Definition.  Seels and Richey (1994) define design as "specifying the conditions for learning" (p. 28). Essentially, design focuses on all things related to planning for instruction.  This can include gathering information about learners, instructional environments, performance contexts, and needs. Design signifies to taking this information into consideration when planning for learning conditions in order to facilitate the most effective and appropriate instruction, and learning, possible.  The design domain includes four subdomains:  instructional systems design, message design, instructinal strategies, and learner characteristics.  

 

Reflection.  Through my work with design in the IDT program, I learned the significance of being purposeful when approaching the instruction and learning process.  While this sounds sounds fairly simple, it represented a major shift in my perspective.  Rather than focusing on content that needed to be taught in a specific instructional context, I learned that it is much more effective to think about the learner, the learner's needs, and the instructional and performane contexts, and to let these elements drive the planning, or design, process.  By placing the learner at the center of instructional planning and design, it becomes much easier to develop learning objectives and activities that have a purpose.  While I may not always have the time or the resources to follow the design process in a way that I have throughout the IDT program, my real-life instruction is now grounded in the the ideas that I need to focus on the learner, and not only what I, as the instructor, think that the learner needs to know.