The Gerlach and Ely Instructional Design Model: A Comprehensive Guide

Most instructional designers know ADDIE by heart, but fewer are familiar with the Gerlach and Ely model, a systematic design framework developed in the 1970s by Vernon Gerlach and Donald Ely that remains genuinely useful for anyone building structured, objectives-driven courses today. Unlike more linear frameworks, Gerlach and Ely's model is built around parallel processing — several elements are meant to be developed simultaneously rather than strictly in sequence — which makes it a good fit for teams that need to iterate quickly on content and assessment together rather than finishing one before starting the other.

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Where the Model Came From and Why It Still Holds Up

Gerlach and Ely designed their model for classroom teachers, not corporate training departments, which is part of why it feels more grounded and less jargon-heavy than some later frameworks. It was built around a simple premise: teaching is a systematic process with identifiable components, and if those components are addressed deliberately rather than intuitively, the resulting instruction will be more consistent and more effective. That premise has aged well. The specific media Gerlach and Ely wrote about — filmstrips, overhead projectors — has not, but the underlying logic of the model transfers cleanly to modern digital course design.

The Ten Elements of the Model

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The Gerlach and Ely model is typically described through ten interconnected components, grouped loosely into planning, implementation, and evaluation stages.

• Specification of content — defining exactly what subject matter will be covered.
• Specification of objectives — stating what learners should be able to do afterward, distinct from content.
• Assessment of entering behaviours — establishing what learners already know or can do before instruction begins.
• Determination of strategy — choosing an overall instructional approach, expository or discovery-based.
• Organisation of groups — deciding how learners will work: individually, in small groups, or as a whole class.
• Allocation of time — assigning realistic time to each learning activity.
• Allocation of space — deciding where and in what physical or digital setting learning will occur.
• Selection of resources — choosing the media, materials, and tools that will support instruction.
• Evaluation of performance — measuring whether learners actually achieved the stated objectives.
• Analysis of feedback — using evaluation results to revise and improve the design going forward.

The Feedback Loop That Sets It Apart

What distinguishes Gerlach and Ely from more purely linear models is the constant feedback loop running through the centre of the diagram most textbooks use to represent it. Rather than treating evaluation as a final step that closes the project, the model treats it as continuously informing content, objectives, and strategy while the course is still being built or run. This is closer to how good course teams actually work in practice: a pilot cohort's confusion about one lesson feeds back into a rewrite of the objectives, not just a note for "next time." Designers using this model deliberately build in checkpoints — early drafts tested with a handful of real learners — rather than waiting until a full course is finished to discover that an objective was unclear or a resource missed the mark.

Applying the Model to a Modern Course Build

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In practice, applying Gerlach and Ely to a modern online or blended course means working through the same ten questions but translating the vocabulary. "Allocation of space" becomes a decision about platform and interface, not classroom layout. "Organisation of groups" becomes a decision about discussion boards, breakout sessions, or solo self-paced study. "Selection of resources" now spans video, interactive scenarios, and generated practice questions rather than filmstrips. The genuinely useful part of the model is that it forces content and objectives to be specified separately and early, before strategy and grouping decisions are made — a discipline that prevents the common trap of building activities first and retrofitting objectives to match them afterward.

Where the Model Fits Alongside Other Frameworks

Gerlach and Ely is often taught alongside ADDIE and Dick and Carey, and it is worth being clear about where each earns its keep. ADDIE is the better choice for large, multi-stakeholder projects that need clear phase gates and sign-offs. Dick and Carey offers more granular guidance on instructional analysis and assessment alignment. Gerlach and Ely sits in between: lighter-weight than Dick and Carey, more iterative than a strict phase-gated ADDIE rollout, and particularly well suited to smaller teams or solo course creators who need a structured checklist without heavy project-management overhead. For an independent instructional designer or corporate trainer building a course from scratch, the model's ten elements make a genuinely practical planning checklist — and platforms like Course Writer can shorten the distance from that checklist to a finished curriculum, generating the objectives, structure, and assessments that the model calls for once content and goals have been specified.

The Lasting Value of a Fifty-Year-Old Framework

The staying power of the Gerlach and Ely model comes down to its insistence on separating decisions that are too often bundled together — content from objectives, strategy from resources, evaluation from a single end-of-course afterthought. Any course creator who works through the ten elements deliberately, even informally, will end up with a more coherent, better-aligned course than one built purely on instinct, regardless of whether the final product involves a projector or a fully online platform.