Although not for the faint of heart, this book provides a thorough overview and a fairly deep dive into the instructional design process, from analysis to evaluation. It’s a great textbook for a graduate students, and it’s a good reference for instructional designers in K-12 or corporate settings at any stage in their careers.
Smith & Ragan provide a thorough, research-based approach to planning for instruction and learning. The structure and approach of the book follow Robert Gagné’s events of instruction as well as his types of instructional outcomes.
If you want to make designing for different types of content easier, you’ll want to take advantage of the prescriptions available for every stage of the design process as outlined in this book. Also, if you want to build your own instructional design model, this would be a great book to have on hand.
I’ve used this one for graduate seminars in instructional design and as a reference when I’m working with various organizations on their approaches to instructional design.
Resources
Book: Instructional Design, by Patricia L. Smith & Tillman J. Ragan
Your turn:
Have you used this book? How has it been helpful to you? What is your favorite reference book for instructional design?
