Why Do We Need Instructional Design?
Tweet. Start A Conversation.
I think it's worth our while to elevate the conversation around learning and development, and therefore I try to spark discussion around certain issues whenever, wherever possible.
Today this involved the following tweet, and based on all the conversation it triggered, I've decided to move the debate over here to LinkedIn to get more people involved. Please add your voice in the comments below this article.
Do We Do It Better?
The first response came from JD Dillon:
JD's response is something I am hearing a lot lately: this idea that instructional designers are more experienced and therefore need to help people learn how to 'fish for themselves'. I often think, on the other hand, that adults are doing just fine finding what they need, when they need it for their learning purposes. Hands up everyone who has searched YouTube for a video and then subsequently learned exactly what you needed from it!
Designer or Curator?
Then shortly after, Jane Bozarth and Gail Radecki weighed in (Jane responded to the response Gail first tweeted to me):
This is the space I play around in and like to push debate about: curation. Why are we designing so much when there's already a shit-tonne of content, information and learning already out there? And why are we thinking that instructional designers are better-equipped to curate than 'average worker/learner'?
What About Performance?
There were a lot of tweets in and around the ones I'm sharing, but I think this exchange is crucial to the discussion:
Again. Creator or Curator?
I love this group of tweets by Gail because I believe it reflects a common way of thinking, that I'm not sure I agree with:
Give me a good, current list of 150 or so instructional designers who are out in the world blogging, vlogging and posting good, effective and engaging content and I'll book a flight to your town and take you out for dinner.
A World That Doesn't Need You
There are many more tweets that you can browse through starting here, but like I said, I'm putting some of the discussion here so that you can share your thoughts below, too, and we can dig deeper into this important issue.
I'll finish with possibly my favourite tweet out of the bunch:
I can.
Igor Čenar the article I mentioned to you...
There are a mountain of holes in this but the one that is ingrained in me is the time that I have spent with military and law enforcement/first response agencies. I have no time for people to curate life-saving strategies and learn from these strategies, whilst I try to fight an enemy or save lives. I need effective instruction designed to educate me to be the best I can be in this chosen field. Individual curation skills can vary wildly and when the curation does not cite or validate trusted resources (which is vital to my PLE) I immediately have huge question marks about the "learning" I am undertaking. There is a place for both ID and curation and ID is not disappearing anytime soon especially when organisations of scale need everyone doing something the same way. I'm not listening to the guy/gal who "read it on a blog" if it puts me at risk. Horses for courses as far as I am concerned. A better question would be: "If artificial intelligence (AI) can construct learning on the fly, why do we need instructional designers?" When deep machine learning can outstrip our abilities in this area then, and only then, are we looking at the demise of ID (IMO).
Maybe the ID role needs to evolve, not die. To generate predictive and proscriptive learning insights, modern learning systems will need data models and rules drawn from an understanding of data/statistics and how to elicit learning and performance. IDs need to become performance designers.
ironically, the question posed by this thread and choice of medium is a great example of engaging Instructional Design.
I think from a social construction of knowledge and reality point of view, lower case instructional design(er) always exists, but upper case Instructional Design(er) emerges as a formalism when "looked back on particular recurring patterns of agency which have become structured now reified". lowercase instructional design is exhibited and upper case Instruction Design is employed systematically and purposefully (such as purposely directing yourself to search YouTube).