Our Evaluation and Design Process

The Basic Design Cycle

Over the next 6 weeks in this course, you will be guided through a developmental evaluation process to evaluate and revise instructional resources to support adult basic education. Entire degree programs are offered in the theory, research, and practice of instructional design, and thousands of journal articles and books have been published about instructional design processes and models. Our challenge here is to focus on the most fundamental evaluation and design processes required to create effective and efficient instructional solutions to meet the instructional need.

To that end, we will be following the basic design processes that underlie most instructional design models and frameworks. As conceptualized in The Delft Design Guide Links to an external site., this basic design cycle includes five primary processes (see figure below). These same processes are also utilized in other design disciplines, such as architecture or product development.

Basic Design Cycle

The Evaluation and Design Process Applied in this Course

While the design processes described above may appear to suggest a prescribed order, it is important to note that these processes are not practiced in a lockstep linear fashion. As you progress through the course, you are encouraged to constantly revisit prior processes to re-analyze, re-synthesize, re-simulate, re-evaluate, and amend your decisions.

We present these five design processes within this course as follows:

  • Analyze: Within Modules 1 and 2, you will analyze key aspects of the design need. In Module 1, you will consider the learners and the learning context. In Module 2, you will dive into the requirements of the project.
  • Synthesize and Evaluate: Within Modules 2 and 3, you will evaluate the extent to which the materials you are reviewing meet the instructional design need. You will contemplate established instructional principles to consider whether the instructional strategies effectively and efficiently support learning. You will also explore and analyze available free and openly licensed open educational resources (OER) that you can adapt to meet the requirements of this project.
  • Simulate & Decide: Within Modules 2 (and the optional Design Slam), you will take the ideas swirling in your head about the materials you have evaluated and simulate (i.e. develop) draft representations of your design conception into a Learning Experience Map. In Module 3, you will make your final design decisions as you prepare revised open educational resources using Open Author on OER Commons. As your final assignment in this course, you will submit the instructional materials you have evaluated and revised. Those who submit final deliverables that meet the design criteria will be invited to include their instructional materials on the Designers for Learning Adult Learning Zone group in OER Commons (Links to an external site.).

Pause.png Before you move on ...

Some may ask, “Why would we do this work only to give it away for free as an open educational resource?” The answer has many layers, some pragmatic and some altruistic. To hear a perspective about OER use from Jennifer Jennings, an adult education instructor at Everett Community College, please view the following video (6:52 minutes) Links to an external site.:

My OER experience by Jennifer Jennings, Everett Community College Links to an external site. from OpenWa Links to an external site. on Vimeo Links to an external site..

From a pragmatic standpoint, we believe it is important that our work is licensed under a Creative Commons license, because we are all volunteers donating our time and effort to create this course and the resulting resources. Therefore, it is important to us that we all retain full access to the works associated with the project. From an altruistic standpoint, we founded Designers for Learning with a charitable purpose. As noted previously, adult basic education is an underserved segment, and we feel we can achieve the greatest good by sharing openly the fruits of our collective efforts. In addition, wherever possible, our goal is NOT to reinvent the wheel, but to improve upon it for our adult learner audience.

Therefore, throughout this design process, keep an eye out for existing open educational resources that can be adapted for your purposes. If there is an existing quality openly licensed image, video, assessment, etc. that aligns with the context of your lesson, by all means adapt it and use it! If you would like more information about Creative Commons licenses, and how to seek and use open educational resources in your project, please see the Extra | Open Educational Resources section within the Extra | Supplementary Readings module.