Instructional Design Fundamentals:
This website provides the fundamentals to understand the field of instructional design. Instructional Design, or ID for short, is defined in different manners by different people. Most agree that instructional design is a systematic process for creating instruction based on empirical principles of learning and instruction. The intent of instructional design is to produce instruction that is effective (the learners master the intended content) and is efficient (the instruction does not waste instructional time or resources).

Representing Instructional Design as a Process:
Instructional Design is usually represented as a process, often as a flowchart, that indicates what instructional designers do when creating instruction regardless of medium for delivery. While most ID models do contain the specific steps one would follow while doing instructional design, skilled practitioners of instructional design work more heuristically rather than step-by-step. Instructional design includes the entire process from analysis of learning needs and goals to the development of a delivery system to meet those needs and finally evaluation of the effectiveness of the instruction in leading learners to reach the instructional goals.

The above model is Hannum's basic instructional design model. In many ways it reflects the common steps in instructional design found in most instructional design models. It is represented in a circular fashion to indicate that while the flow is generally from one step to the next, at many points while doing instructional design you "revisit" an earlier step.

The typical starting point is with needs assessment (on the left slightly below center) then continuing counter-clockwise around the circle through evaluation and revision. More detailed information about each step can be found under ID Steps in the top menu.

Where to Start:
If you are fairly new to the field of instructional design, then start with the Overview or you may read the FAQs in the Help & Support section. If you are somewhat familiar with instructional design, then you may want to go to ID Steps to see what how I recommend instructional design be conducted. If you are more familiar with instructional design, you may want to go to Resources to see academic programs to help you further your career, journals to learn more about ID, or check website links. You can find information about employment opportunities in instructional design as well as articles about ID in PDF format in the Help & Support section.