Aug 22, 2010

The Instructional Designer

Watch the little animation Patrick Dunn made on his blog.

So, is the future of instructional design in danger? Are Subject Matter Experts the ones we need?

I will only add this to the debate: I see a lot of 'degraded' instructional design roles, and to me an instructional designer for learning is like the TV format creator in entertainment.

Yes, degraded. When I look only at my own company to all the people that carry the title 'instructional designer' (especially in one country that attracts a lot of outsourced work and shall remain unnamed)  and I look at what they mostly do, I get worried. Somehow, over the years the skill of matching learning need with proper learning activity design degraded into how to arrange stuff on a screen. That is not what instructional design is about. If it is, or if it got degraded into that for most that carry the title, please let subject matter experts take over.

A proper instructional designer is like a TV Quiz format creator to me. It is the design of the 'template', where other people can make a 1000 shows on... We don't need 100s of instructional designers for that, but we need a few damn good ones.

2 comments:

Ma said...

Bert: a thought-provoking article indeed. I'm inclined to agree with your assertion that some ID work has devolved to storyboard planning, however, it can also be said that the role of the ID has evolved to include effective content planning for new media.

Mark Sheppard said...

Bert: a thought-provoking article. I'm inclined to agree with your assertion that some ID work has devolved to storyboard planning, however, it can also be said that the role of the ID has evolved to include effective content planning for new media.

I enjoy the blog...it's a welcome contribution to my educational feeds.