Fundamentals of instructional design

- Designing a learning experience in the metaverse doesn't mean abandoning traditional instructional design principles. In fact, it means embracing those principles. To create meaningful metaverse learning experiences, I suggest following the ADDIE model of instructional design, analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation. This model will allow you to create instructionally sound experiences for your learners. The first step in the ADDIE model is to conduct an analysis of what is to be taught. You want to carefully examine why the learning experience is needed and determine what the stakeholder's desired outcome is for the learning. For example, does the organization need their employees to be better at negotiating sales deals? Or in an academic situation, do you want the students to be able to identify the causes of the Peloponnesian War? An analysis of the learning goals needs to inform the design of the metaverse learning experience. But the analysis shouldn't end there. You need to understand the learners who will be involved in the experience. During the learner analysis, ask yourself, are the learners experienced in the subject matter? Are they comfortable with metaverse technology? Do they have prior knowledge that can be leveraged? Conducting a learner analysis up front makes the experience more effective when the learners enter into the actual metaverse. You'll also want to conduct a content analysis. You need to understand the nature of the content you're teaching. Is it conceptual knowledge? Problem solving? Procedural knowledge? The type of content will have a definite influence on how you design the learning experience within the metaverse. Next is the design of the metaverse experience. This step is a little different than designing a typical course, but it's still a required step. In the metaverse, you design the learning experience and, in many cases, design the actual space or location where the learning takes place. You might need to determine the location of key elements within the environment and determine how the learners interact with those key items. Since it's a three-dimensional space, you'll have many design elements you'll need to consider. Next, you have to determine how the experience is going to be developed. You might hand your design off to a metaverse developer or leverage a metaverse creation tool. Many tools like these are becoming easier to use and available to those of us who design instruction within the metaverse. Implementation is next. At this step, you need to determine the onboarding process for the learners, decide how learners will access the metaverse, how they receive navigation instructions, and determine when they can gain access to the hardware if they don't have their own headsets. The last step is evaluation. How are you going to determine if the learning was a success? By using the traditional ADDIE model to design a metaverse learning experience, you can be sure that the foundation of your instruction is sound and will meet the desired learning outcomes.