The Instructional Design Environment: technology to support design problem solving

Abstract

The problems of efficiently producing effective instruction in areas such as industry, military, and vocational education are exacerbated by several complex factors: increasingly rapid change in technology; substantial variation in training needs and target populations within large organizations; inefficient mechanisms for performing formative evaluations; and a lack of means for efficiently incorporating new models of design into practice. In the context of these increasingly difficult problems, we present the Instructional Design Environment (IDE), a hypermedia system for designing and developing instructional material, including texts, interactive video disk, and intelligent tutoring systems. The representation of design analyses and specifications, and the design activities of IDE users are not constrained by any particular model of instructional design, but can be tailored to suit a wide range of such models. Although the system is continually evolving and exists in several forms, (Swartz and Russell, 1989) we discuss how the features of IDE suggest how computer-based design environments may provide ways simplifying the design problems for technical training in rapidly changing areas. © 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers.