Traditional Instructional Design (ISD)

Just as I was leaving graduate school, there was a great deal of interest in systematic approaches to instructional design. The search was on for a process model that novice and expert designers could use to produce good designs consistently. This was a time of great excitement, because such models promised to bring order and definition to professional practice that was otherwise uneven and disorganized. Many large projects were sponsored by industry, government, and the military around this time to create both general-purpose and context-specific approaches to designing. I recall being a part of some projects whose purpose was to tailor-make systematic models and other projects where the goal was to apply and test such models. This was very exciting work at the time. Even the terminology for naming these models was undecided, so there were many flavors: Systems Engineering of Training (SET), Systems Approach to Training (SAT), and, ultimately, the name that stuck, Instructional Systems Development (ISD). One thing I learned from this experience is that it was the systematic approach itself and not the specific model that mattered. For several years after this experiecne my colleagues and I used this knowledge to tailor instructional design models to the specific needs and contexts of several organizations, large and small. Out of this experience came a generic ISD model that I found useful in later years for helping new designers catch the idea behind systematic process models. I have written a minimalist textbook that contains this model for use in my own consulting practice. Since writing the textbook my views of instructional design process have grown to incorporate additional new ideas that I could accept without giving up the old systematic model ideas (see the "Layering of Instructional Designs" page at this site). I have made the ISD textbook available at this site and invite you to make what use of it you will. I only ask that if the text is used for commercial purposes there be no charge made to the student. I also give the caveat that I take no responsibility for the shortcomings of products designed by the users of the manual. The table of contents and chapters of this text can be accessed here.

Contact me at:   andy_gibbons@byu.edu