ADDIE

This morning I was reading over the job postings for positions on LinkedIn. (Not to worry - I'm not going anywhere! I just like to stay on top of what is requested/expected for folks in my line of work.) I saw a position that looked really interesting -- a consulting job for an Instructional Design Manager in India. That is, it looked interesting until I got to this line:

Client follows the ADDIE model of Instructional Design and Development.

People, people, people! ADDIE isn't anymore an instructional design model than "lather, rinse, repeat" is a design model. ADDIE, for my non-instructional design peeps means Analysis, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate. A design model that has "Design" as one of it's phases -- that's not terribly helpful. A design model should give me guidelines on how to design -- how to decide what's in, what's not,  to chunk, order,  present content. Seeing this statement tells me that whoever wrote the job description, and likely whoever is the hiring manager, has no idea what it takes to make good, instructionally effective content.Working for these people would be a nightmare because I would be continuously struggling to educate management/the client on what the heck we were trying to do.

Likewise, when I'm interviewing candidates and I ask them "What instructional design model guides you most?" and they reply, "The ADDIE model," I know they haven't a clue. Take a few minutes and simply scan the results of a search on "instructional design" and then you can at least toss around names like Merrill and Clark. Otherwise, I can guarantee you - we won't be chatting at a second interview!