Basic Theories of Instructional Designing

With E-learning coming of age, Instructional Designing has grown in leaps and bounds. The growing importance of Instructional Designing has led to many studies in this field, which have brought a variety of learning theories to the field of Instructional Designing.

In this post, let us know the most widely known theories of Instructional Designing:

Behaviorism:

Behaviorism as a learning theory can be dated back to Aristotle. The primary focus of the theory is to study the overt behavior that can be clearly seen and measured. This learning theory aims at shaping the behavioral pattern to bring about a desired stimulus-response pattern. When applied to Instructional Designing, a course based on the theory of behaviorism, may be structured in a way that aims at repeating a certain behavioral pattern to make it an automatic response.

Cognitivism:

People found that the theory of behaviorism had limitations, because it treated learning as a programmed response that happened by mere repetition. So, the new studies that were conducted came up with the theory of Cognitivism. The theory of Cognitivism says that learning involves associations established through contiguity and repetition. Here learning is seen as a inner mental activity that involves thought process, memory, understanding, and problem-solving abilities. Courses are built in a way that students learn to perform a particular task in a consistent way, not just by mere repetition but by “acquisition or reorganization of the cognitive structures through which humans process and store information.” They believe that learning (Schemata) is a process that alters the internal knowledge structure (Schema).

Constructivism:

Constructivists brought a paradigm shift in the way learning was perceived. So far, both Behavioral and Cognitivism believed that learning was an objective process, but, with Constructivism, learning was seen as subjective phenomena, where the learners construct their own reality based on their previous experiences.  Then there was the question, if everyone constructed their own unique reality, how then could so many unique realities co exist? To this the Constructivism theorists said that, there is a co-existence of many realities because much of the reality is shared through a process of social negotiation.

What is the best theoretical approach to Instructional Designing?

Like all theories have their pros and cons, these learning theories too have their strengths and weaknesses.

The behavioral theory is good, when we have to train people to have an automatic reflex-like response to a situation. For instance: security personnel taking safety measures in different situations. But, the people who have been highly conditioned using this type of training may go blank in situations for which they have not been trained.

Similarly, Cognitivism, is good to train people to perform a task in a consistent way, but again the consistent way may not be the best way of doing something for everybody, and at all times.

Whereas, the Constructivism exposes you to a variety of situations, and allows you to construct your own learning space, which helps in dealing with real life situations, but this kind of training may become  unnecessary and problematic at times when there is just one way to do things right, and allowing you to do something your way may be dangerous.

So, there is no one theory for Instructional Designing. Experienced Instructional Designers apply different theories to meet different learning objectives. But, nevertheless, these theories give instructional designers an idea of variety of approaches they can employ while preparing a courseware.

Advertisement