Instructional Design in the Face of COVID-19: Learned Lessons and Pending Tasks

Abstract

Faced with confinement due to COVID-19, educational institutions with face-to-face models had to continue their activities under conditions and with resources not used up to that moment. For this, the institutions formulated and put into operation continuity plans, which involved everything from remote education to hybrids between the latter and online education. Institutions that already had online or hybrid education programs were able to apply that experience to their face-to-face programs, allowing them to respond more quickly than those that did not. The stages of the teaching-learning process that were "adjusted" during this emergency in order to give continuity to educational activities were the last two, namely: the development of instructional material and teaching. In this work, an intervention is proposed in a previous stage of the process, that is, in the instructional design (ID), using the ASSURE model derived from the ADDIE model or approach. This intervention is based on the lessons learned during the pandemic, for the preparation or reformulation of study plans that consider information and communication technologies as a platform to enhance the effectiveness of learning, selecting them and establishing their use strategy from the stage in which the materials are designed, which may be useful considering that even if the students return to the classrooms, a virtual part will be preserved, that is, a hybrid model, in which the face-to-face-virtual ratio will be determined by the educational strategy of the institution.