Finding Great Instructional Design

As I wrote in my column Why You Need Instructional Design, “Great instructional design attracts learners to the content, to the performance ideal, and to the change process. This attraction is essential for changing behavior.” If you’re looking for great instructional design, you need to find an instructional designer with these three qualifications:

Insight
You can likely get adequate ID from any qualified designer, but great instructional design can only come from a designer who understands your learners and your business. Sales representatives learn differently than managers. Physicians learn differently than writers. A great-for-you instructional designer is one who understands how to design training for learners and businesses like yours.

Every new project involves a ramp up. With an experienced designer, you can use your ramp up time to discuss deliverables, establish timelines, identify production protocols, and brainstorm concepts and themes. An inexperienced designer will need to be brought up to speed on your products or services, the state of your market, competitive analyses, training objectives, and learner profile before you can even begin to clarify the project scope. Read more

Sally Bacchetta
Onwords™ column
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Why You Need Instructional Design

Humans learn every minute of every day. We learn without overt effort or intention. We learn by existing, by seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, and tasting. As long as we are conscious, we are learning. We can’t stop ourselves.

So, why does anyone need instructional design? Why not just provide content and let people learn it?

If you read any articles about the importance of instructional design (ID) you will find them peppered with the words engage and process, and yes, basic requirements of instructional design are that it engage learners and help them process specific information. But that’s not why you need ID. I have completed countless ID projects for a variety of industries, and I have found only one reason for instructional design. That is to attract a learner. The value of instructional design is in its ability to attract, because attraction has the power to change behavior.

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Sally Bacchetta
Onwords™ column
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