Main Body
Key Terms and Definitions
This e-book is designed as a companion to UNH-CPS’s COM 707 Communication for Training and Performance Improvement. It has been adapted from a textbook that was originally designed for students in an Instructional Design program for Educational Technologists.
In this revised edition, there is more emphasis on communication strategies and less emphasis on learning theories, models of evaluation, task analysis and other dimensions of instructional design (ID) as a scholarly or professional pursuit. Students in COM 707 who wish to pursue further studies in instructional design will encounter more in-depth material on cognitive science, learning theory, instructional theory, multimedia design, and more.
Students of Communications should know that communication is one of the most important skills in the ID profession. Instructional design, as a process, is facilitated through communication, both on the inquiry side in gathering information, in the presentation side in reporting to stakeholders, and in the development of instructional media.
All instructional designers need to be good communicators.
What is ID about?
Everyone at some point has taken a class, a training session, or used a how-to resource to learn something new. In each instance, there was a design process where decisions were made about the nature of the instruction and how it would be facilitated to the enduser, student, trainee, or whichever title you can think of as the consumer of instruction. This design process is embodied in the ID profession and practiced in many areas: K-12 education, higher education, corporate training, military, non-profits, and enrichment programs.
So, what is instructional design, and how is it different from teaching? The teaching profession is concerned with the interplay of people in a set of learning conditions assembled to achieve a goal. As a profession, teaching is primarily focused on the moments in time after the planning process has occurred, the instructional materials have been produced, the conditions for teaching have been determined, and the analysis and selection of students prior to teaching have been conducted.
Instructional design is concerned with structures and strategies within which teaching takes place, much like how an architect conceptualizes a building according to how it will be used. Think of ID as systems thinking about the conditions of learning and the scientific process of learning itself where teaching is a component of its implementation.
When approached with a need for education, training, or performance improvement, the instructional designer, as a systems thinker, considers the following:
- What research strategies do you employ to determine whether the instructional needs are, in fact, related to a need for instruction? (In corporate training situations, there may be organizational or managerial causes for performance problems). How do you determine the exact needs for instruction,