The Dick and Carey Model, also known as the Systems Approach Model, is a widely recognized instructional design framework developed by Walter Dick and Lou Carey in the 1970s. This model provides a structured and systematic approach to the design and development of effective instructional materials. It has been used extensively in educational settings to create courses, training programs, and educational resources that promote meaningful and engaging learning experiences.
The Dick and Carey Model is grounded in the belief that effective instruction should be carefully planned and systematically designed to achieve specific learning objectives. This model is characterized by a step-by-step approach that guides instructional designers through the entire process of creating instructional materials. The key components of the Dick and Carey Model include:
Identifying Instructional Goals: This initial step involves defining clear and measurable learning objectives. Instructional designers work closely with subject matter experts (SMEs) to identify what learners should know or be able to do after completing the instruction.
Conducting Instructional Analysis: During this phase, a thorough analysis of the learning environment and learner characteristics is conducted. Instructional designers gather information about the target audience, their prior knowledge, learning preferences, and any constraints that may impact the design process.
Conducting Learner Analysis: A learner analysis focuses on understanding the characteristics of the learners, such as their age, educational background, experience, and motivation. This analysis helps tailor the instruction to the specific needs and preferences of the learners.
Defining Entry Behaviors: Entry behaviors refer to the knowledge and skills learners should possess before beginning the instruction. Instructional designers identify these prerequisites to ensure that learners are adequately prepared for the instructional content.
Writing Performance Objectives: Clear and specific performance objectives are developed to articulate what learners are expected to achieve. These objectives serve as the foundation for the entire design process and provide a basis for assessment.
Developing Criterion-Referenced Tests: Criterion-referenced tests are designed to assess learner performance in relation to the established objectives. These assessments are aligned with the learning objectives and provide a means to measure the effectiveness of the instruction.
Selecting Instructional Strategies: Instructional designers choose appropriate teaching methods and strategies based on the learning objectives, learner characteristics, and the nature of the content. These strategies may include lectures, discussions, simulations, or hands-on activities.
Developing Instructional Materials: Instructional materials, such as textbooks, multimedia resources, and activities, are created or selected to support the instructional strategies. These materials should align with the learning objectives and engage learners effectively.
Designing and Conducting Formative Evaluation: Formative evaluation involves ongoing assessment and feedback throughout the design process. It helps identify and address any issues or deficiencies in the instructional materials and strategies.
Revising and Refining Instruction: Based on the feedback and data gathered during formative evaluation, instructional materials and strategies are revised and refined to enhance their effectiveness and alignment with the objectives.
Designing and Conducting Summative Evaluation: Summative evaluation is the final assessment of learner performance and the overall effectiveness of the instruction. It determines whether the learning objectives have been met.
Finalizing the Instruction: After completing the evaluation phase, the instructional materials are finalized, and the instruction is ready for implementation.
Key Phases of the Dick and Carey Model
Let’s delve into the key phases of the Dick and Carey Model in more detail:
1. Identifying Instructional Goals
Needs Assessment: Identify the need for instruction and the specific learning goals that need to be addressed.
Objective Hierarchy: Develop a hierarchy of objectives that includes terminal objectives (what learners will accomplish by the end) and enabling objectives (sub-skills or knowledge needed to achieve the terminal objectives).
2. Conducting Instructional Analysis
Task Analysis: Break down the content into smaller, manageable units or tasks. This helps in organizing the instruction and sequencing the content effectively.
Resource Analysis: Identify the resources needed for instruction, including materials, technology, and human resources.
3. Conducting Learner Analysis
Learner Characteristics: Gather information about the learners, including their age, educational background, prior knowledge, learning preferences, and motivation.
Diversity Considerations: Consider the diverse needs and characteristics of the learners, such as language proficiency, disabilities, or cultural backgrounds.
4. Defining Entry Behaviors
Prerequisite Knowledge and Skills: Identify what learners should already know or be able to do before beginning the instruction.
Entry-Level Assessment: Develop assessments to determine whether learners possess the required entry behaviors.
5. Writing Performance Objectives
Clear and Specific Objectives: Write performance objectives that are clear, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART).
Alignment with Goals: Ensure that the objectives align with the instructional goals identified in the first phase.
6. Developing Criterion-Referenced Tests
Assessment Design: Create assessments that directly measure the achievement of the performance objectives. These assessments should be aligned with the objectives.
Validity and Reliability: Ensure that the assessments are valid (measuring what they are intended to measure) and reliable (yielding consistent results).
7. Selecting Instructional Strategies
Teaching Methods: Choose appropriate teaching methods and strategies based on the learning objectives, content, and learner characteristics.
Engagement Strategies: Incorporate strategies that engage learners actively in the learning process.
8. Developing Instructional Materials
Content Development: Create or select instructional materials, such as textbooks, multimedia resources, and activities, that align with the objectives and teaching methods.
Alignment with Objectives: Ensure that the materials support the achievement of the performance objectives.
9. Designing and Conducting Formative Evaluation
Continuous Feedback: Gather ongoing feedback from learners and experts to assess the effectiveness of the instruction.
Revision: Revise and improve instructional materials and strategies based on the formative evaluation data.
10. Revising and Refining Instruction
Iterative Process: The design process is iterative, with ongoing revisions and refinements based on feedback and evaluation results.
Alignment with Objectives: Ensure that all aspects of the instruction align with the defined objectives.
11. Designing and Conducting Summative Evaluation
Final Assessment: Conduct a final assessment to determine whether the learners have achieved the performance objectives.
Overall Effectiveness: Evaluate the overall effectiveness of the instruction in meeting the instructional goals.
12. Finalizing the Instruction
Completion: Finalize all instructional materials, assessments, and resources for implementation.
Implementation: Prepare for the implementation of the instruction in the learning environment.
Practical Applications of the Dick and Carey Model
The Dick and Carey Model has practical applications in various educational and instructional design contexts:
K-12 Education: Educators use the model to design and develop curriculum materials, textbooks, and instructional resources for elementary, middle, and high school students.
Higher Education: Colleges and universities employ the model to create course materials, online courses, and instructional resources for undergraduate and graduate programs.
Corporate Training: Organizations utilize the model to design training programs, e-learning modules, and employee development initiatives.
Healthcare Education: The model is applied in healthcare education to develop instructional materials for medical, nursing, and allied health programs.
Military Training: Military institutions use the model to design training programs and materials for personnel in various branches of the armed forces.
Online Learning: The model is adapted for designing online courses and digital learning resources for remote and asynchronous learning environments.
Benefits of the Dick and Carey Model
The Dick and Carey Model offers several benefits to instructional designers, educators, and learners:
Systematic Approach: It provides a structured and systematic approach to instructional design, ensuring that all essential components are considered.
Alignment with Objectives: The model emphasizes the alignment of instructional materials and strategies with clear, measurable learning objectives.
Assessment Integration: The inclusion of formative and summative evaluations ensures that instruction is continuously improved and that learner performance is assessed effectively.
Customization: Instructional materials can be customized to meet the specific needs of learners and adapt to diverse learning environments.
Effective Learning: When implemented correctly, the Dick and Carey Model results in more effective learning experiences and improved learner outcomes.
Feedback-Driven: The iterative nature of the model encourages ongoing feedback and improvement, even after implementation.
Challenges and Considerations
While the Dick and Carey Model is a valuable framework, it also presents challenges and considerations:
Resource Intensive: Properly implementing the model can be resource-intensive, requiring time, expertise, and technology.
Complexity: The model may be seen as complex for smaller projects or organizations with limited resources.
Time-Consuming: The comprehensive approach of the model can be time-consuming, particularly in the analysis and design phases.
Iterative Nature: Iterations and revisions can extend project timelines and increase costs.
Expertise Required: Skilled instructional designers are often needed to effectively apply the model.
Resistance to Change: Educators and organizations may resist the change required to adopt a systematic instructional design process.
The Significance of the Dick and Carey Model
The Dick and Carey Model holds significant importance in instructional design and education:
Quality Assurance: It serves as a quality assurance framework, ensuring that instructional materials are well-designed and effective.
Alignment with Learning Objectives: The model ensures that instructional materials align with learning objectives and goals.
Continuous Improvement: The Dick and Carey Model fosters a culture of continuous improvement in education and training.
Customization: It allows for the customization of instructional materials to meet specific learner needs.
Effective Learning: When properly implemented, the model results in more effective and impactful learning experiences.
Research and Evidence-Based: The model aligns with evidence-based practices in instructional design and education.
In conclusion, the Dick and Carey Model is a robust and widely recognized framework for instructional design, providing a systematic approach to creating effective learning experiences. Its emphasis on analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation ensures that instructional materials are well-planned, aligned with objectives, and continuously improved. As education and training continue to evolve, the Dick and Carey Model remains a relevant and valuable tool for enhancing the quality and impact of instructional materials and programs.
Convergent thinking occurs when the solution to a problem can be found by applying established rules and logical reasoning. Whereas divergent thinking is an unstructured problem-solving method where participants are encouraged to develop many innovative ideas or solutions to a given problem. Where convergent thinking might work for larger, mature organizations where divergent thinking is more suited for startups and innovative companies.
The concept of cognitive biases was introduced and popularized by the work of Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in 1972. Biases are seen as systematic errors and flaws that make humans deviate from the standards of rationality, thus making us inept at making good decisions under uncertainty.
Second-order thinking is a means of assessing the implications of our decisions by considering future consequences. Second-order thinking is a mental model that considers all future possibilities. It encourages individuals to think outside of the box so that they can prepare for every and eventuality. It also discourages the tendency for individuals to default to the most obvious choice.
Lateral thinking is a business strategy that involves approaching a problem from a different direction. The strategy attempts to remove traditionally formulaic and routine approaches to problem-solving by advocating creative thinking, therefore finding unconventional ways to solve a known problem. This sort of non-linear approach to problem-solving, can at times, create a big impact.
Bounded rationality is a concept attributed to Herbert Simon, an economist and political scientist interested in decision-making and how we make decisions in the real world. In fact, he believed that rather than optimizing (which was the mainstream view in the past decades) humans follow what he called satisficing.
The Dunning-Kruger effect describes a cognitive bias where people with low ability in a task overestimate their ability to perform that task well. Consumers or businesses that do not possess the requisite knowledge make bad decisions. What’s more, knowledge gaps prevent the person or business from seeing their mistakes.
Occam’s Razor states that one should not increase (beyond reason) the number of entities required to explain anything. All things being equal, the simplest solution is often the best one. The principle is attributed to 14th-century English theologian William of Ockham.
The Lindy Effect is a theory about the ageing of non-perishable things, like technology or ideas. Popularized by author Nicholas Nassim Taleb, the Lindy Effect states that non-perishable things like technology age – linearly – in reverse. Therefore, the older an idea or a technology, the same will be its life expectancy.
Antifragility was first coined as a term by author, and options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Antifragility is a characteristic of systems that thrive as a result of stressors, volatility, and randomness. Therefore, Antifragile is the opposite of fragile. Where a fragile thing breaks up to volatility; a robust thing resists volatility. An antifragile thing gets stronger from volatility (provided the level of stressors and randomness doesn’t pass a certain threshold).
Systems thinking is a holistic means of investigating the factors and interactions that could contribute to a potential outcome. It is about thinking non-linearly, and understanding the second-order consequences of actions and input into the system.
Vertical thinking, on the other hand, is a problem-solving approach that favors a selective, analytical, structured, and sequential mindset. The focus of vertical thinking is to arrive at a reasoned, defined solution.
Maslow’s Hammer, otherwise known as the law of the instrument or the Einstellung effect, is a cognitive bias causing an over-reliance on a familiar tool. This can be expressed as the tendency to overuse a known tool (perhaps a hammer) to solve issues that might require a different tool. This problem is persistent in the business world where perhaps known tools or frameworks might be used in the wrong context (like business plans used as planning tools instead of only investors’ pitches).
The Peter Principle was first described by Canadian sociologist Lawrence J. Peter in his 1969 book The Peter Principle. The Peter Principle states that people are continually promoted within an organization until they reach their level of incompetence.
The straw man fallacy describes an argument that misrepresents an opponent’s stance to make rebuttal more convenient. The straw man fallacy is a type of informal logical fallacy, defined as a flaw in the structure of an argument that renders it invalid.
The Streisand Effect is a paradoxical phenomenon where the act of suppressing information to reduce visibility causes it to become more visible. In 2003, Streisand attempted to suppress aerial photographs of her Californian home by suing photographer Kenneth Adelman for an invasion of privacy. Adelman, who Streisand assumed was paparazzi, was instead taking photographs to document and study coastal erosion. In her quest for more privacy, Streisand’s efforts had the opposite effect.
As highlighted by German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer in the paper “Heuristic Decision Making,” the term heuristic is of Greek origin, meaning “serving to find out or discover.” More precisely, a heuristic is a fast and accurate way to make decisions in the real world, which is driven by uncertainty.
The recognition heuristic is a psychological model of judgment and decision making. It is part of a suite of simple and economical heuristics proposed by psychologists Daniel Goldstein and Gerd Gigerenzer. The recognition heuristic argues that inferences are made about an object based on whether it is recognized or not.
The representativeness heuristic was first described by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. The representativeness heuristic judges the probability of an event according to the degree to which that event resembles a broader class. When queried, most will choose the first option because the description of John matches the stereotype we may hold for an archaeologist.
The take-the-best heuristic is a decision-making shortcut that helps an individual choose between several alternatives. The take-the-best (TTB) heuristic decides between two or more alternatives based on a single good attribute, otherwise known as a cue. In the process, less desirable attributes are ignored.
The bundling bias is a cognitive bias in e-commerce where a consumer tends not to use all of the products bought as a group, or bundle. Bundling occurs when individual products or services are sold together as a bundle. Common examples are tickets and experiences. The bundling bias dictates that consumers are less likely to use each item in the bundle. This means that the value of the bundle and indeed the value of each item in the bundle is decreased.
The Barnum Effect is a cognitive bias where individuals believe that generic information – which applies to most people – is specifically tailored for themselves.
First-principles thinking – sometimes called reasoning from first principles – is used to reverse-engineer complex problems and encourage creativity. It involves breaking down problems into basic elements and reassembling them from the ground up. Elon Musk is among the strongest proponents of this way of thinking.
The ladder of inference is a conscious or subconscious thinking process where an individual moves from a fact to a decision or action. The ladder of inference was created by academic Chris Argyris to illustrate how people form and then use mental models to make decisions.
Goodhart’s Law is named after British monetary policy theorist and economist Charles Goodhart. Speaking at a conference in Sydney in 1975, Goodhart said that “any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes.” Goodhart’s Law states that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
The Six Thinking Hats model was created by psychologist Edward de Bono in 1986, who noted that personality type was a key driver of how people approached problem-solving. For example, optimists view situations differently from pessimists. Analytical individuals may generate ideas that a more emotional person would not, and vice versa.
The Mandela effect is a phenomenon where a large group of people remembers an event differently from how it occurred. The Mandela effect was first described in relation to Fiona Broome, who believed that former South African President Nelson Mandela died in prison during the 1980s. While Mandela was released from prison in 1990 and died 23 years later, Broome remembered news coverage of his death in prison and even a speech from his widow. Of course, neither event occurred in reality. But Broome was later to discover that she was not the only one with the same recollection of events.
The bandwagon effect tells us that the more a belief or idea has been adopted by more people within a group, the more the individual adoption of that idea might increase within the same group. This is the psychological effect that leads to herd mentality. What in marketing can be associated with social proof.
Moore’s law states that the number of transistors on a microchip doubles approximately every two years. This observation was made by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965 and it become a guiding principle for the semiconductor industry and has had far-reaching implications for technology as a whole.
Disruptive innovation as a term was first described by Clayton M. Christensen, an American academic and business consultant whom The Economist called “the most influential management thinker of his time.” Disruptive innovation describes the process by which a product or service takes hold at the bottom of a market and eventually displaces established competitors, products, firms, or alliances.
Value migration was first described by author Adrian Slywotzky in his 1996 book Value Migration – How to Think Several Moves Ahead of the Competition. Value migration is the transferal of value-creating forces from outdated business models to something better able to satisfy consumer demands.
The bye-now effect describes the tendency for consumers to think of the word “buy” when they read the word “bye”. In a study that tracked diners at a name-your-own-price restaurant, each diner was asked to read one of two phrases before ordering their meal. The first phrase, “so long”, resulted in diners paying an average of $32 per meal. But when diners recited the phrase “bye bye” before ordering, the average price per meal rose to $45.
Groupthink occurs when well-intentioned individuals make non-optimal or irrational decisions based on a belief that dissent is impossible or on a motivation to conform. Groupthink occurs when members of a group reach a consensus without critical reasoning or evaluation of the alternatives and their consequences.
A stereotype is a fixed and over-generalized belief about a particular group or class of people. These beliefs are based on the false assumption that certain characteristics are common to every individual residing in that group. Many stereotypes have a long and sometimes controversial history and are a direct consequence of various political, social, or economic events. Stereotyping is the process of making assumptions about a person or group of people based on various attributes, including gender, race, religion, or physical traits.
Murphy’s Law states that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. Murphy’s Law was named after aerospace engineer Edward A. Murphy. During his time working at Edwards Air Force Base in 1949, Murphy cursed a technician who had improperly wired an electrical component and said, “If there is any way to do it wrong, he’ll find it.”
The law of unintended consequences was first mentioned by British philosopher John Locke when writing to parliament about the unintended effects of interest rate rises. However, it was popularized in 1936 by American sociologist Robert K. Merton who looked at unexpected, unanticipated, and unintended consequences and their impact on society.
Fundamental attribution error is a bias people display when judging the behavior of others. The tendency is to over-emphasize personal characteristics and under-emphasize environmental and situational factors.
Outcome bias describes a tendency to evaluate a decision based on its outcome and not on the process by which the decision was reached. In other words, the quality of a decision is only determined once the outcome is known. Outcome bias occurs when a decision is based on the outcome of previous events without regard for how those events developed.
Hindsight bias is the tendency for people to perceive past events as more predictable than they actually were. The result of a presidential election, for example, seems more obvious when the winner is announced. The same can also be said for the avid sports fan who predicted the correct outcome of a match regardless of whether their team won or lost. Hindsight bias, therefore, is the tendency for an individual to convince themselves that they accurately predicted an event before it happened.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
