ADDIE and Instructional Design

What first struck me from ADDIE design theory is that it is based on systems theory.  When I took a Psychology Human Development course the Systems Theory impacted me.  The idea that the we process and learn (develop) as individuals within systems of complex relationships that grow increasingly larger and are interdependent, and that change through adaptive self-regulation and adaptive self organization.

Here is a diagram I liked explaining Urie Broffenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory

Broffenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory
(image license under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0)

I had quoted how systems theory related to technology from the text, Development Through Life (Newman, 2009) "The direction of this [adaptive] change is not necessarily patterned, except that it is expected to move in the direction of creating new, higher levels of organization to coordinate newly developed substructures." Another point I noted how information technology is changing our development, "In the framework of systems theory, the boundary between the person and the environment is fuzzy; as an open system, a person is continuously influenced by information and resources from the environment and, at the same time, creates or modifies the environment to preserve system functioning." Development Through Life (Newman, 2009)

This was my Aha for the week, going back through these psychosocial theories of development helped me put connectivism into perspective.  I also concluded that as part of my own theory, I believe we need a combination of collectivism and individualism to be responsible and effective users of information and technology.

A design theory I have experience with is Universal Design for Learning (UDL). It is not a step by step design system like ADDIE and instead a set of principles for designing curriculum that give individuals equal opportunities for learning.  Possibly the difference is UDL is a set of principles for design and ADDIE is a system for design?

One thing I need to consider in our mini course design is that I have a tendency to make the common mistake that was mentioned in Designing Instructional Systems of putting too much breadth and not enough depth (covering information rather than developing skills).