Instructional design
From The Learning Engineer's Knowledgebase
Instructional design is the process of planning, designing and developing an educational product or experience with the intention of helping a participant achieve specific learning objectives.
Definition
The instructional design process is a step-by-step process by which an educational product or experience is planned, designed, and developed so that it can be subsequently used to help people learn.
An instructional designer is a person who performs instructional design tasks, including any of the design tasks, conceptualization, and development of educational products, experiences, interfaces, and technologies. Instructional designers always intend for products to achieve specific goals, particularly the achievement of learning objectives.
Instructional designers are similar to learning engineers, learning scientists, and educational technologists, differing only in that instructional designers' primary focus is taking actions to design and implement educational experiences.
Additional Information
To design something is to document and develop the instructions or directions for performing specific interactions and activities that are expected to occur among people and technologies, the technologies to be used, any interfaces and media to be used, and the look and feel of the experience.
The instructional design process is guided by a model of instructional design that outlines each of the steps that should be taken by designers when working on a project. A commonly used model for instructional design is The ADDIE Model of Design.
All instructional designs are intended to help participants achieve specific learning objectives. The output of the instructional design process is an educational product or experience that is intended to be used in actual educational settings. The objectives and intended design of an educational product or experience are typically well documented to clearly denote how the product is to be used, what actions that the people and technology will perform (including both instructors and participants)
Instructional design requires an instructional designer or instructional design team to consider and design (i.e., document and develop) the primary components that must be included in a well-designed educational product or experience. These components include:
- The context and scope in which the design will be used
- Details and directions for the activities that will be performed by the participant
- The instructional activities that will be performed by any teachers, facilitators, or software
- How the product or experience should be implemented
- How the product or experience should be evaluated
Tips and Tricks
- The instructional design process is the primary work that we do as people who want to design, develop, and use new educational products to help people learn. The process is one that has been improved over the years by countless designers who have shared the lessons that they have learned on what works well or not. Thus, instructional design is a very practical field that is mostly concerned with following steps that have been shown to work well at creating products that demonstrate that people learn.
- The instructional design process produces the best products when a common model of design process is followed. The ADDIE Model is an excellent model that contains the essential steps for completing an educational product that is well thought out and can be shown that it works during evaluations.
- Anyone who participates in instructional design is an instructional designer. If you're working on an instructional design project, you are an instructional designer! Welcome to the club!
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