A Conversation with Michael Allen–ADDIE, SAM & the Future of ID

For those of you who may not know, Michael W. Allen is a leader in the field of design, developing and delivering online instruction. He is the author of seven book including a best-seller on creating effective e-learning and in has received ASTD’s Distinguished Contribution to Workplace Learning and Performance Award in 2011. He founded the computer-based course authoring tool Authorware in 1984 and later formed Macromedia through a merger which was then bought by Adobe Systems. Today, he has created a new authoring tool called ZebraZapps which is a cloud based authoring and publishing platform with a built in community.Today, he has authored another book and I again got a chance to talk with him about the book.

Michael Allen and I sit down and discuss the Zebra program at ASTD conference way back in 2011.

Recently, I was fortunate enough to receive an advanced copy of Michael Allen’s new book and loved it and thought I’d ask him a few questions about the book, the field and the future of elearning.

He has just released a new book, Leaving Addie for SAM: An Agile Model for Developing the Best Learning Experiences in which he describes what he calls the Successive approximation Model (SAM). Apparently the book has stirred a little controversy around the topic of ADDIE.

Michael Allen:(MA) I hasten to say that if ADDIE is working well for you, then nothing is wrong with it. A process is appraised by the quality of its output and efficiency in producing a quality product. If ADDIE produces the products you want, does so comfortably, and works effectively with the constraints you work with, I’d stick with ADDIE. I used to teach ADDIE to both my graduate students and corporate teams. I felt I was sharing the best process.

But after watching many teams produce learning products they were dissatisfied with, after listening to how difficult SMEs, or designers, or writers, or programmers are to work with, after seeing project after project finishing up late or over budget, and after learning that no team member thought the final product was what it really should and could have been, I realized something was wrong.

KK: So, how does SAM work?

MA: It’s not very complicated. Just a few guiding principles define the imperatives, but it’s important not to underestimate their importance and cheat. I don’t want to oversimplify here, but at heart, SAM works by taking small iterative steps. It’s prone to action. Instead of exhaustive analysis, for example, we gather whatever project background information is relatively easy to obtain, then sketch out a possible instructional approach, and ask, “Why wouldn’t this be a successful direction?”

In each iteration, we use what information is known as guidance, roughly design a possible solution, and build out or prototype enough of it so stakeholders can consider it. We work quickly to develop something we can actually test out with prospective learners.

Questions naturally arise, and these are the questions we then pursue to keep analysis efforts focused and productive. So, instead of doing all the analysis, then the design, the development and so on, we do small segments and then evaluate. It keeps everyone involved and understanding. No one waits in suspense with the risk that a lot of unacceptable work will be done.

KK: Why is SAM a better way to design instruction?

MA: SAM doesn’t rely on specification documents to communicate designs, nor does it require exhaustive work at each prerequisite phase. It’s much more forgiving, inventive, even playful and energizing. It throws out a first, thoughtful idea and asks, Why wouldn’t this work? By actively looking for things to change rather than trying to inhibit changes as work progresses, it welcomes creative ideas as they emerge—even fairly late in the process.

The result tends to be a better design, implementation that’s true to the wishes of the team, little or no fault-finding, and much more effective end products.

Regardless of the delivery method, designing instruction is challenging (unless you stick to the regrettable format of lecture and test—and even that can involve a lot of work). When we involve e-learning, the number of tasks involved and the design challenges become truly daunting. SAM works well in every instructional design situation and truly shines with e-learning.

KK: How did you “discover” SAM as a method for designing instruction.

MA:When I was working at Control Data Corporation on the PLATO system, I was given the task of making courseware development much easier and much faster. We were spending millions of dollars on courseware development. The costs were simply unsustainable.

Our first thought was to build a better programming language than the one PLATO had. Proficiency in it took a long time to develop, often a couple of years or more. But as we began thinking about what tools could do to improve production, we realized it was important that we were supporting the right process—a process that could be effective if supportive tools were available.

I began research to study the ADDIE process we were using. When I questioned people, I learned that, across the board, people felt they should be producing better products than they were. Very seldom did people who designed and developed courseware feel satisfied with their products. When I probed deeper, people pinned the problems on others. For example, SMEs were often disappointed with what programmers delivered. Programmers often deflected criticism to the designer. When SMEs alerted designers that they had overlooked critical content, the designers replied that it would have been useful to have had that information much earlier. “Why didn’t you tell me about this critical content?” The SME’s response, “You didn’t ask me for it.”

Designers aren’t always knowledgeable enough to ask all the necessary content questions, SME’s don’t know enough about design and instruction to anticipate information they should need, and programmers often don’t realize when their interpretation of a design is misguided. Almost every combination of team members had trouble communicating. They didn’t know what options existed and which were appropriate. When a product that instantiated all the design decisions was delivered, everyone but the programmer was surprised and often, unfortunately, disappointed. We realized then that the process was at fault and that small iterative steps could be part of the solution for many problems ranging from communication to managing time and budget.

KK: 5) Can you give an example of how SAM has been used to create an e-learning product?

MA: Sure. Our Tampa studio had the opportunity to work with a new client that wanted to develop e-learning for sales training. At the Savvy Start, an iterative exploration session that occurs early in SAM, the first prototype focused on improving the sales team members’ ability to accurately recite a standard sales script. As the e-learning prototype developed during the session, the SME team realized the behavioral need was more about giving appropriate reactions to customer responses. Subsequent prototypes led to a design that challenged learners to handle customer conversations effectively with appropriate dialogue and awareness of verbal and non-verbal cues.

This client is now a real advocate of SAM, stating, “Having been through numerous custom e-learning projects using ADDIE, Allen’s SAM approach was refreshing. Much simpler, more effective, and faster. Our SMEs loved it so much more than ADDIE because they could see the learning developing much faster.”

KK: 6) Thanks, that’s a great example. Switching gears a little, you’ve been in the field for over 40 years, teaching, creating authoring software, developing e-learning, working with eager, wide-eyed instructional designers, what is the most dramatic change you’ve seen in the field?

MA: I’d like to mention two changes. One is the speed with which interactive media have become so inexpensive and ubiquitous. The other is the disappointing abandonment of greater instructional goals.

When we started exploring technology support for learning beyond filmstrips and audiotapes, we looked to the power of “branching” capabilities, to be able to respond to each learner’s capabilities. Individualization was a key concept. And we proved with the primitive computing capabilities we had, that great things could come of this.

We thought that when we could incorporate color, graphics, sound, and even video into interactive instruction, our ability to teach and the effort to create spectacularly effective learning experience would be a piece of cake. Every project would be sensitive to individual learners, adapt to their needs and interests, and with the many powers of interactive media integrated, develop competencies in amazingly short spans of time.

But while technical capabilities now exist that were only a dream some years ago, we unfortunately see these capabilities being used to support overly simplistic and ineffective instructional paradigms. Rapid development tools and their promoters are, in my opinion, much at fault here. They promote easy to develop inept instruction. Little learner modeling is done or even considered. Focus is on content presentation and meaningless adornments, such as smiling or frowning avatars.

KK: 7) Finally, if you were giving advice to students about developing and designing instruction, what advice would you give?

MA:Given my previous remarks, I guess what I’d like to share here will be of little surprise. I’d advise students to overcome the traditions of ADDIE that seem to focus so very much on content development and process management as opposed to greater learner experiences. Developing highly effective learning experiences, with all the complexity that entails, needs to be an experimental undertaking. Small experiments with frequent evaluation are both the safest means and the most efficient. The most fun, too.

But think carefully. How would you want to learn? Where are the opportunities for learning epiphanies that would be retained forever and motivate application? How can you use context, challenges, activities, and feedback to create meaningful, memorable, and motivational learning experiences while simultaneously informing you about learner needs? The opportunities to reset the path toward learning opportunities of remarkable value have never been so great. And with today’s technology, they can be developed so much more easily and shared with a global audience, making our world safer and a better place to live.