Instructional Designers Becoming Education Agents - #CCK11

PAPER 2

As a recent career change has placed me onto the path of an elearning instructional designer (ID) I find it difficult to know whether the role has changed or not for those that may have been doing it for more than 5 years.


Personally, I don’t believe the role itself is changing; however the techniques and tools to accomplish the role are ever changing. One description of an ID is that “…it is similar to that of a film maker. The only difference is that a film maker directs the movie and the Instructional Designer directs the e-learning course.”1 This is a great description in that, we as ID’s often gather in the information that will be placed into the course, whether by ourselves or from subject matter experts and the decide on the best method in how to deliver it to the learners. We direct how the material and resources to the learners.

As the format of CCK11 has shown though, IDs need to find new ways to deliver the material to the learners. It can no longer be just a “push” effort to the learner. Better engagement by the learners, increased interest, and retention all stems from allowing the learners to seek out much of the information on their own.

In order to do this we can no long just create an elearning course and expect the person to sit down and click through some screens and activities to a desired end. We need to utilize more of the tools that our learners are using daily to connect with their peer networks. We need to find ways to allow the learners to use these tools, such as Twitter, Facebook, etc. to access, manage and seek out information about the given topic being taught.

Our learners are becoming more and more accustom to these “immediate response” tools and are demanding the same in the delivery of their learning. “We have to stop thinking about “training” and start designing for learning. We need to people to learn quick increments.”2

It is not uncommon for those that are shopping for a vacation will spend days or weeks, sometimes even months, searching and research for the “just oh so perfect vacation. This is because they want the best price, but even more so because they truly do want the best experience. As IDs we too should keep this in mind. Our learners want the best experience they can achieve as well in their learning endeavors.

Dreaming along these lines and the “what could it be” path, I envision IDs to become more like travel agents or perhaps more like travel brochures. We will be Education Agents. Given a topic we will offer several different avenues that the learner can look at, explore and research on their own. We will let them shop through the various brochures on the topic that we have available. Much like suggested readings, video posts, images, graphics that are typical in a course. However, unlike travel agents we will encourage that they shop around. We will ask them to compare notes from other “brochures”. We will want our learners to “share the buys and deals” that they uncover and we will encourage them to share these other brochures of information with other learners in the class.

http://www.digitalbeedesigns.com/

By increasing their engagement and allowing them the freedom to seek out the information that matters to them, still based on a particular topic, we will in turn be helping our learners by increasing their interest and retention.

1 Rupa Rajagopalan . (February 28, 2007). The Role of an Instructional Designer. In One-Stop Resource for Instructional Designing. Retrieved march 10, 2011, from http://writersgateway.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/the-role-of-an-instructional-designer/.



2 Sharon Boller. (July 2010). SlideShare. In Training Trends 2010. Retrieved March 10, 2011, from http://www.slideshare.net/SharonBoller/training-trends-2010.