Instructional Design: Where's Your Center? Who's Your Master?

As you create training solutions, to what master are you answering?

Are you being content centric or learner centric? Or are you forced to be sponsor centric?

Content Centric Solutions

These are those courses that have the entire book of knowledge in 'em. Every software interaction and menu is explained in detail. It's all there. You've covered the content to death. And probably killed a learner or two in the process, if they even bothered to stick with it.

Learner Centric Solutions

This is what we're all striving for, right? That course that meets the needs of the learner. The right content, in the right format.

Sponsor Centric Solutions

Unfortunately, it's often the project sponsor who's really calling the tune. They claim to have detailed understanding of the learner. As the course designer, you're not encouraged or even allowed access to actual learners to get an understanding yourself. Perhaps that kind of access isn't possible, given the limited budget.

Or maybe what really matters is what the Senior VP of Training thinks of all this. If they like the colors and the interactivity and the general format, then they consider the project a success. Evaluation complete.

eLearning vendors (those that design custom courseware) are often handed the course to be built. The sponsor says "we want this eLearning course." So the vendor scopes it out and does the design work, the storyboarding, the development work.

But the bottom line is, the vendor needs to butter their bread and produce what the client has asked for.

What strategies do you use to ensure a project stays learner centric vs. sponsor centric? How do you ensure your consulting expertise gets communicated in a development project?

Photo credit: Spirals On Blue by Tanakawho

Metaphors of Instructional Design

In the exciting and sometimes heated recent debate on the role of instructional designers (The Value of Instructional Designers, Karl Kapp's We Need a Degree in Instructional Design, Learning Circuits Big Question for Feb) I've seen instructional design compared to:

• brain surgery
• interior design
• carpentry

I certainly don't think it's rocket science nor do I think it's brain surgery.

I like the analogy Michele Martin uses: instructional design as cooking.

Most of us can cook a little something. Perhaps you're best at opening a box of frozen fish sticks and laying them on the cookie sheet and dumping a bag of frozen peas in a pot. In recent years, I've resorted to this meal quite often. Hey, I've got small kids and I know my audience. Which is critical in both cooking and instructional design.

Not all meals are created equal. Just like training experiences. Some might require that you simply follow the recipe; others may demand a five star experience:

Just Follow the Recipe

A lot of people out there can create a great meal by following a recipe to a T.

Of course, you need the right tools -- accurate measuring spoons and cups, and the right ingredients.

Muffins, spaghetti sauce, cookies, yum. There are still those who follow the recipe and end up with burnt yuck.

The Dump and Pray Method

My Granny followed the dump and pray method of cooking.

Admittedly, I never had the pleasure or displeasure of sampling her menus, so I can't say if this method worked for her, but I've found it works for me in the kitchen.

Granted, I've read a lot of cookbooks. I watch an occasional cooking show, but not as a rule. (I don't have cable, so I don't know from Rachel Ray). And I've cooked a lot. Generally, I know what works. I know how to carmelize a mean onion and have a good sense of my herb cabinet.

I've taken many a cookbook recipe and improvised, creating something new and innovative. I can step out of the box.

Many self taught cooks achieve culinary perfection through this type of of experimention. Can you replicate the meal the next time? Maybe yes. But maybe it's slightly different the next time 'cuz you've used more garlic.

The dump and pray method works best when you understand your audience. Do you know who's going to be eating this particular meal? And it works best when you know your tools and your ingredients.

Creating a Five Star Meal

I don't know much about the starring system for restaurants, but my limited understanding knows that it has to do with the complete experience. The right napkins and place settings must be used or you lose a star.

I was once making an omelete with a professional chef who showed me how to make the red pepper we were cutting up five star: each piece had to be the exact same size, all the white trimmed off, all the edges perfectly square.

I rarely see the worth in that. But then, I tend to prefer thick chunky, even in an omelete.

But there may be times when a five star meal is exactly what's required. In which case you need a five star chef who probably went to a high-end Culinary Institute of Learning and has the knife sharpening skills to prove it.

Instructional Designers as Chefs

Different eating experiences require different expertise. And I would argue that different training experiences also require different expertise. Back to Instructional Design as a Spectrum.

Sometimes we may just dump and pray -- and if you're good, you come up with something great. Sometimes you just follow the recipe -- perhaps using a rapid eLearning Template tool and a solid ISD model. Sometimes you need a five star chef.

If you've seen the recent animated feature, Ratotouille (I watched it twice while home sick a few weeks ago) then you know that "Anyone can cook." Even a rat.

Now I'm not saying that SMEs are rats, or instructional designers are rats....

So what are you cooking up these days?


Photo credits:
The Last Happy Chef by Mykl Roventine
Open Onion by Darwin Bell
Mouse Spaghetti Tastes Better When Cooked by Jannes Pockele

InVision Learning: Seeking an Instructional Designer

We're seeking a full-time Instructional Designer to join our growing company here in Westborough, Massachusetts.

Invision Learning is seeking an Instructional Designer to design leading-edge interactive multimedia and web-based eLearning applications. Our company specializes in Custom Courses, Flash Templates, and Learning Portals...

If you, or someone you know, is an experienced instructional designer looking for work in the greater Boston area, please let me know!

We're looking for someone with a focus on the content creation side; we don't expect or even want you to build these things. You'll work closely with our Flash designers and programmers who will do that heavy lifting. Your focus will be more on the client and content side. Check out my job description for a better sense...

(You'd get to work with me -- how exciting is that?)

My Client is Addicted: Audio in eLearning

Cathy Moore had a post a few months ago (Addicted to Audio?) that inspired me to change my approach to using audio in eLearning. She suggested using audio sparingly.

So I've been storyboarding differently. When I see a need for a text heavy pages, I eliminate audio so as not to "depress learning." I avoided narrating onscreen text.

In the comments on Cathy's post, there was a bit of discussion about switching back and forth between pages with and pages without audio.

Yesterday, after round four of a storyboard review process (which has stretched out for months, by the way, due to unavailable/overloaded client SMEs), the lead ID at my client came back asking for audio on EVERY page.

The biggest thing I would like to see is that we add some voiceover on just about all of the slides. Based on experience here, our learners are used to having v.o. on just about all slides. They think the program isn't working when they come across a slide that doesn't have v.o. It doesn't need to be much - but there should be something (verbal instruction rather than just text for example).

Now, maybe I'm just jaded and want to get to an approved storyboard. Maybe it's the fact that I'm recovering from pneumonia and just don't have the energy to fight the fight. But I caved. And yesterday I just added audio back to every page. A little. A line here or there.

Can't win every battle.

The reality of everyday instructional design.

Photo credit: Microphone by hiddedevries

Who Gets to Be Called an Instructional Designer?

A SME builds a course with the latest rapid eLearning tool. A teacher makes a leap into a new field and gets a job as an "instructional designer". A technical writer takes on a new challenge.

Are they instructional designers? If so, when? When do you cross the line and enter the hallowed world of Instructional Design?

Unlike medicine, interior design, or electricians, the field of instructional design does not require a license to practice. At least not yet. I never took a test that said I was actually an instructional designer.

So at what point does one "become" an instructional designer? What are the criteria?

• Is it the number of courses you have created?
• The quality of those courses? (And who graded them?)
• Is it the number of theories you can cite?
• The number of Gagne's events you can recite?
• Is it your mindset? Your desire to figure out a better way, so you can create a better learning experience the next time around?
• Is it a degree?
• Is it your business card?
  
• Does it matter where on the instructional design spectrum you fall and the types of learning experiences you create?

Who and what gave me the right to call myself an instructional designer? What about you?

Essential Reading for Instructional Design?

As an instructional designer/eLearning professional, what books are the essential tools in your reference library?

I'm not looking for the obtuse theory books. I prefer the get-down-and-dirty variety.

These are my current faves. Easy-readers (a term of praise, in this case). Practical books with lots of real examples. They might refer to theory, but they don't get bogged down in it:

• e-Learning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer
  
• Michael Allen's Guide to E-Learning by Michael Allen
  
• Gadgets, Games & Gizmos for Learning by Karl Kapp
  

Last May, I started a bit of a list in this post: Beginning Instructional Designer's Toolkit.

Dr. John Curry was kind enough to post a really detailed reading list in his post How to Get an Instructional Design Education Without Paying Tuition (gotta love that title!)

After my appeal for something a little more pared down that I might actually be able to read, Dr. John came up with these essentials:

• The Conditions of Learning and Theory of Instruction, by Robert Gagné
• Training Complex Cognitive Skills, by Jeroen J.G. van Merriënboer [currently unavailable on Amazon]
  
• The First Principles of Instruction, by M. David Merrill [I couldn't find that listing on Amazon, but there are a number of results for M. David Merrill]
  
• The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald Norman

Other ID books of note that have been recently recommended to me:

• e-Learning by Design by William Horton (recommended by Christy Tucker)
• What Every Manager Should Know About Training by Robert Mager (recommended by Dave Ferguson)
• The Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams (not the comedian) (this was recently recommended to me by someone who asked the same question on LinkedIn.

What would you add? Or can we stop? I'm already feeling a bit overwhelmed. Perhaps we need to start a lending library.

Photo credit: Little by MegElizabeth

Theory vs. Application in Instructional Design: One Academic's View

A long time ago, I decided I was much better at the practical side of things than the theoretical.

I did great in Calculus AB(?) in high school, which involved solving problems like figuring out the volume of weird spaces. In college, at the urging of my father, I took the next "level up" in Calculus. This turned out to be a big mistake as it was all about proving theorems. I dropped out of that class halfway through the semester and decided I just didn't have the math/technical/scientific nature.

I'm still a really hands-on person. Perhaps this is why I never went back to grad school. Or maybe I'm just too lazy and poor.

Over the past few days, I've been having a back and forth with Dr. John Curry, an Assistant Professor in Educational Technology at Oklahoma State. Now, I'm not linking to John just because he is full of praise of me (which is nice and somewhat embarrassing, I must admit...), but rather because he brings up some interesting points about the disconnect between the theory of instructional design in academia and the actual practice of it.

See what John has to say in Instructional Design and Academia -- Where Theory and Practice RARELY Meet.

John asks,

"So does it matter if Cammy knows (and I have no idea if she does) what the Dick/Carey, Smith/Ragan, or Morrison/Ross/Kemp models are? What about Component Display Theory, Elaboration Theory, the Conditions of Learning, Learning Hierarchies, the ARCS model, 4C/ID, ADDIE, ASSURE, Schema theory, Cognitive apprenticeship, Social Learning theory, or Cognitive flexibility? Does she need to know those?"

Well. My truthful answer is that I've heard of some of these theories and theoreticians. I've even read about some of them. I actually have some books on my shelf that cover these topics. Admittedly, I may not have read all of the books.

Do you think it matters?

Photo Credit: Integral Calculus DSC00163 by Mr. ToHa