The Virtual Profession Immersion Model: Bridging Principles and Practice For Instructional Design Students

Instructional design students are typically provided with a strong set of instructional design theories and models as a major component of an instructional design degree. These models vary in particulars but include three basic questions: Where do you need to go? (learner and needs assessment) How will you get there? (instructional strategies) How will you know when you have arrived? (evaluation). The models represent theories that include knowledge from educational psychology, motivation, adult learning, and program assessment and are critical to the design process. However, these models are often presented in a linear manner that implies a step by step approach to designing instruction. The danger is for students, who are presented various models, to learn the models through declarative knowledge acquisition, being able to recall all of the steps of an ID model as if one is memorizing the steps in baking a cake. Students may also be presented and taught ID models that emphasize procedural knowledge acquisition. This approach would focus the student on learning how to perform and complete an instructional design project. Good & Brophy (1995) reported that combining both declarative and procedural knowledge acquisition strategies were most effective for students learning new concepts and skills. But what if learning what the ID models are, and learning how to apply the models do not necessarily coincide with what strategies and activities ID practitioners actually employ when designing instruction?