How do you blend the art and science of instructional design to develop strong content that both engages users and targets what they need to know? Learn to weigh the business constraints of each project along a spectrum that will help you understand the power of innovation when married to sound principles of instructional design. And learn to quickly determine the variables in play for each project, understand the audience you need to reach, and decide where to focus your attention and resources along the art-science continuum.
5. Design is directed towards human
beings. To design is to solve human
problems by identifying them and
executing the best solution.
I V A N C H E R M A Y E F F
“
6.
7. Done is better than perfect.
S H E R Y L S A N D B E R G
“
8. S T A T E T H E O B V I O U S A L E R T
Instructional Design is
NOT necessary for learning
Instructional Design does
NOT guarantee learning
9. A RT I S T I C I D B A D I DF O R C E D I D
DESTRUCTIONAL DESIGN
the three pillars of…
25. How much I actually know
How much I think I know (%)
How much I realize
there is to know
Knowledge
Expertise
I know nothing I’m an expert I know nothing
BEGINNER E XP ERTHA ZARD
adapted from Simon Wardley
27. M A R S H A L L M C L U H A N
We become what we behold. We shape
our tools and then our tools shape us.
“
28. SQUARE PEG, ROUND HOLE
Too much emotion
Not enough science
Fits, but doesn’t solve
the problem
Doesn’t fit, but still try
to force it.
29. I never teach my students.
I only provide the conditions
In which they can learn
A L B E R T E I N S T E I N
“
Notes de l'éditeur
Let me tell you a story about Donnie, Donnie is an ID that gets tasked by his department from the functional sales lead to build a course on sales enablement.
He scopes, completes a needs analysis, designs, develops, and finally deploys the course (or courses). However, by the time he's finished, the Sales team has already used micro-video in the form of user-generated video, wiki articles, and community to solve the immediate problem. A course is helpful, but in 6 months a new version of the product or methodology will be out, and the training will be useless.
Sound familiar?
In my estimate you're probably sitting here right now because you're a designer or manager passionate about instructional design, and you're here to find out exactly what to watch out for, because instructional design is a system and if applied correctly, with the right educated person, is THE tool to use for training.
Or, you're here because you don't like that first person and you're here to find out some definitive reasoning on what to watch out for, and use as justification because having a degree in instructional design doesn't make you a better learning experience designer.
Or, you're here because you thought the title, description, or presenter, sounded interesting (at least better than anything else in this time slot), so you thought you'd stop by.
Other?
But no matter why you are here, you probably believe that Instructional Design can be factor in solving human problems (much like any design system is)
From an execution standpoint, we're always looking to get the best instructional design in the quickest way possible with the least amount of money spent.
That's not a bad thing, I'm not saying we're not spending money on instructional design, rather, we want everything now as soon as we can, and are always willing to accept a less expensive option as long as it delivers the same level of quality.
And at the same time, we don't want to waste our time on bad execution or methodology.
The challenge becomes that (as with the first story), the longer we take, the more likely that the problem will be solved without formally designed training.
Similarly, we're facing challenges and competitors in experience from all over the industry and outside of the industry (not only experiences by large catalog firms such as Lynda.com or Pluralsight, but also competitors like Uber and Apple who have amped consumer expectations on how something should look and feel). We've got to be fast, and we have to know when to apply ID so that we can provide a value add in this shortest time possible…
Because our people now are very smart, driven, and embrace change with digital technology… They are continuously learning (and if they aren't doing these things, then they will need to in the future).
(Facebook mantra = Done is better than Perfect)
Big shock, guess what "Instructional Design is not necessary for Learning"
It's great for designing training, and it gives the learner the best opportunity for behavior or attitude change to occur, however, it is NOT necessary.
In fact, even the best instructional design for a formally training event, does not guarantee learning.
Again, instructional design is not necessary and does not guarantee learning.
Therefore if isn't necessary, and it doesn't guarantee learning, then the true challenge is when to apply it and to watch out for pitfalls that may hinder its effectiveness.
So for this reason, I’m going to give you three things to watch out for so that you can quickly decide if ID is necessary, and avoid potential pitfalls. Keep in mind, these are a way of thinking, and not something that you can simply write down as checkboxes from each project.
You'll have to embrace each, and change may be difficult.
My wife loves design, and has an exceptional knack at both interior and exterior design.
We just purchased a home, and are converting what was once the “living” room into my work-at-home office while simultaneously designing and finishing our master bedroom.
During this process recently, my wife entered my office and asked if I would like to move some of my books (currently in the office) to our bedroom.
I was enthralled at the idea, given that we try to keep work/personal separate, and reading in bed (as well as television) never was big.
After handing my wife 2-3 books to place by my bedside, she looked at each of them and replied, “well… do you have anything in more of a toupe cover?”
In her mind, she was simply going to use the books as artistic elements for the master bedroom.
She, literally, was judging each book by its cover. She wanted good looking books.
Why does one believe that form follows function, or art follows the science of design?
The form (or “art”) of good design is always dictated by the function (“science”) or purpose of the product.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/23/does-form-follow-function/
While sometimes attributed to sculptor Horatio Greenough, the phrase “form follows function” was coined by American architect Louis Sullivan. In his 1896 article, “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered,” Sullivan wrote:
“It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.”
Good and bad examples design (too much science without art, and, too much art without science)
The art and science of instructional design is no different. Instructional Design IS a type of design that has both elements.
Be aware of Instructional Design bias (going too far considering the science) and eye-candy (going too far on the design side)
The science of instructional design dates back to John Dewey and is refined by ideas from Clark, Merrill, Gagne, etc…
People complain about a formal instructional designer, about how much they can’t stand
Continue to ask yourself about how you are apply instructional design, and if it needs to be more of an art or science.
What do the learner’s actually need?
In fact, when I went into college, my goal was to become an architect, because I loved beautiful design, loved art of the possible, and loved the ability to imagine and create something that I think is beautiful.
I’m a perfectionist like that, I really am. What I had a hard time believing was that my art could be “graded”, and that there were certain aspects of creation that were objective and that I couldn’t get people to buy into my idea of beauty and art. In other words, I hated the idea that there were levels of talent in art.
I always thought that if you put the time in, art was in the eye of the beholder.
What I realized was that there were principles and elements of artistic design that you would absolutely measure against, and potentially need to explain their involvement in each piece that was created.
After a few semesters of soul-searching, I landed on the major of math education, partly because I loved the idea of designing something that I could control, and math was an objective science that allowed me to focus on the design of the delivery and execution, instead of focusing on the interpretation of the subject matter. Math, in my eyes, was black/white… it was the delivery that needed to be designed. And, my teacher education program helped me understand the nuances of design.
We’re going to find ourselves irrelevant
When do we apply instructional design? For “Instruction”, duh.
Yes, we can glean off of other design systems.
We think that instructional design is critical for all instruction, however, to be quite honest, it’s not high stakes.
Therefore, Don’t force it. Focus on when it is important to the User Experience.
If the UX doesn’t call for “instruction”, don’t use instructional design. (would you force graphic design if there were no graphics?)
Ask the question “How many people out here have built a website, or app? Seriously, built it yourself”
How many people of those have hand-coded it vs starting with a template or using another web-tool like Squarespace, Google Sites, Wordpress, etc…?
Tell story about how web development is easy now, but even though people can code, templates and other tools take the guesswork out of user-interface design
Bad decisions can be made with design, simply because the tools are supposed to take the guess-work out of it, but you don’t know when they’ve failed or not… you’re simply using a tool
If you can build a website using a template/tool all of the time, would you consider yourself a web designer?
Why do we consider people who build courses with tools as instructional designers. Yes tools/templates take the guess-work out of some aspects of design, but if something goes wrong, or a new feature or version is released, they consider the tool as instructional… driving the instruction, not the user of the tool (so-called instructional designer).
A lot of bad decisions have been made with the greatest intentions.
We need to continue to focus on an instructional outcome that’s aligned to a business outcome.
I’ve built and designed courses, videos, wikis, blogs. I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t work as a student of instructional design, instructional designer, manager of instructional design.
I learned instructional design techniques, and right out of college I thought I could solve every problem with instructional design, and the workforce would love me for it….
But in reality, you have to watch out what you think you know about instructional design. What I’ve learned through my long tenure of design is that I don’t know a lot, and, that it changes everyday. The better you are at instructional design, the better you are able to make connections.
Even though presented with the same knowledge blocks, an expert knows what her next move is.
It is imperative that we don’t simply rely on a “spray and pray” approach to instructional design…
Talk about how tools have forced anyone to become an instructional designer.
You need all of these, but they must come in the form of talented individuals or you having enough knowledge to be dangerous
It wasn’t until then that adding loads of colors/animations/interactions became apparent, and there was no set of guidelines to use that suggested any type of learning implications.
You remember this time, right? When sparkling rainbow gradients, comic sans, and spinning entrance animations polluted the many presentations that we saw.
It was the wild-west of visual learning design simply because we didn’t know.
[maybe use these sites to generate some feedback and questions--- https://infogr.am/PowerPoint-usage-and-Marketshare, http://powerpointinfo.blogspot.com/2012/02/powerpoint-usage-statistics-and-market.html]
After a several years of teaching at the high school and university level, and around 2003, I was hired at Element K (now Skillsoft) into the role of “instructional designer”.
Now, when you first hear this title, it became apparent to me that I would be designing instruction. In other words, I would be designing instructional experiences. Now, Element K at the time was building a format in which you could design both ILT and digital learning (“eLearning”, at the time) at the same time, the same structure.
My role was not only to design instructionally the experience, with assistance from senior instructional designers, but also author the content. So, in essence, because the technology was available for me to write directly into the tool that would output into the final experience, my role was to not only design the instruction but also author the content. In essence, due to technology, there were two systems of design that I had to learn… instructional and information design and architecture. The good thing was that there was research to base this on… we used research-based theory and approach by Clark and Merrill to create a unified design approach to the instructional design for both ILT and digital.
After teaching awhile as a teacher and professor, I moved to a private learning solutions company named Element K.
I started as an instructional designer, fresh off of the heals of them wondering whether or not it should be called a “technical writer”
Basically, I worked with senior instructional designers in working with the content, and designing it, molding it in a way that promoted retention. In essence, we were creating formal instructor led training for the classroom and self-paced elearning at the same time using an instructional design methodology that was a hybrid of research and practice from Ruth Clark and David Merrill.
Here is where I really started to blossom, given that the first technology I started to learn was XML and it was the technology that we were using to deploy these learning experiences.
We worked hand-in-hand with graphic designers, multimedia designers and something called a “MID” (Multimedia Instructional Designer).
Their role was to interpret what the instructional designer wanted to convey into a visual language for the graphic designer, the graphic designer would then create the overall layout of the animation or digital interaction, to create the multimedia (which, at the time, was audio + animation).