Distance Education Innovations and New Learning Environments: Com ...

Reigeluth’s elaboration theory is an instructional design theory that suggests teaching strategies and instructional solutions that can be applied in many learning environments. Again, the focus at this point is to explain and demonstrate the nature and value of instructional design theories, which are prescriptive in nature, for the purpose of comparing these types of theories with learning theories, which are descriptive in nature. Learning theories only describe how learning occurs; they do not prescribe instructional strategies to accomplish specific learning goals. This study focuses on instructional design theories that can provide specific guidance on which instructional strategies to employ in blended learning contexts.

Now that the distinction between learning theory and instructional design theory has been clarified, I will elaborate on the criteria for judging and selecting a promising instructional design theory for distance or blended learning contexts.

Criteria for Instructional Design Theories

I argue that viable and valuable instructional design theories require the following five elements: principles or values, goals, methods, conditions, and usability (see figure 1). Each criterion will be described in turn.

Principles

First, instructional design theories must be based on identified and expressed principles. What is a principle? It is a basic rule, doctrine,