What Is Instructional Design?

Instructional Design (also called Instructional Systems Design (ISD)) is the practice of creating "instructional experiences which make the acquisition of knowledge and skill more efficient, effective, and appealing."

What Is Instructional Design? from ejars

The ADDIE Instructional Design Model from Christopher Pappas

There are many instructional design models but many are based on the ADDIE model with the five phases: analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. As a field, instructional design is historically and traditionally rooted in cognitive and behavioral psychology, though recently Constructivism (learning theory) has influenced thinking in the field. The concept of learning design arrived in the literature of technology for education in the late nineties and early 2000s  with the idea that "designers and instructors need to choose for themselves the best mixture of behaviorist and constructivist learning experiences for their online courses". But the concept of learning design is probably as old as the concept of teaching. Learning design might be defined as "the description of the teaching-learning process that takes place in a unit of learning (eg, a course, a lesson or any other designed learning event)".