Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

The Systematic Design of Instruction

Rate this book
New Book

396 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

18 people are currently reading
312 people want to read

About the author

Walter Dick

17 books1 follower

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
84 (31%)
4 stars
84 (31%)
3 stars
70 (26%)
2 stars
23 (8%)
1 star
6 (2%)
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
Profile Image for Becky.
877 reviews149 followers
December 18, 2017
This, this is the sort of thing that I am stuck reading for two years instead of books I would actually like to be reading. *Grumble*

1- I would strongly encourage you to get the traditional book rather than the online/e-book. It isnt available on regular kindle readers so you are stuck reading it on an IPAD or Kindle fire. Interacting with the book through navigation or highlights is a real pain.

2- This is one of the DRIEST textbooks I've ever read. Mind-numbing. I'm new to the education world so I would have preferred that they spent more time defining their terms than they did. They also assumed people had a bit more educational theory behind them then I did so there were times I felt like I was playing catch up with the textbook.

3- The book DID have good points. While I disagree with asking educators to perform this level of lesson planning for every single lesson, the book does encourage instructional designer's to ask the right questions and gives them a good step by step method for designing meaningful curriculum. It was quite the information drop but I learned a lot and have even applied some of its methods to our survey collection for institutional research.

4- I appreciated that they spent time both on corporate and traditional educational examples.
Profile Image for kelly.
296 reviews1 follower
May 21, 2010
textbook example of a textbook. a little too textbook-y for my tastes.
Profile Image for Christian.
96 reviews17 followers
February 24, 2010
The 7th edition adds a useful set of appendices, in addition to other tweaks. If you plan on taking more than one or two courses in a program based on the Dick and Carey approach, it's well worth buying the latest edition -- even if you've managed to scrape up an older one.

I still find it useful to go back and refer to the book on occasion.


The online version stinks, however. It's a CourseSmart book that can't be saved to a Kindle or other offline reader.

Profile Image for Alex.
177 reviews
July 23, 2008
This is just an example of the kind of text I'm reading for my degree. It's extremely useful for educators, but oh God, it's so dry. I wish I could be reading "The Circuitous Design of Instruction," or "A Haphazard Arrangement of Information that Somehow Results in Instruction."
6 reviews
February 21, 2016
Assumes a lot of knowledge about Robert Gangé's works and other learning theories without giving adequate summaries for a beginner. Also, the explanation seems clear enough at first, but examples are often not adequate (too basic) to apply the concepts to more complex situations. Better for someone who already has knowledge of ISD models and wants to learn more specifically about the Dick and Carey Model.
Profile Image for Becca .
722 reviews43 followers
April 8, 2019
This is the text for my instructional design course and it's an eminently usable tool. It is as clear and methodical as the method it describes. It's like a pretty little reflective puzzle, the way some of my education courses were. "This is how to teach how to teach how to teach..." in a fractal spiral of meta-instructional funhouse insanity.

Eh hem.

Other than the minor meta-meta-meta-mess induced headache this book gives me, I've got to say this is great bare bones manual for instructional design. Many of the steps are common sense-- but it's always good to slow down the planning process and critically examine each step for its value and efficacy.

Common sense is not always best practice in reality. What we call common sense can be a weird amalgamation of bias, stop-gap coping techniques, old habits, and unchallenged assumptions.

In case you need to check in with your curriculum-building process, to make sure you are working efficiently to define and meet your goals, this is a great streamlined method.
1 review
November 16, 2015
This book is useful for my education research
Profile Image for Karlee.
223 reviews3 followers
November 26, 2022
Read for class. Informative, systematic approach, but could drag on at times in text. Charts and diagrams were helpful to summarize information.
Profile Image for YOGESWARAN S.P.MUNIANDI.
24 reviews1 follower
March 24, 2021
This is another masterpiece on instructional design and helped me from the beginning of my career as a curriculum developer. Generally known as Dick and Carey in empirical researches, this book emphasizes the hierarchy of instructional design and meticulously plan the instruction chapter by chapter. This includes setting up a goal, need analysis, task analysis, learning assessment plan, developing instructions and instruction assessments.
Profile Image for ECH.
426 reviews22 followers
August 22, 2019
To be clear I

a) might have not read a chapter or two but many of the chapters ive been ordered to read many times so I get it.
b)I definitely knocked a star off for spite as my course instructors used a thousand reps of this book as an alternative to teaching the course
3 reviews
August 1, 2025
Pretty dry. I might just be out of practice reading academic texts but it felt like they went out of their way to use less familiar, more clinical language when more common vocabulary would be as precise and more readily understood. But the content is excellent. Makes a great introduction to ID.
Profile Image for Gabriel .
14 reviews
September 23, 2019
Good book to know the creation of instructional design. It was my reference book in a doctoral class
Profile Image for Latifah Alateeq.
10 reviews7 followers
August 27, 2011
من أحدث الكتب لنموذج ديك و كاري و يتكلم في البدايه عن التصميم التعليمي و النظام ثم حول النماذج باختصار ثم بالتفصيل كل فصل عباره عن مكون من مكونات نموذج ديك و كاري ، طريقة العرض جميله و المعلومات أجمل للمهتهم في مجال التصميم التعليمي أنصحه به و بشده ،،
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.