A cost‐effective procedure for adapting instructional materials

Developing instructional materials is a formidable task. Expertise, motivation, time and special equipment are all necessary to prepare quality items. Furthermore, very few things in training are completely new and, if even a part of existing materials is appropriate for accomplishing training needs, it should be seriously considered. This article develops and explains a procedure for identifying, locating, gathering, examining and adapting instructional materials. It concludes with the importance of, and a methodology for, trying out and revising the materials. If this evaluation procedure is omitted, because of time or other resource constraints, there is a risk that instructional materials will not facilitate attainment of the learning objectives. When this happens, the entire adaptation effort will have been in vain.