As I begin my journey to start a career as an Instructional Designer (sometimes called an Instructional Technologist), I have had many people ask me what exactly an Instructional Designer does. In fact, I’ve had to ask myself this very question in order to truly be confident in my intended goal. One needs only to look at job postings on the internet for Instructional Designers in order to realize that the definition of the job and the expectations for what Instructional Designer are to do are widely varied. In order to explain how I came to my own definition of what an Instructional Designer does, I believe that it will be helpful to look briefly at the historical transition that the field has taken.
According to Januszewski and Molenda (2008), the term “Educational Technology” was one of the foundational terms for this field especially as we entered the information age (p. 1). Later on, the term “Instructional Technology” began to be used more widely (Reiser, 2018, p. 2). As time went on the conceptual understanding of the field and all that it encompassed began to evolve. This evolution was due in large part to an evolution of research and thinking on learning theories and with that came “a greater recognition of the learner’s role as a constructor as opposed to a recipient of knowledge. With this recognition of learner ownership and responsibility has come a role for technology that is more facilitative than controlling” (Januszewski and Molenda, 2008, p.4). I believe that this was an important turning point for the field of education as a whole because it resulted in a focus on tailoring instruction and the learning environment to the learner and what would best help the individual in their learning path.
One of the things that I find most interesting about this field is the opportunity for creativity in the design of the instructional environment. The goal of the Instructional Designer is to use any method or tool that is feasible and applicable to help the learner achieve the learning goals. According to Januszewski and Molenda (2008), “the immersive environments and cognitive tools educational technologists help design and use are created to guide learners, to make learning opportunities available, and to assist learners in finding the answers to their questions” (p. 4). This field truly is an excellent combination of creativity and scientific research. The research portion informs the Instructional Designer on what the data says about how people learn and what instructional strategies may best to be used. As research is applied to the design of instruction and evaluated for its effectiveness it will naturally lead to more questioning that will need to be validated by additional research (Januszewski and Molenda, 2008). The creativity portion takes the scientific data from research and applies it in unique and thoughtful ways to the individual learning environments. My personal definition of Instructional Design is that it is the art and science of developing the learning methodology and/or environment.
Januszewski, A., & Molenda, M. (2008). Chapter 1: Definition. In Educational Technology: A Definition with Commentary (pp. 1-14). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Reiser, R. A. (2018). What field did you say you were in? Defining and naming our field. In R. A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (4th Ed.), (pp. 1-7). New York, NY: Pearson Education.
The Learning World Is My Oyster 