Tom Kuhlmann makes some nice observations about what good instructional design does.
And he cleverly uses a visually-rich YouTube video to illustrate the importance of focusing the learner’s attention and simplifying complex content.
At the same time, as we go forward we’ll need to be more rigorous and incisive about distinguishing between instruction and information.
Wouldn’t an information designer make all of Tom’s same points, saying that that’s what good information design does?
Is the YouTube video information or instruction?
Under what circumstances should instructional designers insert themselves between the learner and the information out there and shape it instructionally for them?
What Everybody Ought to Know About Instructional Design | The Rapid E-Learning Blog | Tom Kuhlmann | 22 July 2008
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Good question. I think it just shows learning is a combination of multiple disciplines. As I said in the post (or maybe it was a different one) part of the role of the instructional designer is to compress the time to learn. This can happen in the types of experiences/activities we create or by doing something as simple as drawing a person’s attention to information that might have taken them longer to find.
I developed a training program in a production environment once where the learner had to do a specific and critical task on the machine. However it only occurred one or two times a day in the natural flow of the work. Because of this, they never let new people do the taks. They didn’t want to delay the production proccess if a mistake was made.
As part of the ID, I had the learner do that same task about 10 times a day. In that sense I altered what would have been a natural learning process. By compressing the activities, I actually had them doing two weeks worth of tasks in one day. By the end of the week, they were as proficient as those who had been doing the same work for more than a year.