NATURE OF ORGANIZATION:

An academic library at a small liberal arts university. The university has a distance education program and is seeking to expand its information literacy course to distance learners.

BUDGET REQUEST DECISION MAKER’S ROLE:

Library Business Manager (LBM) determines if funds are available for items requested. If funds are available, the LBM presents the request to a leadership team who approves or disapproves requests.

TO: J.Q. Approval DATE: April 27, 2010 SUBJECT: Rationale for Course Development Analysis In March, 2010, the Instructional Design Team (IDT) submitted a request for funds to complete a course analysis. The request was returned to the IDT team with a request to provide more evidence that would justify the need to conduct a needs analysis. The following information is in response to your request. The needs analysis phase of the process is instrumental to defining what direction the remainder of the course development should take. Among the information discovered during the analysis are the needs of course learners, what needs to be taught, what resources are needed to teach the course, and the standards and competencies that will allow instructors to determine when students have successfully completed the course (Peterson, 2003, p. 228). This phase also serves as the foundation for the remaining stages of development, “In summary, the analysis stage provides important information to support decisions during the subsequent design stage” (Gagne, Wager, Golas, & Keller, 2005, p. 26). Without the analysis phase we will not have a plan that can serve as a decision making tool, as well as hold the team accountable for project outcomes. The design stage is the stage where our team will generate a plan for course development. Well respected instructional designers compare the plan that instructional designers use to develop a course to the blueprints that an architect uses to build a building, “The design component of the instructional design process results in a plan or blueprint for guiding the development of instruction. Just as an architect produces a blueprint for constructing a building after learning what the goals and needs are, the designer constructs a plan for the instruction based on the learning requirements (Gagne et al., 2005, p. 26). If this project begins in the design phase instead of the analysis phase, then the IDT will be making a plan based on guesswork instead of facts. This condition will decrease the chance of the final product fulfilling the needs of the university, as well as increase the possibility that the final project cost will be more and the production time of the project will be longer.

Thank you for your time. Please let me know if you have any questions or need any additional information. Lola Gilbert Instructional Design Team Representative Gagne, R. M., Wager, W.W., Golas, K.C., & Keller, J. M. (2005). Principles of instructional design (5th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. Peterson, C. (2003). Bringing ADDIE to life: Instructional design at its best. Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 12(3), 227-241.