In the manner of other military procedures, a formal methodology of Instructional Design was developed and proved a great success. B.F. Skinner, in his Programmed Instruction , was an early proponent of breaking educational content down into small chunks, testing whether the information was learned immediately after presentation, and reinforcing or remediating answers before continuing to the next chunk. ID is used to develop textbooks and ancillaries, but it still hasn t penetrated college and university instruction to the extent that it has military and corporate training. Despite lip service purporting to value teaching, publication for peers still far outranks teaching excellence. Freed from research and service duties, they presumably have more time to devote to instruction.
Rigorous analysis identifies the most critical material and makes it a priority of the course.
The course is tailored to a specific audience. Course content is derived from learning objectives that specifically state what a student is to learn. Course content is delivered in a variety of methods and carefully scripted to evoke maximum learning and retention. Evaluation is varied and frequent. In the ID approach, testing follows directly from the learning objectives and course content, ensuring that testing reflects teaching.