ADDIE Model:

ADDIE training is a learning development model for Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation. It’s a more time-consuming process than the SAM model, but it’s a complete cycle focusing on getting it right the first time. With ADDIE, a solution spends more time developing, where designers tweak and perfect the details before launch. 

1. Analyze

This phase requires a complete analysis of the instructional goals and objectives. The team is hammering out answers to these questions – and more:

What’s the learning environment?

Do you need to offer training in multiple locations? Does the course content require role-playing and hands-on skill building? What’s the technical situation? Do your learners have access to wi-fi and smart phones? Are there limiting factors such as technical resources, time, and financial investment?

Who is the audience?
What is the demographic of your learners (age, level of education, cultural background, etc.)? Are they familiar with digital learning? Do they have desk jobs or are they skilled laborers? Do they have previous knowledge of the course topic? How much time do they have to devote to learning? Are there barriers for achieving their professional goals? If so—what are they? What specific skills do they have, and what are the performance gaps? 

What problem are you trying to solve?
Skills deficits? Communication issues? Lack of diversity awareness?

What are the expectations?
Are learners required to take the course? Do they expect this course to solve a problem, help them learn a new skill, or move up the ladder in their company? Would the course address the “what’s in it for me?” question? What do you want learners to achieve?

How do learners prefer to learn?
The answer to this question will help you determine the best delivery tool. Find out whether your learners prefer face-to-face learning, hands-on skill-building, or a mixture of both, which would point you to a blended learning approach.

2. Design

Now that you know your audience, the next step in the ADDIE model is to think about creating a course that fills in the gaps. This is where you:

• Determine learning objectives

• Create content outlines

• Develop scripts

• Select the user interface and environment (web based? LMS? Face-to face instruction? Gamification? Instructional storytelling? mLearning? Videos? A blended learning approach?)

• Map out time frames for each activity

• Choose the course progression (linear or based on skill achievement? Can learners opt out of parts of the course through assessment? Can learners go at their own pace?)

• Choose the assessment method

After all of these elements are determined, you’re ready to create storyboards so you can see the big picture.

3. Develop

Ready, set, action! Now it’s time to bring those storyboards to life.

Look back at the previous steps to make sure you’re focusing on your audience and the best way to reach them. This is where you create a prototype for the customer to make sure you’re on the right track.

If you get the green light, start creating course content—videos, audio, animations, assessments, graphics, hands-on tasks, instructional guides, multimedia presentations—whatever the team determined was the best delivery method in the DESIGN phase.

This is also where you choose the look and feel of the course, which includes fonts, colors, and other design elements that reflect the learning environment culture.

Instead of creating the entire course then dumping it all at once on your reviewers, it’s a good idea to divide the course into modules to save development time. This way, while the customer and/or QA is reviewing a module, the development team can continue working on the next one.

Pay attention to your Quality Assurance colleagues, who have the end user in mind, and are also really good at catching simple typos and more complex structural errors. Build, test, then rebuild: remember—the key to the ADDIE is iteration!

This is also the time to reach back again to the DESIGN phase to make sure the timing is right. If the course is taking too much time to complete, it might be time for the chopping block.

4. Implement

This is the nail biter stage where you find out whether the design team paid close attention to the previous three steps: it’s time to present and teach the course material to your learners. Here, you’re not only paying attention to learners’ (and instructors’, if that applies) reactions to the course itself, you’re also looking at whether the delivery method is working. Were there hiccups in accessing the LMS? Did learners have adequate wi-fi coverage? Were the instructors prepared? Did learners need constant guidance? Did the assessments tell you what you needed to know? Did the learners achieve the learning outcomes you set out to achieve?

The development isn’t over yet; you’re paying attention to learner feedback so you can make the course even better.

5. Evaluate

You paid attention to everything you learned in the implementation stage and delivered the course. So, how’d you do? Did the learners learn what you wanted them to learn? Were they able to apply new skills? Were they motivated to learn? You can find out by checking assessment targets through the LMS, surveying learners and instructors, conducting interviews—whatever method you choose to get feedback. 

Based on that feedback, you can evaluate whether or not you achieved the goals you identified in the ANALYSIS phase, and, based on the answer, either forge ahead, make a few tweaks, or begin the ADDIE process anew. 

The thing is, if you did everything right—allowing for an iterative process, completing each stage before beginning the next one, paying attention to your original course objectives, acting on feedback from your team, client, learners, and instructors—you have a pretty good chance of getting it right the first time.