ABSTRACT
About 10 years ago, the Singapore government, in cooperation with a major U.S. electronics corporation, began to plan the development of a training design center in Singapore, in which participants would be trained to design instruction using a systems approach. The hope was that Singapore would obtain the long-term capability to determine the need for, and then to develop, appropriate training programs for its workforce. At the time this decision was made, no instructional design (ID) training programs were being offered in Singapore, although various training institutes were in operation (e.g., the Teacher Training Institute, the National Training Center, and the Vocational Education Center), and numerous government employees provided training for local businesses. Although these employees served as trainers, they themselves had received little, if any, formal instruction in instructional design theory or practice; furthermore, they had never participated in a curriculum that used a systems approach to the design and development of training. Although Singaporean trainers often delivered instruction on specified content, they had no formal experience with, or knowledge of, adult learning principles or the use of interactive teaching strategies. The instruction they created typically depended on their own content expertise or was based upon instruction that had been imported from the United States and then adapted.
