Dick and Carey Model

The Dick and Carey model is a systems-based approach to designing instruction, first set out by Walter Dick and Lou Carey in their textbook The Systematic Design of Instruction, a widely used instructional-design text that went through many later editions with the later co-author James O. Carey. Rather than treating instructional design as a single act of writing a lesson, the model treats teaching and learning as a system of interrelated components, including the learner, the instructor, the instructional materials and the surrounding learning environment, that must all work together for instruction to succeed. Its process moves through a sequence of interconnected stages beginning with identifying an instructional goal and analyzing what learners must actually do to reach it, then analyzing the learners themselves and the context in which they will learn, writing specific performance objectives, developing assessment instruments to measure whether those objectives are met, and developing an instructional strategy and the materials that carry it out. The model builds in formative evaluation, testing draft instruction with learners and revising it based on the results, as a step distinct from summative evaluation of the finished, revised instruction, so that problems are caught and corrected before a course is judged as a whole. Because of its systematic, component-by-component structure, the Dick and Carey model has been one of the most widely taught instructional-design models in the field, particularly in preparing designers to build training and coursework for adult and workplace learners.