Self-regulating Yourself and Others during the Instructional Design Process

In order to produce a successful instructional design, the designer must create the instructional design, implement it, and evaluate it so that improvements can be made. This takes someone who has the grit to continue the evaluation and revising process until the design is finalized and meets the needs of its audience. Instructional designs are dynamic in nature because they can always be improved upon; therefore, much time is invested into creating a successful instructional design. Completing the entire instructional design process requires someone who can manage and self-regulate themselves and others until a finished product is completed within the allotted timeframe.

First, what does it mean to self-regulate yourself and others?  Once the implementation date of the lesson is established, then the instructional designer must create a timeline to work from. Careful thought should be given to the progress that should be made each day or week in order to meet the implementation timeline. That is where self-regulation comes into play. If the designer isn’t making progress each week, then it will be difficult to complete all of the steps in the ADDIE framework of instructional design, and the effectiveness of the lesson will suffer.

During the first project, students were asked to upload their design documents each step of the ADDIE process. The instructor was regulating and establishing a method to ensure that students would have ample time dedicated to each step of the process. In addition, feedback was provided along the way so that improvements could be made prior to implementation. This method was helpful and enabled the designer to meet the deadlines established in the course.

During the second project, the completion date was given; however, the instructional designer was responsible for establishing a timeline so the lesson design would be completed before the end of the course. Documents were not required to be turned in, so it was imperative that a self-regulating plan was established between the designer and the client, so they could meet the target implementation date. In my second project, I was also working with another classmate, so we had to establish a completion timeframe in which both of us could accomplish. This took much more time than I originally expected. Coordinating both clients’ and both designers’ schedules was more difficult and limited productivity at times.   

Both designers accomplished the steps of the ADDIE framework and met the clients’ implementation date. Regulating the process and meeting the timeframe was effective because a checklist of what to accomplish and the person responsible for completing the task was established before the process began. This strategy worked well for the second project; therefore, the implementation of the design was completed in a timely manner and revisions could be made to the final document that improved the overall instructional design.