Instructional Design
by Olga Kostiouchina
Whether or not you have a background in education, you as a technical writer may often find yourself in the shoes of an instructional designer.
What is instructional design?
Here’s a dictionary definition:
"It is the process by which instruction is improved through the analysis of learning needs and systematic development of learning materials. Instructional designers often use technology and multimedia as tools to enhance instruction."
In other words, every time you sign up for creating a training manual or an e-learning course, you effectively become an instructional designer and perform all the tasks commonly associated with this occupation: research of the topic you’re supposed to write about, analyze the needs of the proposed user and design the material according to these needs.
What credentials you may need?
There are instructional design academic programs out there, and there’s a lot to be said on how complex the process of designing the training materials can get, but don’t despair! You may grow to be an excellent instructional designer and be able to create high quality training materials if you have the right aptitude and desire to succeed even without an advanced degree. Of course instructional design is a science in itself with its theory, methods and models, so be sure to read up and take some courses that will help you master at least the basics. There are courses at UBC within the Master of Educational Technology program, this program is broken down into 2 certificate programs, so you can chose to take one, or the other, or both for your Master’s degree. They’re taught completely online, can be taken at your own convenience, the only catch is – you have to have at least a Bachelor’s degree to be accepted into the program.
Software that is good to know:
Certainly you will need to know the usual authoring tools, but one advantage you can definitely gain is by learning screen and video capturing tools for e-learning such as Adobe Captivate or Camtasia Studio. Another group of e-learning authoring tools widely used by instructional designers is made by Articulate and includes the following titles: Presenter, Quizmaker, Engage and Articulate Online. Instructional design goes hand in hand with usability experience and GUI (Graphic User Interface) development, so knowledge of web development and computer graphics software is exceptionally useful as well.
Further reading and resources:
http://www.stcsig.org/idl/resources__info.shtml : STC’s Special Interest Group (SIG) excellent collection of links related to instructional design.
http://www.instructionaldesign.org/ : A website kept up by notable instructional and learning professionals.
http://met.ubc.ca/ : UBC Master of Educational Technology homepage.
http://intercom.stc.org/2011/05/you-may-be-an-instructional-designer/ : An article from the current issue of STC Intercom publication – accessible without STC membership.
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