The ADDIE Model - My Take

The ADDIE model is a tool that has shown itself to be quite formidable in instructional design circles, please pardon the imagery pun.

The ADDIE model is a phased tool utilized by instructional designers and developers of training material. Each phase that makes up the model are connected in that each builds and transitions the user to the next stage. There are five phases, analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation.

The analysis phase is where goals and objectives are established. One might think of this phase as being where you wrap your head around and prepare for what is to come in creating the exercises.

The next step is the design phase, which is where the objectives are dealt with, assessment instruments are established, exercises and content are created, and the lesson's actual planning is fleshed out. Planning the strategy of how the materials will be presented and how it will ultimately appear to an end-user comprise the lion's share of this portion within the model.

Now that you've thought about what you want to teach others and come up with how you want it to look and be interacted with, the next phase comes into sight, the development phase. In the development portion of the model assembly of the design's

materials are debugged and worked through. This phase allows for those ideas and content to be vetted and poured over until they are ready for launch.

Following the development, the phase where any project's ultimate success is decided, let alone a learning initiative, the implementation phase. Implementation is critical, and this is where no matter how great an effort was exerted in the earlier portions decides the fate of the course or materials that folks are expected to learn from. Procedures for training trainers, sourcing proper materials, and finalizing the method of delivery being used for the course that has been created to take their final form.

Now that all of the creative and the herculean effort of launching a new training initiative is complete, you find yourself looking back at your baby. This final phase is the evaluation phase. During, the portion of the model, is where you'll seek input from learners and users of your creation, along with trying to do some self-critique of what you've put out there. So let us say you didn't get great feedback, and you found some things that you want to clean up, well then you get to start all over again, with phase 1.

The cyclical nature of the process/model feeds itself and requires one to seek out ways of improving their materials until all avenues have been exhausted.