SAM model for agile course development

Before talking about SAM, we will inevitably talk about an old-timer who stands on its opposite side: ADDIE. As a research result in the 1970s, ADDIE can be described as the "Bible" of curriculum development. It has almost no dead ends in logical steps and has been highly praised by trainees to this day.

Then, as the general environment changes, market competition becomes increasingly fierce, and iterative updates within the company become more frequent. Due to the long development cycle of ADDIE, users are gradually removing complexity and simplifying it. In order to better keep up with the pace of enterprise iteration, some links began to be weakened, and the applicability of ADDIE began to weaken. Ever since, agile, continuous and efficient course development models like SAM began to emerge.

In 2015, the slogan "ADDIE is dead?" became popular in the training world. One stone stirred up a thousand waves, and the competition between ADDIE and SAM became a topic of discussion, with mixed reviews.

Fortunately, the industry is very tolerant, so the official result that most appeases the public is roughly: SAM, or other agile design and development models, have indeed become the mainstream of current training course design and development, but ADDIE It is not dead, and its standard processes and many effective tools and methods can still be used.

So, what is this SAM that is on par with ADDIE, and how useful is it?

Let’s take a look at ADDIE first. It seems to be a more linear process. In fact, although ADDIE looks simple, its logic is actually very rigorous. It shows its richness and flexibility through the series of analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation.

Let’s look back at the SAM model. Silber, a professor at Northern Illinois University, believes that curriculum development is a problem-solving process and requires teamwork. This "persistent approximation model" is divided into three stages:

1. Preparation stage: collecting information, concentrating thinking, and generating ideas.

2. Iterative design stage: determine the content and design, generate a model outline and continue to optimize and iterate.

3. Iterative development stage: realizing course content. Various versions are developed according to different environments (training objects) and tested, evaluated and refined.

It seems that SAM has reduced the steps on the surface, but there is still the shadow of ADDIE, but it has been integrated more quickly, and the order has been disrupted to a certain extent. So what's the biggest difference?

First of all, we can find that the evaluation link of SAM is not after implementation, but before implementation. The development team conducts a large number of test evaluations;

Secondly, in order to be able to reflect "Continuous approximation", SAM requires the ability to quickly evaluate and iterate, which obviously cannot be completed by one person. Because a set of course ideas that can solve problems must require the full cooperation of course designers and business experts, SAM must be developed by teamwork;

Then, SAM strives to "make and sell now" and quickly Find the target needs and quickly solve the current problems, which is quite the "treating the symptoms" style of Western medicine;

Finally, we can find that SAM is more flexible and casual. Once there is a problem in the process, we can start over and repeat it immediately. Carry out iterative improvements to avoid the embarrassing situation of "losing one thing and losing both".

We can find that the five key points of ADDIE are like the five internal organs of the human body, step by step and complementary to each other; if SAM wants to survive reasonably, it cannot do without these important contents. It's just that based on some background and needs, a more rapid and efficient response was made.

Similarly, when we look back at the current corporate background, with the rise of more entrepreneurial Internet companies, their operations will also undergo rapid iterations. If corporate training wants to keep up with them, the matching degree of SAM must be will fit better. For traditional enterprises, ADDIE, as a more logical model, will be more suitable.

Okay, that’s all for today’s content, thank you all for reading.