Conducting literature searches for instructional development projects

While most instructional developers would agree that some type of literature search should be conducted prior to ac~ tuatty producing a new training program, few would agree on the actual procedures that should be used in completing the search. Because so little attention has been paid to this area of instructional design, there also would likely be disagreement concerning the purposes of conducting the search. Most would agree that a primary purpose would be to avoid the duplication of existing training programs, but is that the only reason for reviewing literature prior to designing instruction/How, for example, is the developer to make the best use of program research and evaluation data that have been collected on the topic of the proposed instructional product? The purpose of this paper is to describe three types of literature searches that should be conducted as part of the instructional design process: (a) an instructional materials review, (b) a content research review, and (c) an instructional theory review. A suggested set of procedures will be given for completing the searches, followed by an account of using the procedure in an actual development project.