What do you think about instructional design so far?
I have decided that instructional design is far more challenging that I, initially, thought when I started this course. I felt confident in my abilities to instructional design and redesign instructional documents. However, as our first project comes to and end, I am still fighting the urge to perfect it until there are no mistakes and nothing has been left out.
It seems that every single time I go in to review the document I find more and more items that need tweaked and re-evaluated. I sought out some information on instructional design and found solace in the advice that is presented in an article from Inside Higher Ed. Leiberman’s article “Tips and resources for instructional designers entering the field” offers several different perspectives and advice for those who might be starting out in the field.
My favorite nugget of advice comes from Betsy Gilbertson, Instructional Designer at Auburn University. Gilberston says,”Be patient with yourself, the process and with others.”
As I worked through the initial design problem with my client, I found that she became increasingly frustrated with my increasing questions about pieces of the lesson. She wanted to quickly come up with solutions when I wanted to dive deeper into each area so we could ensure the learner would walk out with all learning objectives met.
It is possible that since we are in the summer months this created the expectation that we would work more in the fall, however, as project manager and knowing my own time constraints with this project I continue to press forward.
There have been many times that I have had to be patient with the process itself. Initially, it seemed that our overall goal was small enough to meet our objectives, but as each day went by and each discussion created more room for improvement it became apparent that this lesson really did need redesign.
Previously, we were just throwing some information out to the learners expecting them to be motivated enough to retain it and be able to perform the same tasks we had quickly modeled.
Overall, patience would be the most important skill for instructional design. Instructional design is a necessary component to teaching and learning and I am thankful that I have had the opportunity to learn more about it in-depth and have the opportunity to practice through the ID projects with peer and instructor feedback.
Resources
Lieberman, M. (2018). Tips and resources for instructional designers entering the field | Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/05/16/tips-and-resources-instructional-designers-entering-field
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