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Molenda 03

The author attempts to find the original source of the ADDIE model of instructional design but is unable to locate a single original source. Through interviews and research of textbooks, dictionaries and instructional design experts from the 1960s onward, no one can provide evidence of a primary source. While the concepts of analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation can be traced to instructional design models from the 1970s, the term "ADDIE" itself seems to have evolved informally without a single author. It is now commonly used as an umbrella term to refer generally to the systematic processes of instructional design.

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426 views3 pages

Molenda 03

The author attempts to find the original source of the ADDIE model of instructional design but is unable to locate a single original source. Through interviews and research of textbooks, dictionaries and instructional design experts from the 1960s onward, no one can provide evidence of a primary source. While the concepts of analysis, design, development, implementation and evaluation can be traced to instructional design models from the 1970s, the term "ADDIE" itself seems to have evolved informally without a single author. It is now commonly used as an umbrella term to refer generally to the systematic processes of instructional design.

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You are on page 1/ 3

In Search of the Elusive

ADDIE Model
by Michael Molenda

n instructional technology (IT) and instructional design (ID), one of the questions
most frequently raised is, What is the original source for the ADDIE Model?
Students, fellow professors, and practicing professionals are often interested in
finding an authoritative source to cite in papers and to provide to clients.

Practitioners tend to be curious about the pedigree of the term: Is it from academia?
Business? Military?
I was curious, too, but not motivated to go beyond a cursory search until I was invited
by the editor of a forthcoming encyclopedia (Kovalchick & Dawson, in press) to write
an entry for the ADDIE Model. The question became personal.
The most obvious place to start such a search is in the existing dictionaries and encyclopedias of instructional technology, education, and training. ADDIE does not appear
in any of them. Next, I went to the large (Saettler, 1990) and small (Reiser, 2001; Shrock,
1995) histories of instructional technology and ID. Again, not a single mention. Next,
the textbooks on ID (Morrison, Ross, & Kemp, 2001; Gentry, 1994; Dick, Carey, & Carey,
2001; Smith & Ragan, 1999; Heinich Molenda, Russell, & Smaldino, 2002), but ADDIE
is not mentioned in any of themneither the older nor the more recent editions. How
about the surveys of ID models (Andrews & Goodson, 1980; Gustafson, 1994; Gustafson
& Branch, 1997, 2002)? Again, ADDIE is invisible.
By this point I was beginning to form the theory that ADDIE existed more as a label than
as an actual ID model. To try to falsify this theory, I contacted about 20 people, including professors and practitioners who I thought would be knowledgeable in this area,
especially those whose institutional memory goes back to the 1960s. Their responses
indicated that they did not know of any original, primary source. When I asked if they
could remember when they first heard the term, their typical response was around the
late 1980s. Some suggested leads or sources that might be early references, so I tracked
down each of the leads. Again, none of the sources mentioned could truly be said to be
a source of the ADDIE Model. I interviewed some of the authors cited as possible early
references and they all said, No, I didnt invent ADDIE and I dont know who did.
Actually, three of them said, No, I didnt invent ADDIE; I thought you did!

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MAY/JUNE 2003

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.
What everyone does agree 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, there is a widely shared
understanding that when used in ISD models, these
processes are considered to be sequential but also iterative,
as depicted in Figure 1. But any claims about what the
ADDIE Model says beyond this are individual inventions.
The origin of the label itself is obscure, but the underlying
concepts of ISD can be traced to the model developed for the
U.S. 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, which
shows five top-level headings: analyze, design, develop,
implement, and control. This model is referenced in virtually all subsequent historical reviews of ID, 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.
The underlying concepts of the IPISD model can be found
in an earlier handbook by Briggs (1970), who also was affiliated with Florida State University. Briggss model incorporates ideas similar to the IPISD model, but without the
ADDIC headings. And, of course, there are many other tributaries leading to the main stream of ISD.
Although Thiagarajan has been mentioned as a possible
source of the ADDIE label, this does not pan out because the
article only refers once to the basic systems approach A-DE model (Thiagarajan, 1976, p. 10), not ADDIE, nor does he
provide a visual or verbal model as such.
The ADDIE terms and concepts appear in a figure in a howto monograph distributed by the American Society for
Training and Development (ASTD) on the basics of ISD
(Grafinger 1988), as shown in Figure 1, but nowhere in the
monograph is the acronym ADDIE itself given. This source
consistently refers to it as the ISD model. Similarly, Rossett
(1987) includes a figure showing an ISD model in which the
top-level boxes are labeled with the five ADDIE terms, but
the caption says, What happens during ISD.

ANALYSIS

DESIGN

DEVELOPMENT

IMPLEMENTATION

EVALUATION

Figure 1. An ISD Model Featuring the ADDIE Processes (Source:


Grafinger, 1988).

A web search engine search will turn up numerous hits on


the term ADDIE, but clearly none of these sources is close to
an original, primary source. One prominent web source is
Big Dogs ISD Page (Clark, 1995). Clarks treatment is similar
to many other web sources: As do Grafinger and Rossett, he
provides a visual model incorporating the ADDIE terms but
refers to it as the ISD model.
One of the few explicit and extensive narrative references to
the ADDIE Model in the academic literature is found in
Molenda, Pershing & Reigeluth (1996). These authors
attempted to capture the current consensus regarding the
characteristics of the systems approach to ID. We chose the
term ADDIE as an umbrella term for ISD models because
thats the term we heard most often in oral discussions of
the topic. We did not refer back to any original, primary
source; nor did we fancy that we were inventing a new concept. In fact, we intentionally pushed the ADDIE concept
into a new application. We attempted to present a model
that illustrates the interconnections between the development of instructional interventions and the development of
performance improvement interventions. That is, we
claimed that performance interventions, such as incentive
programs, job redesigns, electronic performance support
systems, ergonomic overhauls, and the like, are themselves
or should be created through a process involving analysis,
design, development, implementation, and evaluation. A
full explication of this model is given in Molenda &
Pershing (2003).

Performance Improvement

Volume 42

Number 5

35

The ADDIE Model is also used as a major organizing principle in Gustafson and Branch (2002), another source intending to represent the current conventional wisdom about ID.
But Gustafson and Branch do not provide any citation for
their references to ADDIE either.
What is emerging in the recent literature is a tendency to
accept the ADDIE term as an umbrella term, and then to go
on to elaborate more fully fleshed-out models and narrative
descriptions. However, it should be recognized that authors
who do this are essentially creating and disseminating their
own models, as there does not appear to be an original,
authoritative version of the ADDIE model to be revealed and
interpreted. Unfortunately for the sake of academic rigor,
there is no real or authentic meaning for the term. Anyone
is free to impute whatever attributes they want to this
labelas they do.

Kovalchick, A., & Dawson, K. (in press). Educational technology: An encyclopedia. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
Molenda, M., Pershing, J.A., & Reigeluth, C.M. (1996).
Designing instructional systems. In R. L. Craig (Ed.), The
ASTD training and development handbook (4th ed.) (pp.
266-293). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Molenda, M., & Pershing, J.A. (2003). The strategic impact
model or Indiana model. Unpublished paper, available
from authors. Bloomington: Indiana University.
Morrison, G.R., Ross, S.M., & Kemp, J.E. (2001). Designing
effective instruction (3rd ed.). New York: John Wiley.
Reiser, R.A. (2001). A history of instructional design and
technology. In R.A. Reiser & J.V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends
and issues in instructional design and technology.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall College Division.
Rossett, A. (1987). Training needs assessment. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ: Educational Technology Publications.

References
Andrews, D.H., & Goodson, L.A. (1980). A comparative
analysis of models of instructional design. Journal of
Instructional Development, 3:4, 2-16.

Saettler, P. (1990). The evolution of American educational


technology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Libraries Unlimited.

Branson, R.K. (1978, March). The interservice procedures


for instructional systems development. Educational
Technology, 11-14.

Shrock, S. (1995). A brief history of instructional development. In G. Anglin (Ed.), Instructional technology: Past,
present, and future. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Libraries
Unlimited.

Briggs, L.J. (1970). Handbook of procedures for the design


of instruction. Pittsburgh: American Institutes for Research.
Clark, D. (1995). Big dogs ISD page [Online]. Available:
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/sat1.html#model.

Smith, P.L., & Ragan, T. J. (1999). Instructional design


(2nd ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Thiagarajan, S. (1976, November). HelpI am trapped
inside an ID model! NSPI Journal, 10-11.

Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J.O. (2001). The systematic
design of instruction (5th ed.). New York: Longman.
Gentry, C.G. (1994). Introduction to instructional development. Belmont: Wadsworth.
Grafinger, D.J. (1988). Basics of instructional systems development. INFO-LINE Issue 8803. Alexandria: American
Society for Training and Development.
Gustafson, K.L. (1994). Instructional design models. In T.
Husen & T.N. Postlethwaite (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of education (2nd ed.). Oxford: Pergamon.
Gustafson, K.L., & Branch, R.M. (1997). Survey of instructional development models. Syracuse: ERIC Clearinghouse
on Information & Technology.
Gustafson, K.L., & Branch, R.M. (2002). What is instructional design? In R.A. Reiser & J.V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends
and issues in instructional design and Technology.
Columbus, OH: Merrill/Prentice Hall.
Heinich, R., Molenda, M., Russell, J.D., & Smaldino, S.
(2002). Instructional media and technologies for learning
(7th ed.). Columbus, OH: Merrill/Prentice Hall.

36

www.ispi.org

MAY/JUNE 2003

Michael Molenda is a Professor of instructional systems technology at


Indiana University. He joined NSPI in the early 1970s when he was completing his doctoral studies at Syracuse University. As NSPI evolved from programmed instruction to instructional design to performance improvement, so
did Mikes interests. He is probably best known as coauthor of Instructional
Media and Technologies for Learning, the most widely used textbook for basic
courses in instructional technology applications, now in its seventh edition.
He also codesigned The Diffusion Simulation Game, a widely used simulation
game for experiencing the role of change agent in an organization. Since
1998 he has coauthored an annual survey of trends in instructional technology in corporate and other settings; it is published in Educational Media and
Technology Yearbook.
Mike teaches graduate courses in foundations of instructional and performance technology, evaluation and change management, and distance education. Recently he has been working with Jim Pershing to develop a model
(the Strategic Impact Model) and procedures for meshing training and nontraining interventions into one coordinated process. The model emphasizes
formative evaluation and change management as central processes. Mike may
be reached at [email protected].

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