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Skill sets of an Instructional Designer

Here a quick list that I came up with:

ID Theory and Concept: Understand and apply ID concepts, theories and models based on relevance.
ADDIE Process: Understand and implement the ADDIE process.
Business Requirement and Problem: Understand the business requirement that led to the demand for the training, and the business problem that the training is intended to be solved.
Suggest appropriate Training Solutions: Suggest appropriate training solutions based on the requirements and audience needs.
Audience Analysis: Understand the target audience profiles and analyze how to design the courses to appeal to such an audience and enable them to perform their job better.
Task Analysis: Structure and chunk course contents and present it in a format desirable to the target audience.
Write Measurable Learning Objectives: Write high-level (terminal) learning objectives and drill them down to the low-level (enabling or task level) task specific objectives. The focus while writing objectives should be to write something that can be measured.
Learner Cognition: Understand the learning patterns that go on in a learner’s mind and design courses appropriately.
Relevant Information: Look at a variety of available resources of information and identify what is relevant to the course objectives.
Interface with SME: Interface with SMEs and build good working relationships in order to get the requisite information to build courses.
Gather Information from different perspectives: Take information pertaining to the course from multiple perspectives (Dev/QA, Product Management, Instructor, Support/Consulting) and take decisions on what is relevant to the course audience.
Curriculum plans: Design curriculum plans indicating the list of courses that will address the business need, define the goals for the courses, and determine the appropriate delivery format that will enhance the effectiveness of the training.
Content Plans: Design the content plan for a single course, based on the results of the task analysis process. This includes writing the course terminal and enabling objectives, the topics comprising the course, and also indicating the content or key points that need to go into a topic. For online courses the strategy of dealing with the content maybe suggested. For ILT suggest how the instructor may use the content.
Storyboarding the course: Translate the information gathered and present it in the format of a course based ensuring that the course objectives are met.
Build use cases and scenarios: Work with SMEs to build good scenarios that the learner can relate to so that they find the examples and exercises relevant to their job.
Design Hands on Exercises: Design hands on exercises that are easy to follow and focused at the objective, and enable the learner to be able to perform the tasks on their own after the training.
Design Instructional Strategies: Design instructional strategies as appropriate to the course objectives and to keep the learner engaged and interacting with the course.
Training Evaluation: Evaluate training feedback and make appropriate improvements to the next versions of the course.

Also found another post on Instructional Design Skills. Please add any more that you can think of.

Comments

  1. Good List!

    Some soft skills an Instructional Designer has to acquire are:

    Ability to structure the unstructured
    Ability to think coherently and logically
    Ability to generate creative ideas
    Aptitude for research and analysis

    Last but not one should be passionate about Instructional Designing only then one can create really good courses just like how a passionate movie maker makes excellent movies :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Sreya,

    I very much enjoy your post concerning the Skill sets of an Instructional Designer
    You may be interested to read the Top 10 Instructional Designer Skills
    http://elearningindustry.com/top-10-instructional-designer-skills


    If I can be valuable to you do not hesitate to contact me.

    Have a wonderful day,
    Christopher Pappas
    http://elearningindustry.com/

    ReplyDelete

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