A SYSTEM'S APPROACH TO CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
ISD is a systems approach to analyzing, designing, developing, implementing, and evaluating any instructional experience. Its DNA is can be traced back to the earliest system theorists, especially Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1950). Centuries earlier, Aristotle summed up system's theory best when he wrote that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” With ISD, the elements of analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation will always create a better instructional product than is possible by leaving any of these elements out of the design process.
ISD is a complex adaptive system in that instructional designers learn and adapt to changes in instructional systems elements to improve instructional products. While some have been quick to criticize ISD for its perceived rigidity related to a systems approach, they fail to realize that ISD allows incredible flexibility, and designers actually learn and adapt from each new variation in population, content, or delivery system. This is critical when new technologies enter the design landscape. You only need to look at the recent seachange in design involving online learning, social media, and smartphone technology for examples. Whatever comes next, ISD will be waiting with a plan and an instructional product.
The systems approach operates on certain basic principles. If you are a “systems” thinker, you already know that systems are present in every facet of our lives. We elect our representatives in the political system, and we prosecute them in the legal system. We pay taxes as a result of the legislative system, and we travel from place to place as a result of a transportation system. Instructional systems are no different in theory than any other system—only the details change.
The reason training and education work so well in a systems environment goes to the very essence of systems themselves. The systems that seem to work best are those that have observable, measurable, and replicable elements. In the case of ISD, these elements include analytical methods, objectives, evaluation schemes, design plans, and a number of other system components.
While ISD is a system, it is not so rigid that it lacks flexibility. In fact, the more you work with ISD, the more you realize that the system allows you greater opportunities to be creative. For example, a system-less training organization with an intra-organizational communications problem might decline to pursue that “analysis and evaluation stuff” and concentrate on creating attractive participant materials and a video that features the company CEO looking casual, sitting on the corner of his or her desk. This is what I refer to as the four-color and Hollywood approach to training—all flash and no substance. A systems approach that contains analysis and evaluation allows for creativity necessary to focus on the real workplace issues and provide solutions that can be evaluated and replicated across the organization, proffering some assurance that the intervention was worth the monies and resources expended.
Before going any further into ISD, it is important to herald the universality of this process. The notion that ISD only works in training environments is as accurate as saying that maps only work if you are driving a red sports car in towns with a population of fewer than 500. The process of assembling a curriculum is built on the same concepts and principles. This applies to whether you are designing an English-as-a-second-language course, a third-grade reading lesson, or a jet airline simulator. The variables that exist in any curriculum design process, including population variables, delivery systems, and resources, are just that—variables.