Customer Reviews

Instructional Design, 2nd Edition

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Why oh why haven't Smith and Ragan, experts in instruction, noticed that dry writing is not effective? Apparently they believe that dry impersonal writing is a model of proper academic voice. Sure, if the purpose of writing is to ensure that readers disengage as quickly as possible, then the style chosen does a wonderful job.

In addition, the text presumes that its audience are bottom-up learners and short-changes those of us that need a good hard look at the big picture before we can absorb the components thereof.

I can say one good thing about this text; it holds its resale value.

This book did have good points, but they drown in a stagnant, dreary pool of monotonous prose that could put the heartiest of readers to sleep. Just imagine wading through page after page of sentences like this: "Closer attention to learners' cognitive processes during declarative knowledge learning has led us to realize that elaboration is a basic process by which links are made with information being received as well as for connecting new information to existing knowledge and structures" (161). Someone please rush the authors a copy of Richard Lanham's "Revising Prose".

This text was quite informative and covered everything. However, the layout of the text was boring. The font was small and each page had double columns which just made reading the material very arduous.

In designing a course and a tutorial for to be taught online for the first time I used this text. I especially found the chapter on the affective component of course design helpful as students are very anxious initally with distance learning. I have subsequently used the book to retool my face-to-face classes. The examples and end-of-chapter sections are useful for new ideas and approaches.

Beyond the fundamental Systematic Approach to Training process, Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation, the authors present proven strategies for teaching students how to learn. Problem-solving, delcarative knowledge, concepts, and principle scenarios are presented. This book is a valuable shelf reference for the K-12 teacher as well as the Instructional Technologist.

This is a well-organized and informative ISD textbook. It also serves as a great reference for me as an ISD practitioner. I consider this book a small but quite valuable investment.

I am in an Instructional Design Masters Program and this is the worst textbook I have seen. The writing is unbelievably dry. I reads like a manual. The typeset is small, the pages are organized in columns and there are very few visual aids. In general I have very good reading comprehension but with this book I had to re-read pages several times because because it was so dull I wasn't retaining anything.

good quality for a good price.
Only a more solid packaging would have been better for the cover.

I had this as a graduate school text and while it seemed to cover the subject well, it's not well written at all. Expect a dull, dry slog through the material if you have it for a class.

I am new to instructional design (ID). The first ID book I read was Gagne's Principles of Instructional Design. That was a tough book to read and understand for me. Patricia's book, however, is easier to read and understand about the field of ID. I particularly like how she related the concept of scaffolding with the Gagne's events of instructions. One thing I hope to see is the relation of Merrill's Component Display Theory to Gagne's events of instruction. Overall, I recommend this book.