Developing Instructional Materials for Distance Education: A “Concerns-Based” Approach

Common approaches to instructional materials development currently used at distance education institutions are reviewed in this paper with the team approach considered in some detail. It is argued, that to a very large extent, the success or failure of most team approaches can be traced to the management of the team's effort. Good management of the process is not only being concerned with getting the administrative procedures right but also with effectively managing the concerns and aspirations of all individual participants In that effort. It means being sensitive to entry-level behaviours of individual members as well as being able to guide their development towards successful achievement of the team's objective. A model for adopting educational innovations using the individual and the innovation as the frame of reference —the Concerns-Based Adoption Model— developed by Gene Hall and others is proposed to show how it could be applied to cope with this issue.