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Qualities of an Instructional Designer?

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I started thinking about putting together some qualities of an instructional designer (ID) versus the skills of an instructional designer, when I attended the April 2009 Learntrends webinar by Jay Cross. The tool used for online conferencing had a chat feature and I got speaking to many of the participants and moderators. Cammy Bean and I happened to discuss what qualities an instructional designer should posses. Clark Quinn intervened with some of his suggestions too, and this got me thinking. The few qualities that came out of the discussion:
  • Innovation
  • Creativity
  • Business sense (goal)
  • Passion
  • Sensitive to learner
  • Minimalist
To start with, an instructional designer has to be open-minded, self-directed and self-motivated with one goal of making the learning experience for learners complete. An ID has to understand the business need that drives the requirement for any learning. Having good communication skills, an ability to gather and analyze information and organize it into a structured format are critical skills for IDs. An ID also needs to be really sensitive to learners and their needs. Understanding how people learn should be an ongoing study, and his/her focus on addressing business needs by leveraging evolving technology and standards. An ID also needs to be a minimalist (apply minimalist theory). Over and above a whole list of must-have's, IDs need to have the discretion to selectively apply what is relevant and will enhance learning, rather than bombard a learner with information.

Some guidelines for all IDs are:
  • Perform a thorough audience-analysis and remain focused on the learner profile and his needs.
  • Design meaningful and measurable goals.
  • Design task-based courses after performing a thorough task-analysis.
  • Use relevant examples and analogies to aid learning.
  • Device methods in which the learner can interact and discover facts, concepts or procedures themselves to keep them interested.
  • Design minimalist, or loosely-coupled, self-contained modules that focus on learner goals and drive to the point quickly.
  • Keep it simple and use animations, demos, practices selectively and only where absolutely necessary.

Whatever you do, you do need to think 'business' at all times and be able to provide quick, relevant and no nonsense information to learners without getting them distracted. All of this calls for you the ID to do your homework well before you get down designing your course.
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Comments

  1. LSPSunday, June 21, 2009

    I think tracking varying trends in user learning should be an agenda for R&D team, like how we do it in software development?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sreya DuttaSunday, June 21, 2009

    @LSP thanks for the comments. Infact the work of an ID is a more of a researcher. You need to be researching while working. That makes you a better ID as you will automatically try to implement the work in your job.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Nancy Rubin, Ph.D.Monday, June 22, 2009

    There was a great article in T&D magazine in 2008 that discusses adding Research to the ADDIE model. The articel was titled:The Year 2013: ARDDIE is in, ADDIE is out.

    ReplyDelete
  4. MrunniMonday, June 29, 2009

    This is very useful article specially for the Students like me, who wants to make their career in ID.
    @Nancy Rubin. It will be really gr8ful if more information about how research can be merged in ADDIE ll b provided. According to my knowledge of ADDIE very first step of process i.e. Analysis is kind of research work. As in every step of ADDIE consist of evaluation it becomes more authentic process.
    Implementing research in ADDIE is something totally different than this?


    waiting for reply
    MM

    ReplyDelete

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