Developing Your Instructional Materials
This is the step that many people jump to first when developing instructional materials. They often are most interested in wading in and writing the lesson plan, shooting the video, programming the computer, or whatever. However, it comes relatively late in the Instructional Design process. What gives?
There are several reasons we don't make up the actual materials until this point. These include the necessity for an analysis phase to ensure that we are teaching things that need to be taught and that we are teaching exactly those things and no others. With any large project, we need a design to follow to make sure that all members of a team are working toward the same ends.
In the Materials Development phase, we actually make whatever instructional materials our designs call for. These may include instructor's manuals, student guides, workbooks, and handouts, videotapes, interactive multimedia computer programs, and almost anything else you can think of. Due to the time limitations of this semester-length course, we tend to concentrate on relatively simple written materials. Remember that the usual project in this course is a self-instructional workbook of some kind.