Telltale Signs you need Instructional Design

After posting “Who Needs Instructional Design?” I received emails asking for specific indicators that knowledge of Instructional Design is recommended. Queries came from both career Training professionals and those rotated into L&D from other functional areas.

Since there are different roles in the Learning function, I will try to go over each one.

If you design training programs, the first thing to review is your objectives. Are they peppered with “to know,” “to understand,” “to appreciate”, and other verbs that cannot be demonstrated?

Do you measure learning only through pre- and post- test regardless of the objectives?

If you are a trainer, do you start planning your program by asking “what do I want to teach?”

Do you find yourself doing majority of the talking in the training while the participants mostly listen?

Do your instructional visuals (such as PowerPoint) resemble Word and Excel Documents on slides?

As a Training Evaluator, do you base your programs’ success on the results of the Smiley Sheets distributed after the training?

As an L&D professional, do you first analyze whether a training request is training or non-training-treatable? Do you know what to look for when evaluating a training vendor’s proposal?  Can you provide your training vendor the objectives you want them to create a learning intervention for?

If you answered Yes to the first 6 questions, and No to the last 3 questions, these are signs that you need Instructional Design knowledge to help you do your job better.

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Do I Need Instructional Design?

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This is the most common question asked by Learning & Development (L&D) professionals. To answer the question, there are 2 related questions one needs to ask: 1) What really is Instructional Design? and 2) What do you do in the L&D function?

I describe Instructional Design (ID) as the planning side of training. My daughters say it so abstract that I have been using a metaphor of building a house to be more easily understood.

You can build a house without a plan; but you could probably guess how that would turn out. You can also buy ready-made house plans but these would not specifically suit your personal requirements. To build a custom house, you would normally turn to an architect. She would bring us back to reality when we let our imaginations go wild, such as building a multi-storey home on a tiny property; or wanting the best features for the least amount of money. Your architect will help you priortize your goals, and tell you what is realistically possible given your resources (such as the size of your property, its terrain, your budget, your timeline). A blueprint is then drawn up to represent what you as a client decide on.

In training, the task of developing the blueprint in called Instructional Design (ID). To do this, you would have understood your client’s requirements, resources, and priorities (Training Needs Analysis). This is why I compare an Instructional designer’s job to that of an architect.

But constructing a house involves other parties as well. The architect will work with a contractor who will execute the plans. The contractor, in turn, will use appropriate tools or rent these from another company. The contractor is the trainer who is tasked with the delivery or implementation. The tools that are used are called courseware (i.e., PowerPoint slides, handouts, assessment materials) which may be developed by the trainer or outsourced from someone else.

At the end of the project, the client will decide how satisfied he is with the construction project. This would be based on how well the execution has adhered to the design, which in turn, is anchored on how well the architect understood the client’s requirements. In training, this is the Evaluation phase.

Training Needs Analysis, Instructional Design, Training Implementation, Courseware development, and Evaluation are collectively known as Instructional SYSTEMS design or ISD. These steps represent what I call the Training Value Chain.

We’ve explained what ID is in a simplified manner. Now let’s go to the question “What do you do in L&D?”

If your responsibility includes working with clients to articulate their requirements into a tangible, measurable output; partner with training vendors, or assess their proposals, then you would need ID (Design and an understanding of Analysis).  

If your job requires you to assess the effectiveness of training delivery and measure training impact, you need Evaluation knowledge. But Evaluation is based on the Design, just like a home owner will base their overall judgment on adherence to the plans.

If your work is focused on developing training materials, you will need an understanding of learning principles and the use of media in instruction. ID is not a requirement; an understanding of how courseware affects training effectiveness will suffice.

If you deliver training, you will need ID should you design your own training programs. Otherwise, a Train-the-Trainers Workshop that includes basic ID principles should serve your requirements.

ISD (the training value chain) consists of different specializations for various L&D professionals. Choose what best fits the work that you do. That is, don’t decide based on the content (or the program title); focus on the program’s objective which summarizes what it promises to deliver.

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My Learning Journey

I discovered my love of learning later in life. I did alright in school but did not particularly excel nor care about academic achievements. Even as I was applying for my college degree, I chose what took my fancy; and even then, moved from one course to another. My only consideration then was that my job would allow me to travel.

My first jobs applied what I learned in school: sales and marketing in the tourism field. I liked the planning part and setting up sales agencies. My sales were also adequate but I detested going on sales calls; each call took all the internal conditioning I could muster. I liked to travel but I forgot to qualify that being a guest and being a service provider are two very different things!  What I really enjoyed was orienting new sales executives and explaining the sales process.

This went on until the opportunity to move to a Training position came along.  Thankfully, the organization I was working for believed in developing its employees in other functions. Although I supposedly headed the Training section, not knowing any better, most of the work I did was coordination. I “progressed” into asking the different member companies for the training programs they wanted to have. I improved by changing that from “what they wanted” to “what they needed.”  Ha! Real progress I thought. Except I did not attempt to validate any of these; I simply proceeded to take and process the orders. I felt something was missing in the way training was conducted but I couldn’t really put my finger on it. The training function seemed so established already that I could only do incremental improvements.

Despite these bumps in the journey, I fell in love with HR in general and Training in particular, so much so that during cross-functional meetings, each situation for me was an HR issue.  I knew I needed to do something when one colleague asked me once “Can you tell what you think that has nothing to do with HR?” Organizing and attending the in-house Management Development Program (MDP) was my first step, but I couldn’t resist the challenge of a post-graduate degree.

So I quit my job, applied for a loan and went back to school for a masteral degree in management. This is when I realized that learning could be so much fun. I found myself understanding the big picture, and how the different functions contributed to it. Slowly, I was pulled away from my HR-centric view and started asking different types of questions.  I didn’t do this on my own; my professors and classmates at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) helped in my transformation.

My corporate job after my masteral degree involved looking at the different business opportunities, and new economy strategies of existing businesses. While it allowed me to utilize my more holistic management know-how, I truly missed my Training work. To keep my connection to the discipline, I enrolled in Instructional Technology courses.  It started to dawn on me that this was the missing link I was looking for- the essence of why learning was needed, and how it could make a difference and be justified.

Despite persistent cajoling from friends that I was turning into a professional student, I pursued my second master’s degree in Instructional and Performance Technology at Boise State University. Although it meant further belt-tightening, juggling multiple priorities, and being uncertain of whether it was worth studying what others felt was already an established practice, I felt it answered the fundamental question of what my chosen vocation was all about.

This degree and my decision to leave the corporate world and join the Academe (AIM) were 2 life changing decisions for me. These experiences further strengthened my interest in Learning & Development (that was how Training was starting to be called then). 

In 2003, backed by AIM’s encouragement of its faculty members to engage in external work to enrich our teaching, I put up a training and consulting company.  I refined the knowledge I gained in my studies to make them more applicable to the organizations I worked with; continued to network with fellow practitioners/former classmates to plan new ways of approaching old problems. I continued to expand the work that I did, helped clients, and also learned in the process.

Since that time, I have had what I would call different adventures:  designing, delivering and evaluating training programs, developing curricula in various industries, coaching subject matter experts-turned- trainers, developing training materials, and setting up corporate universities. What started out as “play” has turned out to be one of my most meaningful pursuits. 

In my almost 20 year-journey as a learning practitioner, there were numerous instances in which I had to do a lot or research to get the answers I needed. With L&D becoming an important discipline in today’s talent economy, I hope to be able to contribute by sharing some knowledge and experiences to those new to the field; and more importantly, to help others realize what fun this line of work is!

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