What does an instructional designer do?
May 26, 2007In the past few months, I’ve been asked by a number of different people what an instructional designer does and how to get into the field. I love instructional design because it is a field where I am constantly learning and I have a great variety in what I do. I use so many different skills—writing, web design, graphics, collaboration, planning, plus of course how people learn.
Since this question has come up more than once, I thought it would be useful to collect all the information I have emailed people privately and post it here. This will be a series of posts over the week or so. I have about five pages of emails to revise for this format, so it’s waaay too long to put into one post.
So without further ado, here’s the first installation:
What does an instructional designer do?: Design and develop learning experiences
I’m emphasizing “experiences” here deliberately, even though that isn’t always how others would describe the job. I think one of the crucial things instructional designers can (and should!) do is make sure that students have opportunities to actively practice what they are learning.
If all you’re doing is dumping content into PowerPoint slides or text to read, you don’t need an instructional designer. The Subject Matter Expert or whoever knows the content can just write it, and the students will be passive recipients of that content. What the instructional designer adds to the process is the experiences of learning and practicing; IDs know how people learn and have ideas on how to help them learn better. If you are looking for engaging learning activities or ways to make practice closer to real life skills, that’s when an ID is who you need.
How do we do that?
- Work with Subject Matter Experts to identify what students need to learn
- Develop objectives and ensure content matches those objectives
- Revise and rewrite content to shape it for learning needs
- Structure content and activities for student learning
- Create media to support learning (e.g., visual aids for face-to-face, various multimedia for e-learning and online)
- Develop assessments (note that this does not only mean tests)
- Adapt instructional materials created for one format to another format (usually this is adapting materials from face-to-face to e-learning)
Note: I don’t consider this to be a completely comprehensive description by any stretch of the imagination. This is intended to just be an overview. If you think I missed any major points, please add a comment. I’d love to hear some feedback!
Update: Other Posts in this Series
- What Does an Instructional Designer Do? (Current post)
- Getting Into Instructional Design
- Instructional Design Skills
- Technology Skills
- Professional Organizations and Career Options
- Is instructional design the right career?
Read all my posts about Instructional Design Careers.
Technorati Tags: instructionaldesign, e-learning, education
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Hi,
Enjoyed your posts. I’m a technical writer seeing a lot of job openings for IDs lately, and was curious about crossing over. You didn’t delve into tech writers too much, but I’m wondering how much graphics development is involved in your daily work. I’m finding that most job openings require several years’ experience, so breaking in could be intersting.
Hi Suzanne,
I haven’t really known any tech writers who became instructional designers, although I’ve interviewed some, so I don’t feel like I have as much expertise in this particular subject. However, I do think it’s possible to make the transition successfully, especially if you could find an ID job that focuses heavily on writing where your skills are already strong.
In my previous two jobs, I did almost no graphic work. I did lay out storyboards in PowerPoint, but they were very rough. Our production group had the graphic design and Flash expertise, so I let them do what they were good at.
My current job is with a much smaller company, and we don’t have the luxury of passing it off to someone else to finish. Most of my visuals are stock photos (with some basic editing). I’m starting to create more custom graphics now as I’m improving my skills, but it’s still pretty basic. Fortunately, one of the other IDs on the team does have strong graphic design skills, so when I need help she’s there to support me.
I think it’s certainly possible for you to find something where you don’t have to do much, if any, graphic design. Larger companies are more likely to split up the work into specializations than small teams where you have a “one person shop.” Personally, I feel that the visual aspect is an area where I have a lot of room to grow, and I’m trying to learn more in this area. You should be able to get started in ID without it though.
[...] to clarify my own “lessons learned.” This won’t be a structured series the way my Instructional Design careers set was where I had all the posts planned out in advance. I haven’t organized my thoughts [...]
Hi Christy- you posted a comment on my blog after you were randomly led there by wordpress. I can’t see a link between my few posts and your site other than we both use wordpress. But then your blog has been around much longer than mine. I am glad you picked up mine as I now know of another field in education. As a classroom teacher designing instruction, I always wished I had time and assistance to create and integrate to make the school day more relevant. My current school is looking at NWEA testing, which I used in my past district. I appreciated the data it provided as a piece of the student’s profile that was easy to use to modify instruction. There is such a need to overhaul and integrate all subjects, not just tech, to allow engaging and meaningful instruction. Cheers!
Nancy, I replied on your blog previously, but just realized I hadn’t done so here yet. Oops! Even those of us who have been at it for a while still make mistakes.
I think that blogging and interacting with other edubloggers will give you numerous ideas about making what you teach more relevant. It won’t help on the time issue though. Teachers just need a few more hours in the day to get everything done.
By the way, don’t forget when you comment on another blog to include your blog address in the URL. That makes it easy for people to find your blog, including people who might just be visiting. I knew who you were because I had already commented on your blog, but people who just come here won’t know how to find you.