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School of Education

Instructional Design

Module 4. Instructional Design Trends

Educational technology is a fast paced field in which new tools and inventions are continually emerging. A freely available open access journal called JAID can help you keep current with new ideas. JAID is an acronym for the Journal of Applied Instructional Design that is freely available at https://jaid.edtechbooks.org.

Learning Experience Design (LXD)

As you learned in module 1, effective learning environments are content centered, learner centered, assessment centered, and community centered. Learning experience design (LXD) looks through the lens of the learner at how the user will experience your learning environment:

Multimedia Design for Learning

As the field of instructional design has progressed through its emphases on behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism, connectivism, and constructionism, multimedia technologies have enabled instructional designers to deliver content through interactive uses of text, image, audio, and video. The second volume of How People Learn added emphasis to the important role multimedia plays in engaging students for social and emotional learning. The following special issue of JAID focuses on the critical need for instructional designers to understand and practice the principles of multimedia learning:

Culturally Sustaining Instructional Design

In August of 2023, JAID published a special issue on the topic of designing for equity. In an article about culturally sustaining instructional design, Smith & Willet (2023) explain how “Instructional designers must take intentional action to develop and implement culturally sustaining online learning environments with the intention of both improving all students’ learning experiences as well as minimizing the success gap (Kumi-Yeboah & Amponsah, 2023). First, they must take the time to understand the history and systems of higher education and seek to minimize the effects of the systemic inequalities higher education has perpetuated in the past (Denaro et al., 2022). Second, they need to reflect on their own biases—both conscious and unconscious prejudices—to design learning that is appropriate for diverse students, not just an assumed norm (Moore, 2021). Finally, instructional designers need to select and use instructional design models that will direct their attention to—rather than ignore or distract from—learners’ individual backgrounds, experiences, and needs.” (para. 10)

Artificial Intelligence

There is no question about AI impacting the practice of instructional design. In the following article from Educause, Rob Gibson, who is the Associate CIO for Academic Technology and User Services at Emporia State University, identifies ten ways in which artificial intelligence is transforming the course design and development process:

Professor Brent Anders is Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at American University of Armenia. Anders recently created a YouTube channel about using AI in education. An important theme is using AI for instructional design. In the videos Anders provides at his Sovorel channel, you will encounter clever prompts Anders uses to make ChatGPT assist in different phases of instructional design. Here are some examples:

Devlyn Peck is a freelance instructional designer you can learn more about by following this link to devlinpeck.com. In the following video, Peck presents his view of AI impacts on instructional design:

Assets identified in Peck’s video are listed as follows: