ADDIE, SAM, and Course Design Frameworks

ADDIE

The most widely used instructional design framework. Five phases:

1. Analyze — Who are the learners? What do they already know? What’s the gap between where they are and where they need to be?
2. Design — Define learning objectives, choose the course structure, plan assessments, and outline the content.
3. Develop — Create the actual materials — record videos, write text, build slides, design worksheets.
4. set up — Launch the course. Upload to the platform. Onboard students.
5. Evaluate — Measure results. Did students learn what you intended? What needs improvement?

Do you need to follow ADDIE? No. Most course creators naturally follow a simplified version without knowing it: figure out what students need (analyze), plan the course (design), build it (develop), launch it (set up), and improve based on feedback (evaluate).

When you’ll hear it: In conversations with instructional designers, corporate training departments, or anyone with an education background.

SAM (Successive Approximation Model)

An agile alternative to ADDIE. Instead of a linear process, SAM uses iterative cycles:

1. Prototype — Build a rough version quickly
2. Review — Get feedback from learners or stakeholders
3. Revise — Improve based on feedback
4. Repeat — Keep iterating until it’s ready

When it’s useful: When you’re not sure exactly what your course should look like and want to test early versions with real students. It’s the instructional design equivalent of the “build a beta, get feedback, improve” approach we teach in Validate & Launch.

Backward Design

Start with the end result you want, then design the course to get students there.

1. Identify the desired result — What should students be able to do after completing the course?
2. Determine acceptable evidence — How will you know they got there? (quizzes, projects, assessments)
3. Plan the learning experiences — What content and activities will prepare them to succeed?

This is the approach we recommend in Plan Your Course — start with the end in mind and work backward.

Instructional Design

The professional field of creating educational experiences. People with degrees in instructional design (often an M.Ed.) are trained in ADDIE, SAM, Bloom’s taxonomy, and other formal frameworks.

Do you need an instructional design degree? No. Most successful course creators are subject matter experts who learned enough about teaching to be effective. You already know more about instructional design than you think if you’ve ever taught someone something.

SME (Subject Matter Expert)

The person who knows the content — that’s you. In corporate training, SMEs work with instructional designers to build courses. The SME provides the knowledge; the ID structures it for learning.

When you’ll hear it: If you ever work with a course builder or consultant (like us), they might refer to you as the SME. It’s a compliment — it means you’re the expert in your topic.

Needs Analysis

The process of figuring out what your audience actually needs to learn. Part of the “Analyze” phase in ADDIE. You do this when you interview potential students, survey your audience, or run a beta test.

Learning Objectives

Specific, measurable statements about what students will be able to do after completing a lesson or course.

Bad objective: “Students will understand marketing.” Good objective: “Students will write a 500-word launch email sequence using the PAS framework.”

The second one is testable. You can look at the email and determine whether the student achieved the objective. We cover this in Bloom’s Taxonomy.