Instructional Design was a unit in which I was particularly interested. As an educator of adult students, providing interesting, accurate, and personalized instruction is a priority. Instructional design provides a way of putting learners’ needs together with technology, content, instructional strategies, and multimedia in ways that will effectively work together and enhance learning.

With adult learners, I routinely implement personalized instruction. However, learning about the basic considerations in design was extremely beneficial. For example, remembering to ask the following questions during the design process:

·        Where are we going ?

·        How will we get there?

·        How will we know when we get there?

These questions are foundational to the analysis, strategy, and evaluation sectors of instructional design. No matter if using the widely recognized ADDIE  model, any of the other models presented, or when creating a customized model for my own use, being able to address and answer these three questions is important to the design process.

The biggest takeaways that I have from this unit are:

·        Analyzing actual status versus desired status during instructional design.

·        Communicating well-written objectives.

·        Determining how to customize the 5 phases found in the ADDIE model (analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation) to best create an effective instructional design model that is cohesive and personalized and tat includes performance assessment(s) based on the objectives, and that enhances retention.