ADDIE Model: 5 Steps to Training

ADDIE model will teach you what an instructional designer does, and you can also use ADDIE as a foundation for your instructional design process. It used to be a set-in-stone process. These days are five different buckets of tasks you can pull from as needed for your instructional design process. ADDIE is an acronym:

• A is for analysis.
• D stands for design (instructional design).
• D stands for development.
• I is for the implementation.
• E stands for evaluation.

Let’s have a closer look at the model.

ANALYSIS.

At the analysis stage, instructional designers gather information and make decisions that will make the training development process much smoother later.

Multiple major activities occur at this stage. For example, instructional designers:

1. Identify the training needs.
2. Learning objectives that address the needs.
3. Define who the audience is to whom the instructions will be targeting.
4. The training content targets to aid the audience in achieving the learning objectives.
5. They pick the most appropriate delivery methods.
6. The resources and constraints are set, such as when the project will be complete, the budget, and the recourses available.

You are doing that upfront work to learn more about the problem, your audience and the solution, so analysis is the best place to start. Therefore, performing a needs assessment is the best place to begin your analysis. It is where you will determine if training helps solve the problem. Through the analysis process, you will look into the root cause of the problem.

For instance, if the problem is due to some environmental issues or some software malfunction, then holding training isn’t going to help solve it. Hence, an essential step in all instructional design is conducting a robust needs assessment.

Learner analysis also falls under this category; this is where you might conduct user interviews and create personas to learn more about your audience because then you can design for that specific audience.

Job task analysis is where you break down what makes up a particular job, so once you have those tasks outlined clearly- it’s much more accessible to design training for people in those specific tasks.

The main issue is the oversight of the analysis stage in the modern instructional design culture. It typically happens that the stakeholders say we need this training, and then the instructional designer designs and develops it because of the organization’s culture.

DESIGN.

At this stage of the ADDIE model, the instructional designer creates a blueprint for the instructions. There are several significant activities included at this stage. The team then arranges the learning content and the information into logical segments or units. Preparation of different storyboards for e-learning modules, training videos and rough drafts of the scripts, and training outlines are composed. Meanwhile, the communication continues between the digital team and the SMEs.

The learning projects’ instructional visual and technical design strategies are documented, reviewed, and signed off by stakeholders on the project. The design stage is where you will look at the results from the analysis, and you will create your learning objectives.

You could also take this a step ahead and create a design document to talk about your findings from the analysis and how you will use those findings to design this solution. Here you would include your objectives, different since and theories to support this learning goal.

DEVELOPMENT. 

Several important activities occur during the development stage of the ADDIE model. The developers create, assemble, and organize the digital and print deliverables that start at the design stage. E-learning and any technical aspects of training are tested and finalized.

Furthermore, the content is live to a selected group of people, including the members of the learning design team. Additionally, development is the stage where you take the storyboard, scripts, and outline of a facilitator’s guide and develop it into the final products presented in front of the audience.

In other words, you will take the storyboard and create it in an authoring tool like the storyline or captivate. You should also develop the facilitator guide into a well-organized final document. It could also be a slide deck to go along with the final form, ready to go live to its audience.

Questions you could ask yourself during the development stage:

1. What to do with the technology fails? Do you have a backup plan?
2. How and when will I use the backup plan?
3. Do the instructional pieces provide accommodation for my learners?

IMPLEMENTATION.

Implementation is the delivery of the training. Here, videos, e-learning, and other materials are run through the participants and learners outside the test groups. Typically, the e-learning packages are uploaded onto the learning management system to be accessed by enrolled users. The facilitator will deliver this to the live audience if it is a face-to-face or virtual session. The person conducting the session would not be the instructional designer. By this stage, the designers would have handed off that to the facilitators.

EVALUATION.

This stage intersects with each of the previous stages of the ADDIE process. The evaluation stage involves 2 major components:

1. Formative evaluation.
2. Summative evaluation.

The formative evaluation describes the examination done throughout the four stages of the training process. It allows those involved in the training or curriculum development to recognize potential barriers to the training before they happen. They respond to training challenges as they occur to avoid repeat mistakes and make course corrections as needed.

The summative evaluation focuses on examining the outcome of the training during the implementation or user acceptance phase. The information gathered from the summative assessment continues to guide the project design process.

Under evaluation, you should aim to answer the following questions:

1. Do people like and positively accept the learning experience?
2. Are the users learning something new?
3. Are they applying what they learn to the job?

To get specific answers to these questions, you can run assessments or look into business metrics or KPIs to see what they use in the job. Further, look into what type of organizational results you observe upon implementation, for example, better customer satisfaction rates, higher sales and customer retention etc.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

The ADDIE model has five stages and is not always linear. They build off one another, and this model’s execution will vary depending on the project. ADDIE, in a nutshell, would be best if you spent more time on analysis and evaluation than design and development.

Related readings:

Professional Leadership Institute (PLI) is an educational website providing professionals from all types of businesses with practical education in human resources and leadership. To keep evolving your leadership toolkit, additional PLI resources below will be useful:
Learning and Development and the ADDIE Model
4 Reasons Why the Best Leaders Embrace Continuous Learning at Work
7 HR Functions And 5 Must-Have Skills