As an instructional designer, I’ve had my fair share of blank stares when I tell people what I do for a living. E-learning? Instructional design? When I talk about my job I may as well be...
Published 10 years ago
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I don't agree that graphic design, illustration, multimedia producer, etc. are inherent roles of an instructional designer, regardless of your comment to Maurizio above about one person makes a team. The instructional designer's role, in terms of illustration/animation/etc, SHOULD be to frame out and define the graphics for the associated content. I'm not saying there aren't qualified IDs, but by and large, they do not have the prowess to pull it off. A professional illustrator, especially one who's area of expertise is eLearning, should be the one to bring the ID's ideas to life.
As far as look and feel of the course, that is better left to people who live and breathe design. A pet peeve of mine is seeing these SL characters used and abused because they look pretty. It's just fluff on a page that has no benefit to the learner.
I think we're living in a age of, "it's good enough," and that's sad. A lot of this has to do with companies stock piling cash while citing the poor economy. Do more with less is the mantra.
That's my nickel's worth.
As far as look and feel of the course, that is better left to people who live and breathe design. A pet peeve of mine is seeing these SL characters used and abused because they look pretty. It's just fluff on a page that has no benefit to the learner.
I think we're living in a age of, "it's good enough," and that's sad. A lot of this has to do with companies stock piling cash while citing the poor economy. Do more with less is the mantra.
That's my nickel's worth.
- You're right -- not every instructional designer does graphic design. The point is that some do. And I have to say, some are quite good at it! I don't believe it's impossible to be good at both instructional design and graphic design.
There are teams of one and teams of many, and there are advantages and disadvantages to both.
The objective of this article is simply to give people an idea of some of the different things instructional designers may or may not do as part of their job. - I can do both, and I can tell you that top-down design from 99% of ID's who do not understand graphic design cannot design for it, either. Generally what you get is word-oriented folks who thing of images, videos and charts merely as supplemental support to their words, rather than an integral part of the message. "Bringing the IDs ideas to life" suggests an ivory tower top down approach, rather than a collaborative one, and this is one big reason that most "training" is so crappy, boring, and rightfully scorned as tiresome and ineffective.
- I think you've wrongfully assumed what my, "bringing ideas to life" comment means. It certainly does not mean what you refer to as and 'ivory tower,' top-down approach.
eLearning designers/illustrators/animators are a very specialized group. The good ones don't think in terms of supportive graphics, ever. They're able to get their head into the content, look at the direction given by an ID, and brainstorm ideas that will bring the content to life. The outcome sometimes results in a rewrite as the eLearning designer will offer an approach that is not so obvious.
I would also say that the majority of ad agency types of designers would struggle with working on eLearning course content. However, they would be great at conceptualizing look and feel elements.- If that is what you meant, you certainly didn't say it the first time around, so no, I didn't wrongly assume anything. Sorry, but if the "developers" and the "graphics guy" aren't included in the design process from the beginning, it's a top-down process, and the results are the crap courses we generally find that can't get out of preachy mode.
