Instructional design and project management: complementary or divergent?

This paper reports the results of a study to identify the extent to which organizations that develop educational/training products are committed to project management, as measured by their project management implementation maturity, as a methodology that is separate and distinct from the processes of instructional design. A Web survey was conducted among 103 public and private sector organizations worldwide that develop educational/training products. Results show no significant difference by project management maturity level in the roles of instructional designer and project manager, although there is some relationship between maturity level and how organizations perceive the skills/competencies of project managers versus those of instructional designers. Further, organizational decision-makers have very specific expectations about the formal education and training of educational/training product development project leaders. The findings should be of value to institutions of higher education in evaluating programs that prepare students for careers in instructional design.     

Knowledge and Skills Needed by Instructional Designers in Higher Education

In this paper, we sought to address the following research question: What knowledge and skills are needed by instructional designers in higher education to be successful in their roles? We interviewed eight instructional designers from across the United States, all working for institutions of higher education. Using the constant comparative method, we analyzed our data to identify relevant themes. Our results suggest that instructional designers in higher education must have a solid foundation in instructional design and learning theory, possess soft skills and technical skills, and have a willingness to learn on the job. Most instructional designers felt their academic backgrounds assisted them with their job roles, and, in particular, valued their professional experiences. Instructional designers in higher education must also keep abreast of multiple emerging information and communication technologies. We provide a discussion to synthesize our findings. The findings are relevant to professionals, professional academic programs, and professional associations.     

The Instructional Designer’s Role in Forming University-Community Partnerships in Digital Literacy

With an eye toward contemporary skill building to meet community centered economic needs, organizations such as Literacy Volunteers of America are increasingly pressured to examine new avenues in promoting employment readiness skills for the newly literate. These organizations and countless others have come to the realization that being prepared for the current workforce demands a skill set that surpasses traditional literacy skills in realizing job opportunity. The newly literate must now achieve a level of digital literacy to accompany traditional literacy efforts. The demand for such contemporary literacy skills to parallel traditional literacy presents an opportunity for university based instructional designers to share expertise and to collaborate with their local communities to this end. This paper focuses on the process of the formation of a university-community partnership in digital literacy designed for participants to collaboratively address such technology focused educational needs.     

Is building relationships the key to leadership?

Instructional designers are at the forefront of many interactions both within an organization and client‐facing. They are responsible for providing noteworthy learning experiences and ensuring the success of instructional programs. However, are instructional designers at a disadvantage because of a lack of interpersonal and building‐relationships skills? This article begins to uncover the notable absences of leadership and relationship‐building skills in professional and educational instructional design environments and the consequences to practicing and budding instructional designers.     

Live and Learn: Informal Learning Among Future Professionals

Although most workplace learning occurs informally, instructional design and technology professionals often focus their attention on more formal interventions, such as training. This article addresses a research study that examined the perception and use of informal learning strategies among instructional design and technology graduate students, the future members of the workforce of instructional designers and performance improvement practitioners. Results of this study may have implications for both instructional design and technology graduate programs and managers of instructional design and technology teams in organizations.     

Faculty and instructional designers on building successful collaborative relationships

Employing phenomenological techniques this qualitative study investigates perceptions of collaborative relationships between instructional designers and faculty at an R1 university. While past research has considered the growing involvement of instructional designers in course development, and knowledge and skills expected from an instructional designer, little attention has been paid to what constitutes an effective collaboration and how it can be developed from the perspectives of both instructional designers and faculty. Based on semi-structured interviews of faculty and instructional designers, the following four thematic categories were uncovered: (1) reasons for collaborative efforts; (2) structure of collaborative relationships; (3) supports of and barriers to collaboration; and (4) essential competencies and strategies for instructional designers and faculty in a collaborative partnership. Our findings support the existing research on the importance of collaboration between instructional designers and faculty, and spotlights instructional designers in the higher education setting. They also outline key elements of an effective relationship, including understanding the role of an instructional designer, trust and rapport building (and its components), administrative support and faculty buy-in. Suggestions are made for to how overcome potential barriers to ensure an effective and collaborative partnership. Implications and future directions for research and training programs are discussed.

     

Enhancing instructional design efficiency: Methodologies employed by instructional designers

Instructional systems design (ISD) has been frequently criticised as taking too long to implement, calling for a reduction in cycle time—the time that elapses between project initiation and delivery. While instructional design research has historically focused on increasing learner efficiencies, the study of what instructional designers do to increase efficiency during the design of instruction, including web‐based training, has not yet been fully examined. The purpose of this qualitative developmental study was to identify and understand the methodologies used by experienced instructional designers to increase the efficiency of the instructional design process. Data were gathered from 11 instructional designers working within two business and industry consulting firms that provide learning solutions to global clients. Results revealed 47 efficiency methodologies found within the four categories of design model, instructional design team member roles, instructional design processes and instructional design tools. Additionally, 14 supporting instructional designer competencies were found within the category of instructional designer knowledge, skills and attitudes.     

Teaching Instructional Design: An Apprenticeship Model

Several cognitive psychologists have written about the importance of placing instruction within “authentic” contexts that mirror real-life situations. They argue that knowledge learned in academic settings does not necessarily transfer to non-academic settings. Whether preparing performance technologists or instructional designers, educators must strive to create meaningful problem-solving contexts that enable students to define, and subsequently solve, real-world problems. In an attempt to address this issue we have modified the way we teach instructional design. This paper discusses a cognitive apprenticeship approach to teaching design, which incorporates elements of modeling, coaching, reflection, articulation, and exploration. We describe how these features are embedded within three phases (orientation, situated training/learning, and exploration) of an introductory instructional design course designed to move our novice designers along a continuum of expertise as they develop and refine their own professional design skills. Although the apprenticeship model described here specifically addresses concerns within the context of preparing instructional designers, we believe that this model can be adapted to address similar issues in the education of performance technologists.     

The dick and carey model: Will it survive the decade?

Many instructional designers and numerous organizations have adapted the Dick and Carey model for use in their training functions. This article reviews the changes that have occurred to the model in the 20 years since its original publication, and identifies various influences that may determine whether it will continue to be useful in the years ahead. Consideration is given to alternative instructional design textbooks and the potential decline in interest in instructional design within academic programs. The influence of constructivist theory on the 1996 version of the Dick and Carey model is described, and the long term impact of constructivist and objectivist models on public education and business and industry is assessed.     

Teaching Instructional Design: An Action Learning Approach

Many theorists and practitioners are calling for more authentically based teaching approaches in the preparation of instructional designers and performance technologists to address the complexity of the field's practice. Although many innovative methods have been incorporated into the study of instructional design and development and human performance technology, including case studies and applied experiences with collaborative groups, among others, the majority of teaching approaches are limited to the time constraints and format of the traditional university classroom setting. This paper discusses an alternative teaching approach that incorporates action learning principles along with authentic project‐based methods into the full‐time study of instructional design. The paper reviews action learning principles and highlights the commonalties between these principles and the application of the practice and teaching of the instructional design process in an authentic manner. Finally, the implementation of action learning principles within a graduate program in instructional technology is described. Action learning principles may be applied to many content areas; however, the highly complementary nature of this specific methodology to the teaching and practice of instructional design may have the potential to improve greatly our preparation of professionals in the complex work environments characteristic of this and related disciplines. As a valuable component of performance technology skills, training in instructional design methods based on an action learning approach may have broad implications for both the preparation of instructional designers and performance technologists.     

The influence of cognitive domain content levels and gender on designer judgments regarding useful instructional methods

Instructional theory is intended to guide instructional designers in selecting the best instructional methods for a given situation. There have been numerous qualitative investigations into how instructional designers make decisions and the alignment of those decisions with theoretical influences. The purpose of this research is to more quantitatively explore the question of how instructional designers actually use instructional planning theory to judge the usefulness of instructional methods. We asked 56 instructional designers to rate the usefulness of 31 instructional methods for six different cognitive domain content level conditions. The results show that content level has a statistically-significant influence on a designer’s judgments regarding the usefulness of an instructional method. A designer’s gender also has a statistically-significant influence on a designer’s judgments regarding methods, but a weak effect size limits this result. Overall, the results provide evidence that supports the core principles of instructional planning theory, specifically method generality. The results also provide instructional designers further guidance in selecting the most useful instructional methods for cognitive domain content levels.     

Instructional designers as reflective practitioners: developing professional identity through reflection

As the design thinking approach becomes more established in the instructional design (ID) discourse, the field will have to reconsider the professional identity of instructional designers. Rather than passively following models or processes, a professional identity rooted in design thinking calls for instructional designers to be dynamic agents of change who use reflective thinking to navigate the design space and develop solutions to ill-structured problems. Graduate programs in ID will also need to prepare students to manage the complexities they will encounter in their professional practice, including the establishment of design precedents, reflective thinking skills, and the foundations of professional identity. This research explored the use of reflective writing assignments in an introductory ID graduate course, with results indicating that most students are able to engage in meaningful reflection in relation to prompts concerning design concepts, experiences, and identity attributes, although no clear patterns of improvement emerged over time. Future directions for research include the use of feedback and the structure of prompts (including frequency of writing assignments and wording of prompts) to support improved student performance.     

Ask the instructional designers: A cursory glance at practice in the workplace

The purpose of this exploratory study was to make better connections between what is professed in instructional design degree programs and what happens in the workplace. Findings from the study of how three corporate instructional designers navigated and made sense of their daily practice included the factors that mostly influence their instructional design (ID) decisions, their perspectives on ID theories and models, how they compensated for any deficits in their knowledge or skills, and their hiring preferences.     

Action Learning: Design Features and Outcomes at Georgia State University

This account of action learning as a curriculum offering at Georgia State University provides background and details of program start-up and operation during a first, experimental year. It explains what features were important in the design, what some of the first-year outcomes were, and what designers of the laboratory course will continuously seek to improve. Research findings from the first year of offering the program supported the expectation that students would gain confidence in their set mentoring and organizational problem-solving skills through a blend of hands-on experience and through independent and in-class reflection. Using critical incidents and journals as a way of staying in touch with events and with their own learning process, participants came to view critique as a leading part of action learning. Graduate students who were the first action learners at GSU included both human resource development and instructional technology majors. They have now fanned out in many directions to learn more about action learning and to carry the process into other organizations.     

A profile of instructional designers in Australia

This paper reports on the findings of a questionnaire which elicited information from ninety‐nine instructional designers in Australia about their qualifications, the activities they undertake, and perceptions of their role. Over half of those surveyed have what they consider to be qualifications in instructional design. The range of activities undertaken is large. There are slight variations in the activities performed by instructional designers at universities compared with instructional designers at Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes. There was very little difference in the frequency of activities performed by those with instructional design qualifications and those without. The research shows that many people are confused about the role of instructional designers. There are many negative perceptions of the role held by people with whom instructional designers work and these perceptions can adversely affect the instructional designers' work.     

The Use of Task Analysis Procedures by Instructional Designers

The purpose of this study was to learn about the use of task analysis procedures by instructional designers. Task analysis is regarded by many to be the most integral part of the instructional design process and the most technical aspect of the instructional designer's job. It is also thought to be the most ambiguous of the instructional design, processes. A questionnaire was developed that surveyed 164 members of the International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) with instructional design responsibilities. This research learned what instructional design activities designers associate with task analysis and the percentage of time instructional designers devote to task analysis. It also learned what task analysis methods are most and least often used by instructional designers and identified those task analysis methods not known by instructional designers. Finally, this study determined how instructional designers learn to conduct task analyses and the factors that impact task analysis practices.     

Preparing Instructional Designers for Game-Based Learning: Part III. Game Design as a Collaborative Process

In this three part series, four professors who teach graduate level courses on the design of instructional video games discuss their perspectives on preparing instructional designers to optimize game-based learning. Part I set the context for the series and one of four panelists discussed what he believes instructional designers should know about instructional game design. In Part II, two faculty members who teach courses on instructional game design presented their perspectives on preparing instructional designers for game-based learning. Part III presents a fourth perspective along with conclusion that contrasts the four views posited in Parts I-III.