development, but, notably, users do not refer to it by the ADDIC acronym. The authors and users refer only to IPISD; hence it is clearly not the source of the ADDIE acronym either."
(2003 In Search of the Elusive ADDIE Model p.2)
As I mentioned in my orginal piece, Mr. Moldenda really did undertake a Dr. Livingstone-like attempt to find the source of the term (an interesting digression in the context of this discussion - Wikipedia's entry on Livingstone attributes a "mythic status" to the good doctor); in his chronology of the emergence of the term ADDIE, the author goes on to reference a range of sources (including your "prominent Web source" (p.3) Big Dog’s ISD Page).
Moldenda again: "...what everyone agrees on is that ADDIE is an acronym referring to the major processes that comprise the generic ISD process: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation. Beyond that, I think there is a widely shared understanding that when used in ISD models, these processes are considered to be sequential but also iterative. But any claims about what The ADDIE Model says beyond this are inventions of the author" (p.1).
I want to be clear - in a professional context, I use ADDIE on a regular basis: it's a proven, effective and practical approach to enabling L&D people develop learning solutions. As you said, it's one of the tools we use to generate (hopefully) engaging, effective, performance-enhancing materials. I stand by my interpretation of the approach as being a means of production, though. Extending from this, I think that there is value in challenging the validity of long-held approaches - particularly given the array of new technologies and networked resources at our disposal.
But I didn't write the post to diss ADDIE (or ISD, or ID), I wrote the post as a reaction to Marc J. Rosenberg's clarion call to look at e-learning afresh and "re-invent" the discipline, as "...e-learning has moved in a new, somewhat unanticipated direction that is not always reminiscent of an instructional framework... it must move beyond courseware and classrooms and into work."
So.
Can we re-invent e-learning?
--
Hi Michael,
MYTH
Thanks for the clarification on the term "myth." However, I'm still not seeing how ADDIE is a myth just because the original FSU/Military version used "Control" rather than "Evaluation," in addition to not using the term ADDIC. Rather than seeing it as a myth, I see it as evolving. Sort of like a car -- we so not say today's cars are a myth because they do not not look like the original Model-T.
In the first link I provided, I show a flowchart that Dr. Russell Watson, who was a Chief of the Staff and Faculty Training Division at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, presented in a paper in 1981 to the International Congress for Individualized Instruction. Rather than using the term "Control" in the ISD model, he used the terms "Evaluation and Control."
So six years later, the military is now using "Evaluation and Control." I also have an original Army manual titled, "A Systems Approach to Training Courses" used at the US Army Field Artillery School for training their instructors. This manual was released in 1983 and the term "Control" has been completely dropped. The military is now only using the term "Evaluation." Note that I was trained on the ISD model in the early 80s at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri and we only used the term "Evaluation." Thus, over time, "Evaluation" has replaced "Control."
We never used the term ADDIE at the time, rather we used ISD or SAT (System Approach to Training). However, I would venture to say the term ADDIE became in use to distinguish it from other ISD models, such as Dick and Carey's 1978 ISD model and Leonard Nadler's 1982 CEM (Critical Events Model).
PRODUCTION
I quite agree that any system is used to produce something, but as George Odiorne wrote in 1965, "The system concept is primarily a way of thinking about the job of managing" (A System Approach to Training, Training Director's Journal, 1965,19,10,11-19). Thus ISD is used to plan and manage while another ID model can be used in conjunction in order to produce a performer.
Now I do not see this as being of limited value to the learners in the long term because most organizations provide learning opportunities to their workforce in order to benefit the organization as a whole, not just the learner.
Re-invent
Forgive me if I am wrong on this but from what I understand from your post so far is that you seem to be implying that we need to replace (or at least change) the ADDIE model in order to reinvent elearning. Yet there are a number of other models out there that can be used in conjunction with or even replace it, such as rapid-prototyping CEM, Dick & Carey, 4C/ID, and evolutionary.
But changing the way elearning is designed does not ensure it will be reinvented -- it might simply mean we end up with the same thing even though we are designing differently. I would have to ask what do you want to reinvent it to? For example, we now have web 2.0, which has led to elearning 2.0, which in turn has led to learning 2.0. So in a way, it has reinvented itself.
Hi Donald,
Thanks for getting back to me. As much as I hate to do this, I'm going to leave you on tenterhooks for a few weeks before responding, as I'm on leave until mid-October. If anyone else wants to contribute in the meantime, please do.
Michael
I think any process is a myth. The reality is, complexity reigns. To pretend we can package customized contextual learning solutions for everyone is a myth. Learners, now faced with an abundance of learning options and the growing skills and awareness of how to "connect" with pools of knowledge are bypassing formal learning processes. Learners are re-inventing e-learning. We do not have to do it for them. Accessibilty, speed, connectivity...those are the future factors for designers/developers to consider...context and personalization are factors e-learners themselves are finding they can do themselves
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