Instructional Design…it isn’t just HR trainings?
By Ellie King and Teri Cremeans
Societally, we have a stigma toward teachers. We’ve all heard the saying, “those who can’t do, teach.” While we know this isn’t true, as teachers form the backbone of our society and have the enormous responsibility of educating the next generation, ultimately, the stigma persists.
When education is applied to a corporate setting, instructional design often gets sidelined as an offshoot of HR; instructional designers relegated to force compliance through mind-numbingly dull videos that you click through without retaining anything. Or worse, “interactive” quizzes you retake three times to reach the requisite 80% threshold, and again, not retain anything.
These misguided views explain why many fail to understand what instructional designers do and the vital role they play in academic and professional learning.
What is an Instructional Designer?
While the job title and duties vary from organization to organization, typically instructional designers create learning experiences for their learners based on identified needs. These learning experiences can take many forms, including: face-to-face, online, or blended learning, (a combination of the two). In each instance, instructional designers are expected to be experts in curriculum development (from scoping through production), a multitude of learning theories, and the rapidly changing learning technologies.
A deep dive in the Instructional Designer Role
Years ago, I read an article which discussed the Instructional Design industry, and the tagline always stuck with me. It said, “Don’t forget that instructional design is about problem solving.” To summarize my recollections of that article into a few words, instructional design as a field is multidisciplinary. Instructional designers go beyond merely education; drawing from diverse fields such as neuroscience, sociology, psychology, philosophy, engineering, and even graphic design. We use all of these diverse backgrounds to solve problems through the lens of learning material, for a wide range of learners including early education, higher education, and even corporate settings.
Now when we see instructional design roles posted on LinkedIn or Glassdoor, they often don’t represent the all encompassing work that an Instructional Designer does. Oftentimes, they start by listing the platforms and authoring tools used. While that knowledge is indispensable to the industry, these job postings rarely ask important questions such as:
- Do you have sound knowledge of learning theories?
- Do you have experience condensing knowledge for appropriate delivery?
- Have you ever created a curriculum from scratch and then assessed its success?
The message from these job postings is that anyone who knows how to use X tool can do this job…which I would argue might explain why some of us have had to sit through the mind-numbingly dull videos I mentioned above. But I digress, most of the time little consideration is being given for what the roles really entail in order to craft ideal learning content. That’s because most people don’t know what ideal learning content looks like. To the layman, you may not know what good content is, but I bet you could point to bad content.
Good learning content should focus on the learners’ needs. Instructional designers should be HIGHLY empathetic people; being an advocate for what the learner needs to gain from the content presented, and the most effective way to go about doing so. Traditionally, this comes with assessments, surveys, and learning management systems that help instructional designers collect a wide variety of data points which enable them to continually assess their work in the eyes of their learners.
Instructional Designers are the people who put thought into the content and delivery of everything you engage with to learn.
So, let’s break it down even more.
Instructional:
Instructional designers should be involved in the content process if the material is educational. Anything that is being developed for learning, should be addressed through the lens of instructional design. This is because learning involves a broader approach to addressing interconnected content which drives the development of the skills and knowledge that enable people to perform their roles better.
However, our skills don’t stop with just crafting the words for learners. Design is in the title too.
Design:
We craft the entire learning experience, deciding if material would be better as a video, a website, an article, a lecture, etc. We make the videos, do the voiceovers, make the graphics, write the words, create the animations, and project manage. We are also researchers, constantly analyzing the success of our eLearnings and reiterating our design approaches. All of these facets go into how we develop learning materials. Curating great learning content is a careful ballet and like any ballet, we want you to have a beautiful (seemingly effortless) experience.
In the design process, instructional designers consider:
- What graphics would help solidify that information in the learner’s brain? The neuroscience of education justifies how many times movement should happen on a screen in order to retain user engagement with video content (spoiler, it’s every six seconds).
- How many times content should be resurfaced and at what intervals to be properly retained? Myelination, it’s a thing, the more times content is repeated back to you (and you actually interact with or apply) the more your brain learns to access it…it’s the equivalent of paving a dirt road, the more you use the road the easier it becomes to travel.
- How to balance the visual and audio input to not only consider the needs of the standard learner but also meet (and ideally exceed) accessibility standards?
Instructional Design in the Industry
For the industry, there are few things more important than developing your teams. Providing people the learning opportunities to hone their skills and enhance their knowledge fuels company success for the long-term. But, this cannot be accomplished through staid educational content; it requires creative, empathetic, and knowledgeable instructional designers…problem solvers.
Are you a problem solver that would like to play a vital role in helping advance people’s careers, and contribute to the success of a company?
Visit www.aboutwayfair.com/careers to see what opportunities there are for you.
Ellie King is currently the Instructional Design Manager developing all on-demand educational content for Wayfair’s Help Center.
Teri Cremeans is currently the Sr. Knowledge Base Manager overseeing Wayfair’s Help Center content which houses all help center and educational materials.
About Wayfair’s Global Experience Design Community
Global Experience Design at Wayfair is a cross-disciplinary function including product design, user research, and content strategy. We create experiences for all of our end-users, including suppliers, customers, agents, field champions, and internal employees. The Wayfair experience supports our mission to be the destination for all things home, helping everyone, anywhere create their feeling of home. 🎉
