We are consultants. We do not want to do Instructional Design.
I hear this statement quite often these days. Every time, I smile and respond with a 'Sure you don't'.
It is my wish that one day, the consultants who share this view with me, ask for the reason behind the smile.
I would tell them then, that they should stay away not because the science and art of instructional design is beneath them. But because a majority of them do not have the skills to be good instructional designers.
The video below is an example of my reasoning. It is a quick view of instructional design in its base form....the ability to understand the key nuances of a business/industry/subject, distill out the key learning message and present in a manner that resonates with the learner.
It is again, a piece of work that takes multidisciplinary skills combined with years of experience and practice...not to mention creativity. Not something that folks can get into 'just because'...premium consultants or not.
Delving deeper, I would define the person who came up with the video based learning byte as an 'associate instructional designer'. A senior designer, in my book, would have transitioned from 'program' to 'organization'....from 'making learning stick' to 'defining and designing for complex business problems'.
Traits of good instructional designers:
I hear this statement quite often these days. Every time, I smile and respond with a 'Sure you don't'.
It is my wish that one day, the consultants who share this view with me, ask for the reason behind the smile.
I would tell them then, that they should stay away not because the science and art of instructional design is beneath them. But because a majority of them do not have the skills to be good instructional designers.
The video below is an example of my reasoning. It is a quick view of instructional design in its base form....the ability to understand the key nuances of a business/industry/subject, distill out the key learning message and present in a manner that resonates with the learner.
It is again, a piece of work that takes multidisciplinary skills combined with years of experience and practice...not to mention creativity. Not something that folks can get into 'just because'...premium consultants or not.
Delving deeper, I would define the person who came up with the video based learning byte as an 'associate instructional designer'. A senior designer, in my book, would have transitioned from 'program' to 'organization'....from 'making learning stick' to 'defining and designing for complex business problems'.
Traits of good instructional designers:
1. Passion for telling a story.
2. The ‘who am I this time’ attitude. Ability to work in and pick up key nuances of a variety of fields/subjects (retail/aerospace/healthcare/computing/ business soft
skills…). It pains me when I hear organizations advertising for instructional designers with 'SAP' functional experience. Ignorance in this case is not bliss...it leads to the deluge of bad design that plagues our industry today.
3. Focus on the message and not on the medium. An instructional designer
should have interests and knowledge that pans across communication
disciplines. The ID’s work straddles the disciplines of the printed word, visual
medium, video, audio and computing.
4. A combination of both theoretical and practical knowledge.
5. Transferable skills. An instructional designer should be able to apply learning across different situations to come up with innovative ideas. The result should be practical new strategies that are credible and that work.
6. Ability to simplify and explain a problem. An instructional designer should be able to think in both abstract (concepts) and concrete (facts). Yet another key requirement is the ability to think on their feet when challenged and to improvise.
7. Great interviewing skills. It is critical that an instructional designer be a good listener.
8. Attention to detail.
9. A team player. While personal goals are important, the customer’s goal must come first.
10. Ability to market themselves and gain the client's trust and respect.
11. Humility and wisdom to remember that the customer is always the star of the story.
Why is there such little understanding of and respect for the profession? Why does Instructional Design receive the bad rap that it does today?
I would lay the blame on the profession and those that profess to be a part of it. In our mad rush to embrace the 'factory model' we forgot to alert our clients and the rest of the world on the difference between 'instructional designers' and 'content collators'... leading them to believe erroneously that they are both the same. As true as equating a data entry person to a solution architect...and as unpardonable.
Why is there such little understanding of and respect for the profession? Why does Instructional Design receive the bad rap that it does today?
I would lay the blame on the profession and those that profess to be a part of it. In our mad rush to embrace the 'factory model' we forgot to alert our clients and the rest of the world on the difference between 'instructional designers' and 'content collators'... leading them to believe erroneously that they are both the same. As true as equating a data entry person to a solution architect...and as unpardonable.
I did NOT see the Bear doing the moonwalk and I suddenly realized that there may be so many things that I may have missed in our daily grind of a life forcing us to come up with time bound solutions to a problem. But then, life one of my favorite authors, Arundhati Roy, once suggested - The God is indeed in small things. It indeed is important to keep your eyes and mind open for the small minute things in the work you do. That is the one that can, and will bring about a change
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you Prasanna! Passion, zeal, practicality, and overall the tremendous tenacity to keep up against all challenges will not only keep up a true Instructional designer afloat but sail through smoothly. People tend to easily join established notions and in their closed world of taking fewer risks, discourage creativity on the pretext of practicality. We all know there is an eternal conflict between reality and practicality and it will remain that way. A true Instructional designer will need to strike the perfect balance between the two, and it will come through years of experience and thinking through things.
ReplyDeleteGood to see that someone pointed this thing out. As you rightly said that organizations nowadays look for IDs with technical and functional experience but neglect their creativity or way of presenting a thought clearly to learners. In some cases the ID-based jobs don't even pertain to the required ID skill set. Anyone with experience in SAP or Oracle seems to fit perfectly the job requirements. But very people understand the difference between the two skill set. Thanks Prasanna for this sharing this...
ReplyDeleteI saw the bear only while it was making its way out. But yes it makes me realize how easily we can miss so many things in our life. We are also more than often happy to think that these little things don't matter, but they do, they really do. More so, because if we start looking at the little things our perspective to the larger picture may take a big turn around.
ReplyDelete