In the constantly evolving landscape of academia, effective instructional design for higher education has emerged as a vital component for enhancing student engagement and learning outcomes. Gone are the days when a syllabus and a few lectures were sufficient. Today, universities and colleges must compete on the global stage, offering courses that are not only informative but also accessible, engaging, and pedagogically sound.

From an educational perspective, instructional design refers to the systematic and deliberate process of crafting learning experiences. It encompasses the transformation of learning principles and theories into tangible plans for instructional materials, activities, resources, and evaluation strategies.

This comprehensive guide aims to provide educators and administrators with a robust roadmap. We will explore why these frameworks matter, how to ensure accessibility for all students, and the top models you can leverage to create impactful learning experiences.

Table of Contents:

What is Instructional Design for Higher Education?

Instructional design (ID) in the context of higher education involves understanding the specific needs and goals of adult learners to strategically plan out learning paths. It is not merely about digitizing textbooks; it is about creating an architecture for learning.

The learning design framework guides educators in effectively planning the overall process. By combining various methods, tools, and media, educators can design environments that suit specific learning objectives. This rigorous process is used for:

  • Designing and developing engaging learning materials: Building content that is clear, concise, and stimulating, utilizing various formats like presentations, simulations, or interactive activities.
  • Implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of instruction: Putting the designed materials into practice and assessing their impact on learner achievement.
  • Revising and refining the instruction as needed: Continuously monitoring and improving the instructional design based on learner feedback and performance data.

Why Apply Instructional Design Models in Universities?

Instructional design frameworks help teachers and educators create optimized and creative learning experiences. When you use framework tools for designing higher education courses, you stay aligned with the institution’s goals and purposes for its students.

Here are the primary reasons why adopting a structured instructional design model is essential for effective teaching and learning:

1. Guidance in Course Development

Developing a course from the ground up can often feel overwhelming. Nonetheless, using instructional design frameworks simplifies this process by offering structured guidelines and templates. This approach conserves time and minimizes the chances of missing essential components, such as aligning assessments with learning objectives or considering accessibility.

By posing essential questions—such as what an instructional design framework is and how it can be customized to meet specific course goals—you can create courses that are efficient and flexible for future requirements.

2. Quality Assurance and Consistency

Instructional design models guide creation with clear objectives in mind, minimizing flaws and maximizing learning impact. Think of them as blueprints for intentional design. They ensure that regardless of who is teaching the course, the core learning outcomes and structural integrity remain consistent and high-quality.

3. Improved Evaluation and Review Processes

Instructional design frameworks highlight ensuring that assessments align with learning objectives. This connection guarantees that evaluations effectively review student progress and skills.

Formative assessments, often incorporated into these frameworks, offer continuous feedback, enabling students to recognize areas that need improvement and modify their learning approaches. These frameworks are known for employing various assessment methods, including quizzes, projects, peer reviews, and reflections.

4. Time and Resource Optimization

Higher education instructional design models provide a structured roadmap for developing learning materials, including necessary components, activities, and assessments. This streamlines development and fosters reuse, saving precious time and resources. Instead of reinventing the wheel for every semester, the framework allows for scalable updates.

5. Enhanced Collaboration

By providing a shared framework, models facilitate seamless collaboration between instructional designers, subject matter experts (SMEs), and stakeholders. It ensures high-quality instruction that aligns with both learner and organizational needs.

6. Continuous Improvement

Higher education is ever-dynamic, and instructional design frameworks support continuous improvement by using evaluation as a core component. The feedback collected during and after course delivery can inform revisions, ensuring that the content remains relevant and effective.

Designing for Accessibility: A Core Requirement

Before diving into specific frameworks, it is crucial to address a foundational element of modern instructional design for higher education: accessibility.

Advancing technology has made it possible to design inclusive courses, but this requires intent. The term “accessible” in this context means that students with disabilities can engage and interact with the content in a way similar to students without disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) mandates inclusive accessibility, including online educational opportunities.

While online instructors spend a lot of time designing courses that foster academic excellence, they also need to be aware of the simple strategies that can make their courses ADA-compliant. Given below are some of the best practices for accessible instructional design.

1. Prioritize Easy-to-Read Fonts

Sans serif is the ideal font style to use when designing accessible courses. Unlike fonts such as Times New Roman, Sans Serif fonts (like Arial and Helvetica) do not have additional strokes attached to the letters, making them easier to read on digital screens. Once you have decided upon the font style, ensure consistency of use throughout the course to minimize cognitive load.

2. Master Color Contrast

For better usability, use a dark-colored font on a light background. Also known as high contrast, the ideal text design method is to use black font on a white background. You should avoid the use of extremely bright background colors such as yellow and red. Furthermore, avoid combinations like red/green or yellow/blue, as students with color blindness may not be able to differentiate the text from the background.

Check color contrast with our free tool here!

3. Simplify Text Formatting

The thumb rule is to follow the ‘less is more’ approach. Avoid unnecessary use of bold and italics, and only underline content that is to be hyperlinked. Variations can discourage students with disabilities from engaging with the content. Additionally, ensure consistency in page navigation and button placement.

4. Manage Graphics and Animation

Graphics are powerful, but to make accessible courses, you must avoid animated and blinking images that put a strain on the eye or could trigger photosensitive seizures. Ensure all images have “alt tags” (alternative text) so screen reader technology can describe the visual to visually impaired students.

5. Audio/Video Considerations

For students with hearing disabilities, all videos must be captioned. Conversely, for the visually impaired, there should be audio descriptions. Including full transcriptions of audio and video lectures allows students to access content via assistive technologies. Always use universal formats like MP3 or MP4.

6. Searchability and Navigation

All text within a course should be searchable. Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that not all students are comfortable with a touchscreen or a mouse. Ensure your course content supports keyboard-only navigation.

Top 5 Instructional Design Frameworks for Higher Education

With accessibility principles in mind, we can now explore the specific models that drive curriculum creation. Here are the top instructional design frameworks widely adopted in higher education for creating impactful and engaging learning experiences.

1. The ADDIE Framework

The ADDIE framework uses five factors—Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate—to help instructional design professionals tackle higher education projects in stages. It is arguably the most common curriculum design framework available.

The key components of this model are:

  • Analysis: This phase involves establishing the main instructional problem and overall instructional goals, followed by identifying the learner’s needs, including existing skills and knowledge.
  • Design: This step involves outlining the learning objectives, instructional strategies, content, assessments, lesson planning, subject matter analysis, and media selection.
  • Development: At this stage, instructional designers create and assemble content and various instructional materials.
  • Implementation: This step involves delivering the training, including detailed instructional guides for facilitators, testing key resources, and considering staffing needs.
  • Evaluation: This final step involves finalizing both formative and summative evaluation plans.

The highlight of the ADDIE framework is that it effectively tackles eLearning development rather than just learning behaviors. It allows instructional designers to dig deeper into desired outcomes to create personalized resources.

2. Bloom’s Taxonomy

In Bloom’s taxonomy framework, educators classify the different skills and objectives they set for their students. Created by Benjamin Bloom in 1956 and revised later, this is an excellent classification system for organizing the different levels of cognitive learning.

The key components of this framework are:

  • Remembering: Retrieving prior knowledge from long-term memory.
  • Understanding: Constructing meaning from instructional messages.
  • Applying: Implementing a procedure in a given situation.
  • Analyzing: Breaking material into constituent parts and determining how parts relate to one another.
  • Evaluating: Making judgments based on criteria and standards.
  • Creating: Putting elements together to form a coherent or functional whole; reorganizing elements into a new pattern or structure.

3. Backward Design / Understanding By Design (UbD)

This is another popular framework based on cognitive psychology. It is primarily an iterative process that constantly promotes reflection and improvement of the curriculum. The “backward” aspect refers to starting with the end goals rather than the materials.

The key components are:

  • Identification of Desired Results: Considering long-term goals and examining content standards.
  • Determination of Assessment Evidence: Distinguishing between performance tasks and other evidence. Performance tasks require students to apply their learning to a new situation to assess their understanding.
  • Planning of Learning Experiences: Planning lessons and activities to effectively address the goals identified in the first stage.

4. Design Thinking Framework

It is a solution-based approach that involves clearly understanding and empathizing with the learner. The designer works on the specific needs of the learner and the creative solutions that instructional design in higher education can offer.

The key components include:

  • Empathizing: Gaining an empathetic understanding of the problem by observing and engaging with students.
  • Defining: Analyzing observations to define the core problems.
  • Ideating: Identifying new solutions using various techniques.
  • Prototyping: Producing inexpensive versions of the product to investigate solutions.
  • Testing: rigorously testing the complete product using the best solutions from the prototyping phase.

5. Merrill’s Principles of Instruction (MPI)

Founded by M. David Merrill, this framework centers on task-based learning. The key premise is that effective learning experiences are rooted in problem-solving.

The key components include:

  • Demonstrating: Designers need to consider adding videos, tutorials, and image-rich infographics that showcase main ideas.
  • Applying: This comes in the form of interactive problem-solving and task performance.
  • Activating: Learners must be able to link the information to pre-existing knowledge.
  • Integrating: Learners must get the chance to integrate their newly acquired skills into their lives.
  • Engaging: Task-centric learning encourages learners to engage with the content by using everything they’ve learned to solve real-world problems.

7 Steps to Implement Instructional Design Strategies

Crafting impactful instructional materials requires a deliberate and systematic approach. Whether you are overhauling a degree program or creating a single online module, following a structured path ensures success. Here is a streamlined seven-step framework for implementing instructional design for higher education:

  1. Analyzing Needs: This involves a thorough examination of curriculum goals, student demographics, and external factors influencing educational objectives. Ask yourself: What is the gap between the current state of learner knowledge and the desired state?
  2. Learner Profile: Develop a comprehensive understanding of your students. Analyze their background knowledge, prior experiences, learning styles, and preferred instructional modalities. Are they working professionals? Undergraduate students? This profile dictates the tone and pace of the course.
  3. Learning Objectives: Define clear, measurable objectives that translate desired outcomes into concrete targets for evaluation. Focus on demonstrable knowledge, skills, and behaviors students should acquire by the program’s end.
  4. Instructional Design Selection: Select the most effective approach among the frameworks discussed above (like ADDIE or UbD) to achieve your learning objectives. Consider incorporating diverse elements, like engaging multimedia, interactive activities, and collaborative tasks.
  5. Content Organization: Structure your content logically. Storyboards are valuable for outlining information flow, sequencing key points, and integrating engaging elements like visuals and technology.
  6. Prototyping and Testing: Create a prototype of your learning materials before full development. This allows you to pilot test with a small group of students and gather valuable feedback to refine the design before a full rollout.
  7. Implementation and Evaluation: Monitor and assess your implemented program. Track student progress, analyze performance data, and gather feedback to refine your instruction.

To Wrap Up

Instructional design is not a rigid formula. The true art lies in the thoughtful selection and nuanced application of these components, considering the subject matter and the unique needs of your students.

Instructional learning design frameworks in higher education are often used when planning for online learning. However, the structure they offer can also be used by educators who are planning courses that will be delivered in face-to-face or hybrid formats as well.

Through ongoing evaluation and refinement, educators can encourage an environment where knowledge is not simply transferred but actively embraced and internalized, empowering students to embark on their chosen field with confidence.

If you’re exploring ways to enhance your training programs with tailored solutions, consider partnering with an experienced team. With decades of expertise in creating innovative learning materials for corporate and educational organizations, Hurix Digital offers comprehensive support to meet your instructional design needs.

We not only bring deep expertise to the table but also collaborate closely with you to ensure the solutions align with your organization’s goals. Reach out to us to learn more about how we can assist you in achieving your training objectives.