Instructional Designer as Consultant?

With the rise of rapid eLearning tools and the ease with which virtually anyone can now create a course, what's changing for the instructional designer?

Consider this part two of my response to the Learning Circuits Big Question for February: Instructional Design - If, When and How Much?

(See part one: Instructional Design as a Spectrum)

In eLearning Magazine's predictions for 2008, Patti Shank said this:

Learning content, activity, and assessment authoring tools continue to improve. There are great tools with a short learning curve (for example, Adobe Captivate and Articulate Presenter) and tools with a longer learning curve that are really excellent (for example, Lectora, and Flashform). Savvy instructional designers are starting to realize that they cannot be involved in the development of all instructional content in their organizations. Designers are beginning to help others author content and that should leave the more complex projects, where quality of instruction and assurance of skills is needed, in the hands of capable instructional designers. One oh-so-hopeful prediction: Instructional design programs will begin teaching instructional designers to write. Why this critical skill isn't considered a must-have has me scratching my head.

—Patti Shank, President, Learning Peaks LLC, USA

Instructional Designer as Consultant

Are we seeing this happen? Are "instructional designers" of the experienced/trained in ID sort, providing more consulting expertise to the lower-tier of instructional designers (a.k.a. SMEs using rapid eLearning tools)?

Clive Shepherd thinks so. And thus the 60-Minute Masters: a crash course created by an instructional designer to teach SMEs the basics of instructional design.

Tom Kuhlman is certainly providing this expertise to the Articulate user community and beyond with his Rapid E-Learning Blog.

Laura from Canada sees an increasing call for IDs as "instructional consultants." In her comments on The Value of Instructional Designers, she observes:

Just wanted to add that I think the role of the ID, as seen in Canada at least, seems to be one of instructional consultant. This is from the numerous job posts (mostly medium size organizations) where they are asking for instructional designers who can assess the learning needs of the company and deliver the right training solutions in a blended format. Basically, they want an 'expert' to tell them how and what to train. There seems to be a mix between contract and full time positions, and I'm not sure how to read into that. I've worked as a technical writer for a long time and am seeing a drop in that area and an increase in instructional designers.

I don't know how to interpret this, nor are my findings indicative of any official status in IDs.

Is this what's happening? Are designers beginning to help others author content? Are IDs starting to serve the role of consultant more than the role of creator?

Personally, I am starting to see a bit of a demand for this. One of the products that my company creates are Flash based eLearning templates. We customize them for each client, based on the instructional design approach that organization is taking, look and feel, etc. What we're finding now is that our clients' "IDs" often have little to no ID experience and need help figuring out how to make the best use of this great tool we've built for them.

Is this a standard part of the package now for most rapid eLearning tool companies? Is this rolled right into the product or is that consulting expertise considered extra?

The Big Question: Instructional Design as a Spectrum

The Learning Circuits Big Question this month: Instructional Design - If, When and How Much?

My response here is not so much an answer to this question, but rather, further musings on this endless topic that I've been rambling on about of late.

Shades of Instructional Design

What if we leave the labels aside for a moment. What if we say that everyone who creates instruction is an instructional designer.

Different tools; different projects; different expertise. Some instructional designers are trained in ID; some are subject matter experts who've been assigned a training project or see a training need.

Of course, there may be and there are many variations in the quality of instruction that result.

But one could argue that some SMEs may and do have a natural flair for the art of instructional design (Rupa's post on ID as art; Donald Clark's post).

Some instructional designers, with a Master's Degree and all, may have no natural flair and may design poor instruction.

Many instructional designers find their way into this job rather randomly. Look at our survey results. Look at my own path to instructional design.

I'm wondering if we should be talking about tiers of instructional design. Of course, this is all semantics, and maybe it doesn't matter. But maybe it does.

Some instructional designers:

• Design self-paced eLearning. PowerPoints on steroids.
• Create complex simulations and games.
• Work with 3D tools like Second Life.
• Use web 2.0 technologies to design collaborative, just-in-time training experiences.
  
• Look at organizations' structures and define strategy.
  
• Craft distance learning events for college credit that pull together elements of both asynchronous and synchronous learning experiences.
• Create online learning experiences for use in K-12 classrooms.
  

We're all still instructional designers. But the shades are many.

I pick purple. What color are you?

Photo: chalk by frumbert

My Predictions for 2008

I won't deign to make grandiose predictions about the state of eLearning in the year 2008 as many have already done.

My Predictions for Learning in 2008 are, well, more about expected outcomes for my own learning journey this year based on some key personal events on my near horizon.

I will learn much, much more about chaos. My changing body shape attests to the fact that I will have a third child in May (at the ripe old age of 39!). While I'm already an expert diaper changer and don't need to learn much more on that subject, I do expect to have to learn a lot of new skills. Particularly, how to parent when outnumbered by children.

I will learn how to take a maternity leave and learn about managing even greater work/life balance issues. My first two kids were born while I had the flexibility of working as an independent contractor. This will be very different. I now have a full-time job with certain obligations. And I don't live in Canada where I'd be assured of a 12-month maternity leave.

I will learn first-hand about the current state of the American Public School System. My oldest child enters kindergarten this fall. Big steps in the journey. He is already dreading it. My daughter, however, wakes up asking to go to kindergarten. She's got two more years, poor dear.

It's going to be a rich year.

Pretesting: Why bother?

Over at The Learning Circuits Blog, Clark Quinn is wondering about pre-tests.

I've always wondered about them myself and have only reluctantly included them in courses. They've always just seemed annoying to me. Well, I recently took Will Thalheimer's Original Learning Research Quiz which had me rethinking the whole point of prequestions/pretesting.

Will points out the validity of pretests and prequestions, arguing that

"prequestions function as learning objectives" guiding the user's "attention toward some aspects of the learning material and away from other
aspects of the learning material."

So if pretests/prequestions are a way to focus your user's attention on the important aspects of the content, then the big question here is, are you asking the right questions? Or are you just asking questions for the sake of asking a question -- because someone told you to include a pre-test?