Teachers and others involved in education design instruction all the time, often without any awareness that there is a formal field of study called instructional design. As a teacher, you've probably had quite a bit of experience with instructional design even though you may have never used the term. You probably intuit many of the steps in the instructional design process quite naturally based on your experience working with students. So, why engage in the formal study of instructional design?

Instructional design, as a formal process, has the following benefits:

• Encourages thorough consideration of all contextual elements affecting the instruction.
• Recommends careful and clear objective setting at the onset of the design process.
• Engages teachers in an iteractive process in which activities and assessments are consistently referenced back to objectives.
• Provides novice instructors with a clear path to success by giving them a step-by-step process to follow.
• Serves as a checklist of sorts for experienced instructors to make sure no steps are forgotten.
• Provides a consistent language for educators to use when discussing their instructional design practices.