Dr. Branch at the University of Georgia clear idea of the characteristics of instructional design. He presents seven features: it is a student-centered process, a goal-oriented process, a creative process, an empirical, integrative, and self-correcting process, a team effort, it also focuses on meaningful performance, assumes outcomes are measurable, reliable, and valid (Branch, 2018).
That gives people a general idea of how the instructional design is, and how it could present to researchers and audiences. The most remarkable characteristic I believe is: instructional design is a creative process. "Instructional design is a system of procedures for developing education and training materials in a consistent and reliable fashion"(Branch, 2018).
In other words, it is a creative process. As a process, it includes an obvious goal for each design purpose, it must be student-centered to fit the audiences' needs. It also will be a creative process, because each goal, target cohort will have different needs, every performance, outcome measure, and the self-correcting process will also be unique and independent. All of those work definitely needs to be done as a group or working in a team. They are all unique but all follow the same process principle, as illustrated in both Dr. Branch and Dr. Dick's article, even though the processes are different, but they are all generated from the same model(Branch, 2018; Dick, 2001).
Thus, it is not hard to conclude that the instructional design is a creative process because it actually contains all other characteristics. Just as Dr. Mintz mentioned in his article: "Let me conclude by urging you to think outside your comfort zone and integrate one or more of these course design strategies into your classes."(Mintz, 2021).
Reference:
Branch, R. M. (2018). Characteristics of instructional design models. In R. A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (4th Ed.), (pp. 23-30). New York, NY: Pearson Education.
Mintz, Steven (2021, February 8). 7 innovative approaches to course design. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/7-innovative-approaches-course-design
Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J. O. (2001). The systematic design of instruction(5th ed.) (pp. 2-14). New York: Longman.
Hi Sungling,
You made a clear summary of sorting out the key characteristics of instructional design peocess. I also advocated for the creative and student-oriented points, which the most outstanding meanings for instructional design. Instruction is a two-way interactive process, involving both teachers and students. What designers need to keep thinking is how to design a more customized and original way to deliver the teaching contents according to the real needs from students, based on the experience of traditional teaching. I like your refelctions.😊
-Xiaoying
Hi Sungling,
Thank you for sharing some of the key points and quotes from the readings. I am interested in knowing more what you mentioned in the concluding paragraph. What would you say are the core characteristics to define "a creative process?" As an educator, when we try to integrate the design strategies as Dr. Mintz suggested, any challenge you would imagine to have to tackle for your interested course setting?
-Renee