ADDIE: Development

Now that you’ve Analyzed your situation and determined there’s an opportunity for learning and you’ve Designed what your course or lesson will look like, it’s time to progress to the third step of the ADDIE model: Development.

While it may seem similar to the Design phase, the Development phase is when the rubber meets the road. You’re looking back at your course design from the second phase and actually creating or sourcing each item you need to make your lessons complete. How do you know what to create, other than referring to your design notes?

Think of this step as gathering all of your materials you need to succeed. Just as bakers and chefs practice mise en place, your job as the instructional designer is to gather the ingredients.

For our example of volunteer training, we’ll want to make sure volunteers have the guidebook we’ll be pulling our information from for the course. Similar to a textbook, our students will want to have this as it will contain a significant portion (if not all) of our facts and figures we’ll be teaching.

Furthermore, if there are any other videos or sequences or activities we want to include in the lessons, this will be the phase we complete that in. But how do we know which to include? We look at our learning objectives, of course!

If we want our learners to identify something, perhaps we include an opportunity to choose the items out of a list. If we want our learners to define something, we should include a spot in a form or the lesson for them to submit their own words defining the topic at hand. If we want our learners to demonstrate, we need to include the opportunity to perform the task. See where this is going? The Development of your course comes primarily from the objectives (and the specific verbs you used) you declared in the Design phase.

When we begin to lay out our lessons for our course, we’ll want a graphic organizer to help convey the content. This is particularly important if you’re developing a course that you need to hand over to someone else. They should be able to take your notes, graphic organizer, and course materials and teach the class as though they developed it.

Graphic organizers can include storyboards, flowcharts, and authoring tools (Ritzhaupt et. al., 2022). “Storyboards are either a graphical or written display of the events to be included in a learning project” (Ritzhaupt et. al., 2022). They’ll include four pieces of information: pictures, texts, narrations, and explanations (Ritzhaupt et. al., 2022). Think of these as your detailed playbook.

Flowcharts use shapes and lines to connect a series of pieces of information or processes in an organized manner. They help convey the lesson plan, but with less information than storyboards.

“Authoring tools are software programs used to develop online content” (Ritzhaupt et. al., 2022). Authoring tools are almost a “one-stop-shop” type tool where you can create courses and materials in the development phase that include media, interaction, and even evaluation in a format that’s pleasing to the eye. It’s highly customizable and can vary in complexity.

Learning management systems are tools that deliver the content to your learner and manage their experience as a student. Think of them as a host site for your instructors and students to meet and access the same educational content. Both public and private entities may use LMS to manage their learning experiences internally.

As you compile your material for your course and lessons, be sure to take time to review the material and make edits as you find them. Have other people edit your work and look for bugs or issues within the experience so you may fix it before it is published. While the Design phase may have brought all the pieces together, your Development phase experience is where you’ll combine your ingredients to make something in the kitchen.

Sources:

Ritzhaupt, A. D. A., Nor Hafizah Beatt, OwenCalhoun, CherylDavis, RobertEichler, Brittany

E.Lee, Brenda R.Nichols, JamesSahay, ShilpaSalama, Christine D.Walsh,

SharonWildberger, WilliamWilson, MatthewYaylaci, Muhammed. (2022). ADDIE

Explained. Retrieved 6/14/2022 from http://www.oercommons.org/courses/addie-

explained-an-open-educational-resource-for-the-educational-technology-

community/view