Estimated reading time: 35 minutes. Read the ADDIE overview and Merrill's First Principles (linked in this module) before this page.
make_videos.py or record and embed your own.)An instructional design model is a representation of the design process: what to do, in what order, and what each step produces. Models serve three purposes. They communicate the process to clients and teammates. They structure the work so nothing essential is skipped. And they embed assumptions about learning and about how design should proceed, which is why choosing a model is a design decision in its own right.
No model is the field's official one. Practitioners adapt, combine, and abandon models as projects demand. Your job in this course is to know the major models well enough to choose and adapt deliberately.
ADDIE is less a specific model than a family name for the generic systems approach: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation. The label was applied retroactively in the 1990s to processes that had existed since the 1970s.
| Phase | Core questions | Typical outputs |
|---|---|---|
| Analysis | Is there a gap? Who are the learners? What must they do? What constraints apply? | Needs assessment, learner and context analysis, task analysis |
| Design | What objectives, assessments, sequence, strategies, and media? | Design document, objectives, assessment plan, storyboards |
| Development | Build it | Materials, media, prototypes, facilitator guides |
| Implementation | Deliver it and support it | Delivery plan, training for facilitators, learner support |
| Evaluation | Did it work? How do we improve it? | Formative and summative evaluation reports, revision plan |
Strengths: universally understood, complete, adaptable. Weaknesses: often practiced as a rigid waterfall with evaluation stuck at the end, slow when requirements change, and easy to bloat with documentation. Most later models are responses to those weaknesses.
Walter Dick and Lou Carey's model (first published 1978, now in its eighth edition with James Carey) is the most detailed articulation of the systems view. It has ten interconnected components:
Two features matter most. First, objectives are written before assessments, and assessments before strategies, which guarantees alignment. Second, revision is a loop, fed by formative evaluation, that touches every earlier component. Dick and Carey is the model behind Modules 3, 4, 6, and 7 of this course.
The Kemp model (Morrison, Ross, Kalman, and Kemp) presents nine elements in a circle rather than a line: instructional problems, learner characteristics, task analysis, instructional objectives, content sequencing, instructional strategies, designing the message, instructional delivery, and evaluation instruments. The circular layout signals that a designer can start anywhere and that the elements are interdependent. Surrounding the circle are ongoing processes: planning, project management, support services, and formative and summative evaluation. Kemp is well suited to classroom teachers and to projects where constraints, not objectives, drive the design.
Michael Allen's SAM (2012) is an agile alternative to ADDIE. After a brief preparation phase (information gathering and a "savvy start" kickoff), the project cycles through iterative design (prototype, review, design) and iterative development (develop, implement, evaluate) with stakeholders reviewing working prototypes early and often. The core commitment is that a rough prototype reviewed in week two teaches the team more than a design document approved in week six. SAM fits e-learning projects with uncertain requirements and available stakeholders; it fits poorly where sign-off must precede any building.
Wiggins and McTighe's Understanding by Design (1998, 2005) is a curriculum design framework rather than a full process model, but its three stages reorganize how designers think:
The insight is the order: evidence before activities. Teachers frequently plan activities first and assessments last, which produces engaging lessons that do not teach what was intended. Backward Design shares this commitment with Dick and Carey but expresses it in language closer to classroom practice.
David Merrill (2002) reviewed the major instructional theories and models and extracted five principles they share. Learning is promoted when:
First Principles is not a process model; it is a set of criteria any instruction should meet. Use it as a checklist against your designs. Instruction that only demonstrates (a lecture) or only applies (an unguided project) fails the principles.
Beyond named models, two broader movements shape current practice. Rapid prototyping (Tripp and Bichelmeyer, 1990) argues that in ill-structured domains, building a quick working version and testing it with learners is a better form of analysis than more analysis. Design thinking, imported from product design, emphasizes empathy with users, reframing the problem, ideation, prototyping, and testing. Both push against the linear reading of ADDIE and both appear in Module 6.
| Model | Process shape | Emphasis | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| ADDIE | Linear with feedback | Completeness | Large, well-defined projects; shared vocabulary |
| Dick and Carey | Linear with revision loop | Alignment and formative evaluation | Systematic training design; instruction with clear performance outcomes |
| Kemp | Circular | Flexibility; constraints | Classroom and small-team design |
| SAM | Iterative cycles | Prototypes; stakeholder review | E-learning with uncertain requirements |
| Backward Design | Three stages | Evidence before activities | Curriculum and unit planning |
| First Principles | Criteria, not process | Problem-centered instruction | Quality check on any design |
Ask four questions:
In practice, most designers use an ADDIE skeleton with iterative development inside it and Merrill's principles as a quality check. That hybrid is a legitimate answer in this course, as long as you can justify it.
Allen, M. W. (2012). Leaving ADDIE for SAM. ASTD Press.
Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J. O. (2015). The systematic design of instruction (8th ed.). Pearson.
Merrill, M. D. (2002). First principles of instruction. Educational Technology Research and Development, 50(3), 43–59.
Morrison, G. R., Ross, S. M., Kalman, H. K., & Kemp, J. E. (2013). Designing effective instruction (7th ed.). Wiley.
Tripp, S. D., & Bichelmeyer, B. (1990). Rapid prototyping: An alternative instructional design strategy. Educational Technology Research and Development, 38(1), 31–44.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). ASCD.