Strength

• It encourages and requires active student participation the design process.
• Clients don’t know their requirements until they see them implemented.
• It allows the stakeholders, subject matter experts, and end users to provide early feedback.
• The rapid prototype creates an early iteration loop that provides valuable feedback on technical issues, creative treatment, and effectiveness of instruction.
• The design document itself is changed to reflect this feedback, and in some cases, a new prototype module is developed for subsequent testing of the refinements.
• Prototyping can increase creativity through quicker user feedback
• Prototyping accelerates the development cycle.

Weaknesses

• Prototyping can lead to a design-by-repair philosophy, which is only an excuse for lack of discipline.
• Prototyping does not eliminate the need for front-end analysis. It cannot help if the situation is not amenable to instructional design.
• There may be many instructional design problems which are not addressed by prototyping.
• Prototyping may lead to premature commitment to a design if it is not remembered that a design is only a hypothesis.