Learning Theory of Instructional Design

Learning Theory of Instructional Design

The instructions created by teachers and trainers in different educational and training institutes as well as in training programs of different organizations, which include the “instructional experiences which helps in making the learning a better experience by enabling and making the process of acquisition of related and relevant knowledge and skill more efficient, appealing in nature, and effective for the learner; is known as “Instructional Design”.

There are various theories under “Instructional Design” such as Learning Theory, Pedagogical Theory, and Instructional Theory.

The link between learning theory and educational practice was proposed and envisioned by John Dewey (1910). But, it was Edward Thorndike (1913) who explored the different associated principals of learning theory, which the teachers can use and directly apply to design their teaching material. There are two theories namely, “Elaboration Theory” and “Linking Theory” which builds a bridge for the transition between instructional design process, learning theory, instructional design methodology, and instructional theory.

I have selected “Elaboration Theory” to describe how it can be applied to design of educational material.

Elaboration Theory (Reigeluth and Stein, 1993) is the learning theory of instructional design, which is aimed at teachers and trainers to focus on “how to teach” rather than concentrating their focus on “how and why people learn different things.” The major concern of the elaboration theory is the organization of the educational material and the structure, which is provided to it by the instructor (teachers mostly). Here the focus is being shifted to organization and structure rather than the materi...

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The problems, which can occur while using an invalid learning theory during the designing of the instructional material, are as follows:

• The instructions can get jumbled and incoherent for the learners. The incoherency can lower the motivation of the students along with their learning experience.

• The instructional materials when not organized and structured according to the learning theory of instructional design; the teacher may miss some points here and there and thus the learning and teaching process remains incomplete and the process of acquiring knowledge becomes low in efficacy.

• The general relationship between different parts of a specific instructional material cannot be established and taught to the learner effectively and thus the whole process of teaching fails; if the invalid learning theory is used while designing the instruction materials.