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ELN ALT Webinar A Fresh Look at Instructional Design

ELN ALT Webinar A Fresh Look at Instructional Design

These are live-blogged notes from a very interesting webinar with Cathy Moore and Patrick Dunn, where they were talking about new approaches to Instructional Design. It was a pretty cool session where Cathy and Patrick talked about how old approaches towards design cease to be meaningful and how instructional designers need to make an effort to create experiences over architecting information.

Cathys talk

For more than 25 years, Cathys used technology to help people learn. These days, she helps people strengthen their instructional design skills, and designs and writes elearning for businesses.

We as instructional designers have jobs because organisations have problems. They have useful information and we have to get it into peoples heads. We decide to make this information interesting, so we chunk it or add interest by adding narrators. Sometimes we play games to make it fun. We tell stories with a character who need help.

Weve got into the business of putting lipstick on a pig through these approaches. Information isnt bad -- getting information into peoples heads doesnt change behaviour. Knowing that smoking is bad for you doesnt make you stop smoking?

So we need to start over.

Cathy is a great proponent of instructional design using action mapping. Its a simple process:

1. Start with a measurable goal.
2. State job behaviours to help people reach the goal. These are real world behaviours. A useful question to ask, is "Why arent people doing it?" Is it really a lack of skill?
   
3. Brainstorm realistic practice activities for each job behaviour.
4. We then identify the bare minimum information people will need to complete these activities.

The information is on the fringes -- its not in the center. We need to limit the amount of information in our courses and place it in the spots where people will find it in their real jobs and teach people to find and use this information.

Our job is not to design information -- it is to design an experience.

As we do this, we start to solve performance problems and stop converting information into interactive presentations.

Patricks Talk

Patrick Dunn has been designing, producing and thinking about various forms of learning technology for more than twenty years. 
According to Patrick, instructional systems design is perhaps an outdated, heavy process. On a pragmatic basis, what really happens in instructional design is the ADDIE process - analyse, design, develop, implement and evaluate. 

In this world of gaming, social media, twitter, etc, is our old approach to instructional design still appropriate? Earlier, our options were few. Constraints were few and clear. Learning challenges were structured, well understood. As against that today, we have many options, many and unclear constraints and very chaotic learning challenges.

Patrick is looking a cheap, quick and effective design that combines:

• Rapidisation
• Gaming
• Social Learning

The question is -- does the old approach still make sense? Is it still fresh? For the current business climate its neither fresh nor does it really make sense for the high impact solutions were looking for.

So here are the ways to move to fresh approach.

Think experience, not content

• Think about experiences in the real world that are changing people.
• Get emotional!
• Whats the tone?

Nobody learns from content, people learn from experience. You cannot know something until you do something with that knowledge. Research shows that using information supports long-term recall more than studying information. As I always say, its not enough to just look at a lake and read about swimming -- you have to dive into the lake and actually swim!

Design bottom-up and top-down

We dont design from business objectives to performance objectives to strategies, etc. We should have Lean design, where we start with learning tactics and trust our hunches. If our strategy doesnt work, we should be flexible to change. Everything should be flexible to change.

Use multi-role teams

Subway subs are great because they get created by people in sharply defined roles. If people switch roles, then the subs can be awful. We dont want this in our teams. We need few people overlapping in roles and generalising deeply. Writers should be able to build, builders should be able to do graphic design, etc.

Use users

• We need more contact with learners.
• We need the right kind of contact with learners

Thats because people are now more into creating digital media than before. They can help us in a big way.

Prototype and Iterate

A working prototype gets more feedback than scripts, etc. A prototype forms a placeholder for discussion, so its really important to get it wrong the first time and iterate from there. Its continuous improvement in design.

Play!

Designers take themselves a bit too seriously. We need to play, laugh, sing, dance a little more and thatll allow us to experiment and do things in a truer designer like fashion.

Available link for download