For a given project, how do you determine if, when, and how much an instructional designer and instructional design are needed? This is the Big Question on the Learning Circuits Blog this month.
You might as well ask how much design is needed to manufacture an automobile. The answer is "the optimal amountt," and that’s determined by judgment based on relevant experience, and it comes up different for a Fiat than for a Ferrari. There’s no formula because oversimplifying an unruly world inevitably leads you to the wrong place.
Some instructional designers believe that learning is learning. I disagree. Why should we assume that the same instructional design approach is valid for cognitive learning, emotional learning, physical learning, disciplined listening, and wine tasting? Minds on Fire by John Seely Brown and Richard Adler in the current Educause Review advocates replacing learning to know with learning to be. Learning is contextual, as is the answer to this month’s big question.
Does anyone believe there’s a single approach for these wildly different forms of learning?
learning to talk
learning to crawl
learning your ABCs
learning to fear the number 13
learning to meditate
learning to speak French
learning the way to the store
learning who to trust
learning with my pal Sally
learning how to sell
learning Ruby on Rails
learning where the answers are
learning to negotiate
learning to play piano
learning to rollerblade
learning to taste wine critically
learning to cook bread
learning to lead effectively
We’ve considered this issue before.
I’m confident some people are going to forcefit ADDIE or HPT to any situation that pops up. That works only if you water ADDIE and HPT down beyond recoginiton. Instructional design does not own the patent on this basic approach humans use to solve problems:
- figure out what you want to do
- explore the environment
- prototype a potential solution
- try it
- back to step 1 if it doesn’t work
The answer this month’s Big Question is: common sense and intuition.
13 comments ↓
Your discussion is very timely for me - as I’m currently reading a book by Marcy Driscoll in which she outlines a 5-step procedure for producing behavioral change. It’s very much like the steps you listed for problem solving and I agree that it’s a very fundamental thing - or common sense. It also seems to agree with Thomas Gilbert’s outlook on engineering performance.
Where I struggle with these concepts in a post I once read on the topic of “usability design” being more science than art (or vice versa). I try to keep that in mind when thinking of the value of an instructional designer - are we more art or science? Science being able to make “predicatable, repeatable results.” http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2007/04/17/uietips-article-cue-a-usability-testing-bake-off/
As an instructional designer, what I heard you say is that you equate ISD with ONE type of learning process or style. From my perspective and experience, ISD/ADDIE are a framework and a process for thinking through the best way to learn something, not a prescription for how to learn anything. I would argue that I could apply my process and framework to any of the topics in your list. And depending on the learner, the content, and the environment for whom/which I am designing I might come up with multiple ways to learn any given thing. (NOTE: There are also the constraints of time, cost, and resources.)
I do agree with you about the common sense part… ultimately, that is what it boils down to.
Jay, the basic approach almost sounds like the ADDIE framework:
Analysis - figure out what you want to do
Analysis & Design - explore the environment
Development - prototype a potential solution
Implement & Formative Evaluation - try it
Summative Evaluation - back to step 1 if it doesn’t work
WHEN DO YOU BRING IN THE TROOPS
Every project presents it’s own unique complexities and on that basis the more experienced you are at managing or developing the skill transfer process, then the more common sense and intuition you have to pull from.
Having said that, many highly talented trainers or tutors can look at the sequencing of knowledge and in an instant know what should be changed to make the learning interaction hum. And that skill is priceless. People at that level don’t need an instructional designer and the market knows it.
However, after the debacle of eLearning 1.0, I believe that eLearning 2.0 brings tracked, measured and audited elearning into clear focus. It is imperative that elearning or distance learning technologies offer assessment and authentication processes of skills being transferred, if the true value of the emerging technology is to be achieved.
With that standard in mind, and in protection of your client’s objectives/learning outcomes, it makes common sense to have an instructional designer on the team or work with a contractor, especially if it is a large multi-course, multi team project, if only to protect yourself. However, the reality is that not all instructional designers are highly creative and capable of engaging the learner’s willingness to learn.
A fairly cost-effective way you could consider working with an instructional designer but still retaining the creative approach is for you to create the flow charts for the content, identifying the outcome required at each step. You contract the ID to identify the sequenced learning steps to be achieved at each junction. You can then build the content creatively, using that as a roadmap moving forward. After the content has been completed, contract the ID to check that you worked according to the roadmap.
Overall, I do think it is due time that elearning projects become 100% accountable for the delivery of skills that should transfer into increased business performance.
Donald, you make my point. You say “the basic approach almost sounds like the ADDIE framework.” And I write, “Instructional design does not own the patent on this basic approach humans use to solve problems.”
Barb, you say that as an instructional designer, “what I heard you say is that you equate ISD with ONE type of learning process or style.” Well, no, I questioned whether the same instructional design approach would be valid for cognitive learning, emotional learning, physical learning, disciplined listening, and wine tasting. I am skeptical that the same design approach fits both learning to speak French and learning to rollerblade unless you water ADDIE and HPT down beyond recoginiton.”
The Big Question was “how much an instructional designer and instructional design are needed?” I don’t think instructional design in and of itself can answer that question.
[...] São muitas perguntas e ainda não são todas. Respostas óbvias também existem: “depende” ou “bom senso e intuição“. [...]
Jay, I don’t think the “basic approach” that you outlined is the way most people go about solving problems. From what I have observed, most people just “shoot from the hip.” Thus I’m inclined to think that the “basic approach” is actually based upon the ADDIE model. Anyway, its a interesting post and discussion.
I noticed the response from Lee, what he is describing is to a great extent what e-Learning 1.0 tried so hard to accomplish.
Your post recognizes a key consideration - namely that learning is for the learners not the assessors. The techniques used to provide learning that fits the needs of learners rather than our expectations of what those needs should are involves all sorts of design approaches.
For example, constructing a content management system / discovery portal involves design in terms of User Interface, taxonomy and content structure and metadata. Many would argue that a CMS and the knowledge within it falls outsides the bounds of elearning, I however disagree.
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