Creating engaging online courses is both a desire and a necessity for knowledge entrepreneurs. However, you can meet many obstacles along the way, starting from the fact that maybe you’re new to the game or haven’t attempted something as ambitious as a complex online course before.
Luckily, instructional design theories such as the ADDIE training model provide a great blueprint for creating engaging online courses. It’s a tried and tested method that many online creators already use. So let’s find out more about it and how it can help you design your courses.
Apart from the easy-to-remember acronym that stands for Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation, ADDIE is known as a basic framework for instructional design.
The five phases are a guideline for building effective and engaging e-learning modules. This structure is so successful because it results in good quality design with specific learning objectives, well-organized content, relevant activities, supporting materials and assessments that are closely connected to the course goals. All of these are general principles for good learning design, but the iterative aspect of ADDIE ensures that it’s effective even for complex projects. The assessment component means that future courses will benefit from the valuable takeaways of past ones.
This learning design model has a logical, sequential quality. The order of steps is as follows:
Identify the instructional objectives and gather basic information about learners (demographics, level of knowledge, preferred learning method, etc.);
This step is highly specific and systematic. The content, resources, instructional methods, and media need to support the objectives established in the Analysis phase.
This is the part where the course is created and it can be reviewed by beta users at this stage.
This is where learners are enrolled and go through the content.
This phase has two parts: formative (at every stage of the process) and summative (assessments aimed at an overall evaluation of the course and gathering feedback from learners).
Learning management systems (LMSs) allow you to use many instructional design models. Learn how to make the best of ADDIE using your LMS.
As an instructional designer, you need all the relevant data to choose the best learning objectives. This is when you use the LMS functions that can deliver you the information you need. Here are some of the items to figure out:
If you already have a platform, it’s a good idea to use site-wide surveys to gather feedback from current learners. Alternatively, if you’re just starting out, conducting learner persona interviews is a great way to find new ideas.
With all the information under your belt, you can decide on your course structure and the knowledge and skills you will focus on. Keep in mind that most of the success of the ADDIE training model is that it applies to both macro and micro levels. This means that you can use the model for the course as a whole and for each module. Your LMS has already-made templates and capabilities that will help you decide:
Read more: How to create scenario-based learning directly in your LMS
This is where you take your carefully drafted blueprint and start building on it. The LMS's authoring tool is your trusted partner in this, as it provides you with everything you need to bring your ideas to life. You can:
Read more: How to create an email course to grow your contacts list
This is where learners buy and enroll in your course. Your LMS will help you with:
The ADDIE training model doesn’t require you to be as hands-on as a trainer in a corporation, but it helps to check the course regularly and make sure that you have the information you need to change things or solve issues if they arise.
This is the final one, where the analytics provided by your LMS come in handy. With the ADDIE model, formative assessment is present at each step of the process. Summative assessment is only possible after the implementation phase when there is enough data to draw informed conclusions. Here are some of the useful analytics to look at:
Apart from all this valuable data, there is also the possibility of running end-of-course surveys or the option for learners to leave online course reviews. In this way, learners can give direct feedback about the content and offer suggestions for future improvements or other topics of interest.
The ADDIE training model was not explicitly created for online course creators or the LMS, but its timeless principles make it suitable for it. Combining the detailed structure of the model with the LMS’s capabilities for course design, implementation and evaluation results in a quality, highly engaging online course tailored to the needs of the learners.