As a high school student, I remember being charged with creative challenges. My English teachers provided opportunities for me to create new characters, scenarios, problems, and solutions. I remember enjoying this kind of writing, especially the colorful prose. When, in college, my passions shifted to history, I discovered a whole new style of writing: academic…

The term Universal Design was coined in the 1970s by Robert Mace to create a framework for building homes where accessibility for all is the standard. Mace envisioned a way to design buildings that are appealing yet accessible to all according to ADA standards (Al-Azawei, 2017). eLearning can be designed with a similar theory in…

Rapid Instructional Design by George M. Piskurich has become invaluable to me as a student of instructional systems design. I find myself dog-earing pages to refer back to later during my career. The first two chapters introduce the reader to instructional design, online learning, and the ADDIE model. Chapters 3-7 dive in-depth into the five…

In Chapter 7, Did It Do Any Good? Evaluation, George Piskurich details how to determine what evaluation your instructional design requires and how to apply evaluation results to a revision plan. He points out that if you don’t complete meaningful evaluations, you may as well have not completed all the other vital steps of the…

Chapter 6, Getting It Where It Does the Most Good: Implementation, is about finding your design’s strengths and flaws through implementation and training your facilitators. George Piskurich provides a sweeping look at how to beta test and pilot a learning experience, what questions to ask during these processes, and who should answer those questions. The…

In Chapter 5, Doing it Right: Development of Rapid Instructional Design, author George Piskurich offers a how-to guide for developing a training session or learning experience. Development is an exciting stage because you can see your learning experience as a whole by the end. It is complete, but that job isn’t done yet. It will…

Chapter 4 of Rapid Instructional Design, How to Do It: Design, is the book’s longest chapter. Author George M. Piskurich uses this chapter to review in depth the second step of the ADDIE model: Design. Like the previous chapters, these nearly hundred pages give the reader the sense of actually working in instructional design and…

In Chapter 3 of Rapid Instructional Design, Do You Know What You Need to Do? Analysis, author George M. Piskurish continues his discussion of how to conquer the difficulties of instructional design through best practices. This chapter describes in depth how to complete the first step of the ADDIE model: Analysis. The ADDIE model is…