ABSTRACT
I hear repeatedly from colleagues who teach instruction design (ID) that because designing is complex, and therefore difficult to learn, we should teach our students a simple process for designing, introducing its complexities to them only after they have mastered that simple process. The textbooks covering basic ID take this simple-to-complex approach (Smith & Boling, 2009), one dictated by basic instructional design theory (Van Patten, Chao & Reigeluth, 1986; Reigeluth, 1999; van Merriënboer, Clark & de Crook, 2002). Such theory holds that “a severe risk of . . . [presenting complex problems directly] is that learners have difficulties learning because they are overwhelmed by the task complexity (van Merriënboer, Kirschner & Kester, 2003, p. 5). This view-that complexity must in some way be reduced-seems to hold even for promising approaches to teaching ID that aim to present authentic design problems to students rather than deconstructed problems (Ertmer & Cennamo, 1995; Bannon-Ritland, 2001).
