What is instructional design?

The cry goes up that all we need to remedy these ills is a good old-fashioned dose of instructional design. “Instructional what?” you respond. Well, instructional design is, taken literally, the design of instruction in all its forms – whether classroom, one-to-one or self-study; for adults or children; in education or training. As a discipline, instructional design draws extensively from the psychology of learning and, in its methodologies, from systems and management thinking.

The term is not favoured by all. Some object to the word ‘instruction’, with its implications of a teacher-centered approach. Others object to the word ‘design’, suggesting as it does a rather arty orientation, and insist that what we really need is ‘instructional engineering’. Nevertheless, we have to settle on a name, and instructional design is not only generally accepted in the USA, it’s almost universally applied to the design of technology-assisted learning. So you may like to consider yourself a ‘learning engineer’, but the job you will be applying for will be instructional designer.

So what does an instructional designer do? Well, according to the competencies published by IBSTPI, a lot more than design. Instructional designers will often take the lead role in analysis and planning. Naturally enough, they’ll mastermind the design phase, selecting the appropriate strategies to meet the learning objectives. Because they don’t like to get left out in the development phase, many instructional designers will go on to write all or part of the script and contribute to the authoring. Typically, the larger the team, the more limited the instructional designer’s role. In a small team, they do everything, including make the tea.