Overview

The within the field of educational technology there are numerous ways to design and communicate opportunities for learning to an audience of learners. Among the various models of instructional system design (ISD) used in teaching, the ADDIE model is commonly used to create instructional materials that cater to the instructor's overall goal. In order to understand the ADDIE model, an instructor must consider its five phases:

Steps of the ADDIE Model

1. Analyze – During this phase, the instructional problem is identified in addition to the goals and objectives, the audience’s needs, existing knowledge, and any other relevant characteristics.
2. Design – This is the phase where systematic and specific selection of learning objectives, assessment instruments, exercises, content, subject matter analysis, lesson planning, graphical user interface (GUI), and media selection are decided upon.
3. Develop – The production, creation and/or assembly of the content outlined in the Design phase of the model.
4. Implement – The action and a procedure for training the learner and instructor is developed.  Additionally, the medium in which the material was created in disturbed with any supplemental information needed to prepare learners and instructors.
5. Evaluate - The evaluation phase consists of two parts: formative and summative. Present in each stage of the ADDIE process is the formative evaluation. The formative evaluation focuses on testing within small groups to improve the mode of instruction. On the other hand, the summative evaluation consists of tests that ensure that the medium was a success in teaching the learner the intended lesson/outcome.

Graphic Illustration

Here's another graphical illustration of the ADDIE model with a brief explanation of the five each phases:

History of the ADDIE Model

1975

Florida State University creates the ADDIE model for the U.S. Army (Branson, Rayner, Cox, Furman, King, Hannum, 1975).

Early 80's

Dr. Russell Watson revises the ADDIE model.  The five main phases remain the same, but the steps within the phases are changed.  This is done to fit an organization's needs (Watson, 1981). 

Mid-80's

ADDIE changes from a linear to a dynamic model (U.S. Army, 1984). The last phase, "Evaluation and Control," is shortened to "Evaluation" (U.S Army, 1984).

1995

ADDIE is first used as an acronym (Schlegel, 1995).

1997

J. J. G. van Merrienbor (1997) writes that other instructional design models can be used in conjunction with ADDIE; thus it is a "plug & play" model.

2000's

ADDIE moves from being a process model (De Simone, Werner, Harris 2002) to being a guide . While ADDIE strives to identify on-the-job performance (Branson, Rayner, Cox, Furman, Hannum, 1975), it works best with other performance models.

References

Clark, D. R. (2004). ADDIE timeline. Retrieved from http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/history_isd/addie.html#model

Dick, W., & Carey, L. (1996). The systematic design of instruction. New York, NY: Haper Collins College Publishers.

Leshin, C.B., Pollock, J., & Reigeluth, C. M. (1992). Instructional design strategies and tactics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Education Technology Publications.

Molenda, M. (2003). "In search of the elusive ADDIE model". Performance improvement, 42(5), 34-37.

Strickland, A.W. (2006). ISU College of Education: ADDIE. Retrieved from http://ed.isu.edu/addie/index.html.