What is instructional design? (+ examples and tips!)
Instructional design is a systematic and theory-backed approach to creating engaging and impactful learning experiences. Whether you’re designing eLearning courses or employee training programs, effective instructional design is a surefire method of meeting business goals and developing effective learning solutions.
But what is instructional design exactly? In this guide, we'll start with a practical definition of instructional design. We'll explore the role of instructional designers, learning models and theories, and also share real-world examples and best practices to help you craft more effective learning experiences.
What is instructional design?
Instructional design is a systematic process of designing and developing effective instructional materials and learning experiences.
Instructional design involves analyzing learner needs, designing a curriculum and learning content designed to meet those needs, implementing that design in the most effective way, and finally evaluating the effectiveness of the learning experience.
When a company sees a need to train their employees or there’s a skills gap that needs to be filled, they’ll often employ an instructional designer to analyze the issue and create an appropriate learning solution based on the desired learning goals of the project.
While instructional design is a process, this isn’t to say instructional design isn’t creative or overly rigid. In my experience, the best instructional designers use their personal style and creativity to develop eLearning or training programs that excite, engage and teach in equal measure.
In my experience, great instructional design happens when:
- a thorough needs analysis is conducted, giving the designer a deep knowledge of the needs, preferences and challengers of their audience
- appropriate and well-defined learning objectives are created in response to the needs of the audience and client
- subject matter experts provide great learning content that the instructional designer can then fashion into engaging course material
- The instructional designer utilizes proven learning theory and instructional design principles to design an effective learning flow, first in the form of an outline or storyboard
- Appropriate learning methods and content styles are used to create engaging learning content that is delivered in the right way for the audience (i.e. a combination of interactive quizzes, simulations, presentations and informational content.)
- The project is managed effectively throughout, with clear and effective collaboration between designers, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), stakeholders and eLearning developers.
- An appropriate implementation platform is chosen and materials are handed over to the implementation team in an easy-to-follow format
While I see instructional design as a profession, I also see it as a set of skills and competencies that allow for the creation of effective learning experiences. This distinction is useful for the fact that people who may not have “instructional designer” in their job title will still benefit from the theories, models and best practices of instructional design.
For me, anyone who is teaching skills or imparting knowledge can benefit from the principles and theories of instructional design.
That said, instructional design is especially useful anytime you are creating a self-paced learning experience (typically eLearning) or designing a training experience that other trainers will deliver, such as a corporate training or a train-the-trainer course.
What does an instructional designer do?
In simple terms, an instructional designer designs and develops effective learning solutions. They’ll typically follow an instructional design process to go from a first step of determining needs, all the way through to a final stage of implementing a solution, often in the form of an eLearning course or training program.
The actual work that an instructional designer does on a day-to-day basis goes way beyond the steps of an instructional design process.
In reality, they’ll often project manage the whole process, interview and source material from subject matter experts, create outlines and storyboards, liaise with stakeholders and more.
In some cases, instructional designers will move their storyboard to eLearning authoring tools or a Learning Management System (LMS) and develop learning aids and images, learning aids, slide decks and more. Sometimes, the instructional designer may pass a completed eLearning storyboard to an eLearning developer or graphic designer to implement the course or create materials.
It’s also worth noting that in different industries and organizations, the exact role and responsibilities of an instructional designer can vary. In one company, the instructional designer may own the entire process and be the one to uncover learner needs and then deploy and monitor the solution they roll out.
In other cases, the instructional designer may receive a brief from another team member or department and design a storyboard that is then passed to someone else to implement in an internal university or course hub.
Here is an inexhaustive list of the tasks and responsibilities an instructional designer will likely perform throughout the process.
- Needs Analysis: Instructional designers identify the learning needs and goals of the target audience. They conduct thorough needs analyses to understand learners’ backgrounds, knowledge gaps, and preferred learning styles.
- Liaising with subject matter experts: designers will interview subject matter experts to source the content for their course, gain insights that will help them design an effective learning flow and source supporting information and materials. This is often an ongoing process with multiple touchpoints throughout a project.
- Conducting research and background reading: while most raw course content typically comes from a SME, it’s often helpful for an instructional designer to become somewhat familiar with the course topic and other instances of learning content in the area they’re working in.
- Curriculum Design: Based on the needs analysis, instructional designers develop curriculum outlines and learning objectives. They define the scope of the learning experience and outline the sequence of instructional activities, often in the form of an instructional design storyboard.
- Content Development: Instructional designers create or curate content that aligns with the learning objectives. This may involve writing instructional materials, designing multimedia resources such as podcasts or videos, or curating or transforming existing content.
- Choose instructional design strategies: Instructional designers design instructional strategies and activities to engage learners and facilitate knowledge acquisition. They’ll incorporate interactive elements, simulations, and assessments to promote active learning and create engagement.
- Manage stakeholder communication and approval processes: Whether working for an external or internal client, instructional designers will typically need to consult stakeholders and get final approval on their instructional design. Designers will typically be responsible for managing this communication and approval process, as well as managing the nuts and bolts of the project at large.
- Prototyping and implementation: In many cases, instructional designers will also be the ones to create a working prototype or implement final course materials in a content authoring tool or LMS. In bigger teams, it’s likely that they’ll pass the storyboard they created to an eLearning developer. In this instance, they’ll likely liaise with the developer and give them the final go-ahead on the complete materials.
- Evaluation and Revision of learning experiences: Once the course or learning solution is live instructional designers assess the effectiveness of the learning experience through formative and summative evaluations. They gather feedback from learners, analyze learning outcomes, and make revisions to improve the instructional materials continuously.
- Briefing trainers and facilitators: When designing and developing instructor-led programs or blended courses, instructional designers will typically brief those people who will be delivering the training or facilitating live elements of a course. They might create a briefing document or conduct a series of meetings to ensure the training is delivered to the desired standard.
- Measuring project impact: Behind every learning project is a business need or company goal. A training course designed to help new employees onboard more effectively will likely have some very clear learning objectives such as ensuring core competencies and demonstrable skills. Beyond that, the organization will also have objectives such as improved employee happiness, retention or an impact on business metrics like the average support ticket speed or sales closed. In some teams, instructional designers will be responsible for measuring the effectiveness of the course and the impact on business goals.
Learning design vs instructional design – what are the differences?
If you’re working in the development of eLearning courses and training programs, you might have heard different terms used in the field: learning design and instructional design. These terms are often used interchangeably, though I’ve found many folks have a preference on which they use and do see a distinction between them.
In my experience, whether someone says they’re an instructional designer or learning designer, they broadly mean the same thing – a person who creates engaging and effective learning experiences.
Where the distinction often comes in is in how they see the work they do, the approach they take and the usual context of their work.
Here are some of the key differences I’ve found that might be useful to think about when consider the question of what is instructional design:
- I’ve seen learning design more commonly used in educational contexts while instructional design seems more commonly used in corporate environments and private training contexts.
- I’ve also seen instructional design used to mean a focused process of creating instructional materials such as eLearning courses while learning design takes a wider approach, thinking about more diverse factors which can affect the learning environment. For example, an instructional designer might be expected create the course materials for an online training program while a learning designer might work with faculty to think about broader factors surrounding the design of learning such as room set-up, learner access, teacher training and more.
- In many cases, I’ve seen instructional design used to refer to self-paced materials and eLearning, while learning design is more commonly used to refer to instructor-led courses or training programs. Going further, learning design has often been used with an emphasis on learning experiences that go beyond the scope of a single online course and into the realm of experience design, stage setting and the wider context of learning.
- For some, the distinction between learning experience design (aka learning design) and instructional design is all about outlook and approach. For example, learning experience design discussions often center arout creating experiences and using goal-oriented and human-centred learning approaches. Conversely, conversations about instructional design more often focus on how to create great eLearning courses and learning materials. That said, good instructional design or learning design will often do exactly the same thing and so I personally find the difference a matter of semantics. But if the distinction helps you talk about your work or define your role in a team, that’s great!
- I personally find it helpful to think about the difference like this:
- instructional design is a more user-led experience where I need to develop effective materials that can be used in a self-paced, self explanatory way. I don’t have control over many factors such as the external environment, and so the design of the course content and materials are more important.
- learning design is a more trainer or facilitator-led experience, where an educator or trainer is present to guide the experience and create the ideal learning environment in a more organic manner. I have more control over the learning environment and how I work with the group as a trainer and facilitator is as important as the course materials.
- In both cases, materials, learning flow and guidance from a trainer or learning designer are important and it’s just that they index differently depending on the needs of the project.
- Of course, this definition is highly personal and you might use learning design to describe the development of self-paced online courses. I find this distinction useful as it helps me think about the relative importance of different learning strategies and how I should approach meeting the learning objectives of the project.
So what is the difference between learning design and instructional design? Short answer: nothing, really. Slightly longer answer: it depends on context, personal outlook and approach.
In reality, much of the work these people do is the same, though they may have a different focus or mindset when it comes to designing and developing learning experiences.
In my experience, this is more often dependent on the industry, job role or project than on the distinction between learning design vs instructional design. That said, I do find the question is interesting when it comes to thinking about the work we do as instructional designers and where our focus should be.
Do you see a distinction or have something to add? We’d love to hear from you in the comments!
Top instructional design models and theories
Whether we’re talking about instructional design or learning design, the learning experiences we create are built on a foundation of effective learning principles, models and theories.
So what are they? Instructional design models often comprise a series of steps designed to create an effective learning experience. Think of instructional models as a proven process an instructional designer may follow in order to develop and project manage an instructional design project.
By following a model, you have a framework creating an effective learning experience and can ensure nothing is missed and that your learning solution is fit for purpose.
Instructional design theories and principles are a collection of learning theories, psychological knowledge and conceptual frameworks that underpin effective learning experiences. In practice, this is a combination of utilizing good pedagogical (and andragogical) practices, learning science and models of learning to inform the experiences and materials you design.
In practice, many instructional design models and theories overlap and are often utilized in the same way – by providing a set of guidelines to follow in order to create an effective instructional design.
So how do you choose one? Early in your instructional design journey, you’ll likely find a model or theory that chimes with your own learning experiences and style. (The ADDIE model and Robert Gagne’s events of instruction are popular for good reason!)
You’ll likely find that you organically use many of these concepts in your work anyway – it’s quite common to discover a learning concept and think, “Oh, I already do this!”
That said, a deeper understanding of how these principles and instructional design models work in tandem can only improve your practice and the quality of your training materials.
As you learn and develop as an instructional designer, I’d highly recommend exploring multiple instructional design models and theories to deepen your knowledge and synthesize best practices from each.
Here are some of the most prominent instructional design models and theories you can use to inform your learning design process.
ADDIE Model
The ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation) model is a systematic approach to instructional design widely used in educational and corporate settings.
ADDIE a proven five step process for developing instructional designs that truly meet learner needs and is probably the most well known model in the field. The five steps of the ADDIE model are:
Analysis
This is where the instructional designers conduct a needs assessment, discover skills gaps and get to know the audience of the online courses and learning resources they may design. You may also conduct research into the needs of the business and the wider space surrounding your potential training.
Design
During the design step, instructional designers begin to ideate on a learning solution designed to meet the needs identified during analysis. You’ll typically create a course outline, craft learning objectives and create an overall structure of your learning process in the form of a storyboard.
Here, you’ll set out to answer any questions about the course or learning experience you’re creating and demonstrate how you’ll meet your goals in order to get approval to move forward.
Development
In the development phase of ADDIE, instructional designers create a storyboard for their chosen learning solution. You’ll also work with subject matter expert to source course content and graphic designers to create course materials.
Once you’ve drafted a storyboard that sings, you’ll often take a different route depending on whether you’re working an online courses or in-person training.
In an eLearning environment, you’ll likely use eLearning authoring tools to create final assets ready to deliver to learners. For in-person training, you’ll likely create instructional manuals or training guides to help in-person trainers lead the program effectively.
Implementation
In this step of the instructional design process, you’re about ready to deliver your instructional materials to learners!
Here, you’ll set up the final learning experience in a learning management system, deliver training directly and distribute other material as necessary. This can also look handing over storyboards to another team to implement or having workshops with trainers and facilitators who will deliver the instructional design content.
Evaluation
Once your learning solution is out in the world, you’ll need to evaluate whether you met your goals and analyse the impact of what you’ve done. Here, you’ll likely look at how learners engaged with your materials while also consider the impact you’ve had on business goals.
The aim is to understand whether you’ve solved the problem or closed the skills gap identifying in your needs assessment and also figure out how you might improve your learning solutions for future learners.
ADDIE is easy to use and is often the first model turned to for even the most complex projects and instructional design processes. Read more in our complete guide to using the ADDIE model or jump into creating your next instructional design with our ADDIE template.
SAM Model
The SAM model (Successive Approximation Model) is an agile instructional design model that focuses on rapid prototyping and iterative development. It encourages collaboration between stakeholders and allows for quick feedback and revisions throughout the design process.
SAM has three distinct phases.
- Preparation
- Iterative design
- Iterative development
In the preparation phase, instructional designers gather background information on learners and seek to understand learner needs, the knowledge and skills they already possess and the skills your team would like them to achieve.
During the iterative design phase, instructional designers will begin planning the learning solution in earnest before designing, prototyping and evaluating the chosen solution over successive rounds of iteration. The goal is to iterate openly and get regular feedback throughout the process.
Finally, in the iterative development phase, learning designers will seek to quickly implement a solution with their choice of instructional technology.
The alpha, beta and gold versions of their instructional design will each go through a round of testing with SMEs, stakeholders and representative users in order to create the best possible solution as quickly as possible.
Prototyping is the name of the game here, and as a result, SAM is a rapid instructional design system that’s a natural alternative to ADDIE for teams who want to move and iterate quickly.
Read more about using the SAM model in our guide to instructional design models.
Dick and Carey Model
Developed as a deeper exploration of ADDIE designed to help newcomers, the Dick and Carey model of instructional design is a great way to consider the wider context of a learner’s experience. It comprises of ten steps which include:
- Identify Instructional Goal(s)
- Conduct instructional analysis
- Analyze learners and contexts
- Write performance objectives
- Develop assessment instruments
- Develop an instructional strategy
- Develop and select instructional materials
- Design and conduct a formative evaluation of instruction
- Revise instruction
- Design and conduct summative evaluation
Personally, I found the Dick and Carey model a great tool when starting out in instructional design. It made certain parts of the process more explicit and helped me see the process of developing an instructional design as an often non-linear system than the straight line that ADDIE might imply.
Bloom’s Taxonomy
Bloom’s taxonomy categorizes how we learn into six levels of cognitive complexity, ranging from simple recall to critical thinking and creativity. Instructional designers and educators use Bloom’s Taxonomy to design learning activities that address different cognitive levels and guide learners towards mastery of a topic or skill.
Bloom’s taxonomy is heavily informed by educational psychology and comprises of three learning domains: cognitive (knowledge), affective (feelings), and psychomotor (skills).
Those learning domains underpin the six levels of bloom’s taxonomy. In the 1956 version of bloom’s taxonomy, those are:
- Knowledge
- Comprehension
- Application
- Analysis
- Synthesis
- Evaluation
Starting with the first step, learners will demonstrate their mastery of one level of learning before moving to the next. Note that a revised version of Bloom’s taxonomy was also created in 2001 to respond to the more dynamic nature of learning.
The six stages of Bloom’s revised taxonomy are:
- Remember
- Understand
- Apply
- Analyze
- Evaluate
- Create
Each stage in the hierarchy of Bloom’s taxonomy also comes with its own set of verbs and questions that learning designers can use to easily create learning objectives and inform their instructional design.
While some learning designers might use Bloom’s Taxonomy to guide their course structure, it’s also a useful tool to use in tandem with other theories and models. If you have trouble with creating learning objectives or setting meaningful and measurable goals for your instructional designs, definitely look deeper into Bloom’s taxonomy.
Robert Gagne’s events of instruction
Gagne’s principles of instructional design is a set of learning events that comprise an effective learning experience. Beginning with gaining learner attention and ending with assessment and learner retention, these 9 events can be used as both the structure of an effective online course and an underlying theory that helps you ensure the learning experience is engaging.
Gagne’s 9 events of instruction are:
- Gain the attention of your learners
- State the objectives
- Stimulate recall of prior learning
- Present the learning content
- Provide learning guidance
- Elicit performance from learners
- Provide feedback
- Assess learner performance
- Enhance retention and transfer
Gagne’s principles have been especially useful in my own practice. I often use the 9 events as a basic course outline or storyboard that I’ll build upon as I move through the stages of the ADDIE model.
On other occasions, I’ll think about how I’ve implemented the 9 events while revising my design and make changes based on Gagne’s principles. Check out our guide to explore these instructional design principles in greater detail and learn how to deploy them in eLearning and instructor-led-training.
Note that these instructional design theories are only a small sample of the entire field of instructional design.
We encourage you to explore and find theories and models that resonate with your personal style while helping you develop your foundation of learning knowledge. Our piece on instructional design models is a great next step on that journey!
I also found this post on fundamental learning theories from Structural Learning helpful when considering how to practically apply theory into my designs.
Instructional design examples
At this stage, you might be wondering what instructional designers end up creating for the clients and companies they work with.
Instructional design principles are applied across various domains, including education, corporate training, personal development, and more to create everything from learning simulations, training courses, employee onboarding and traditional eLearning.
Here are some examples of instructional design in action with a template for each you can use and adapt when developing your own learning solutions.
- Instructional design for eLearning
- Instructional design for instructor-led training programs
- Instructional design for blended learning
Instructional design for eLearning
Instructional designers are often called upon to create interactive eLearning in the form of online courses and online training programs. Typical eLearning projects are mostly self-paced in nature and will include multimedia elements, quizzes, and simulations to enhance learning outcomes.
In addition to traditional long-form course, eLearning can also come in the form of micro-learning, entirely gamified experiences, simulations and more. Instructional designers create a variety of different materials and will deploy a particular format of eLearning based on learner needs and the remit of the project.
eLearning will often be delivered to solve a training need, onboard new employees or develop key skills or knowledge. After an instructional designer has created the course design in the form of a storyboard, this will then be developed into a finished course. Depending on the client and department, completed eLearning might live in an internal learning hub or learning management system or be delivered to a public course platform.
Curious to see what this looks like for an instructional designer? Explore this example of an eLearning course storyboard I delivered for a client. After delivery of the storyboard, I handed the design to an eLearning developer who then implemented the design in their LMS.
Instructional design for instructor-led training programs
In corporate settings, instructional designers often develop training programs to onboard new employees, upgrade skills, or promote workplace safety. These programs often incorporate scenario-based learning, role-playing activities, and real-world simulations to provide hands-on experience.
A key distinction here is that instructor-led training is often conducted in real-time, with an experienced trainer leading the session for trainees. Traditionally, this was in a live setting where trainees all attended in person, but these days, virtual training is increasingly frequent.
The instructional designer will create training materials, design an effective training flow and then brief trainers on how the training should be delivered. They’ll often also create facilitator guides, instructional manuals, job aids and learning materials to help aid the delivery and retention of training courses.
Explore this guide on how to create an engaging training session to learn how to plan and design effective employee training and more!
Instructional design for blended learning
Blended learning courses and cohort-based online learning are learning experiences that feature some combination of self-paced learning and live, facilitated content. Instructional systems design is highly useful in such scenarios, as the balance of experiences needs to be finely tuned.
Here, learners typically engage with self-paced eLearning content alongside live workshops and training sessions. Trainers may introduce the blended course with an introductory meeting and then run live workshops or presentations at various points in the program. Often, learners will join such a program in a cohort of other learners that they can interact with in social spaces or even in peer-learning activities.
Blended learning design can often combine the best of sync and async learning environments, but it can also be a challenging balance to strike. You’ll need to deploy a variety of instructional technology, often providing opportunities for hybrid learning and virtual facilitation too.
Learn more in this guide to blended learning design or see what a design might look like in practice in this blended learning course template.
Instructional design best practices and tips
The field of instructional design/learning design/learning experience design has existed in some form for decades. Well before the invention of eLearning and advanced instructional technology, academics, psychologists and designers established learning theories and best practices that persist to this day.
Combine this body of existing learning knowledge with the best parts of modern instructional design and you can bolster your practice and inform any learning design process you’re working on. Here’s an in-exhaustive list of some instructional design best practices I’ve learned while creating my own courses and researching the topic.
Take the time to get to know your audience deeply (and meet them where they are.)
Whatever model and approach you take to developing your learning solution, it’s imperative you understand the characteristics, preferences, and learning styles of your target audience. Not only will this help you tailor the learning experience to their needs but you’ll create more authoritative and engaging content too.
Where possible, talk to your audience directly. Getting insights from a third-party or subject matter expert is sometimes the best you can do, but when possible, arrange interviews, focus groups or just send a simple survey. Even a single conversation with a would-be cohort can reveal so much about how you might approach developing training materials.
An example of this going wrong is when developing training for new employees. Instead of talking to new employees who just went through the existing training, an instructional design strapped for time might just speak to the HR team and look at analytics for course completion in the LMS.
While these are great data points, speaking directly to the people taking the training is something you should try and do in order to develop the best possible onboarding materials.
It’s also incredibly useful to source feedback from your audience at various points in the process. A synthesis of data from how they interacted with your course and text or verbal feedback can help ensure your next project is even better suited to their needs.
Learner experience > design
A beautiful course with great material that is hard for users to navigate is not a great learning experience. Whatever you’re designing, ensure that accessibility, easy navigation and legibility is front of mind in order to craft an experience that learners can move through without friction. In practice, this means ensuring that instructions are clear, page navigation is easy and that your course content is always legible.
This is especially important if you’re designing interactive materials that go beyond the scope of a typical “click next slide” or “click the correct answer” format. Every unique format is an opportunity for engagement and excitement but they can also introduce friction. Try and keep core elements simple and consistent throughout so people are never lost with how to proceed through your learning programs.
For courses that are composed entirely in an uncommon format, I try to include a tutorial slide that teaches participants how to engage with the course. Even then, it’s important that as a design, you ask whether the medium or format you’re using is truly the best one for your audience.
Experimentation can be beautiful, but it can also be confusing – on some courses, you simply need to transmit information in an effective manner and don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Recognize when each method is best suited to the task at hand for the most effective learning design.
Test on different platforms and with accessibility in mind
Testing (and testing again!) from the perspective and preferred platforms of your learners is an important aspect of instructional systems design.
Learners will often access your learning materials from different platforms than the one you use to create your online learning. Test your content on mobile and desktop, even when using learning management systems that optimize for different platforms.
What is clearly visible on one platform might only appear while scrolling on another. While these items might seem small, ensuring that even the most basic components work as intended can ensure that your desired learning flow is in place for everyone.
Accessibility is also an important factor when designing your materials. Be sure to surface any accessibility needs early in the project and design your text, UI and any multimedia learning materials with accessibility best practices in mind. Check out this article from eLearning Industry for more on this topic.
Beyond testing navigation and usability, it’s also worth testing your learning flow multiple times through the design process to see what the learning experience feels like. Where possible, source beta testers from your stakeholder team, SMEs or even from a possible learning cohort. Feedback is always invaluable though it’s also worth noting that there’s a right time to share your learning flow with others. I’d recommend having a complete draft of your storyboard before asking people to truly test it.
Respect the time and effort of your SMEs
In most cases, instructional designers will call on the expertise of subject matter experts to provide learning content and provide feedback on storyboards and materials. Whether working in higher education or a corporate training environment, SMEs often have a heap of work on their plate. So try and be conscious of that and respect their time!
Make clear requests or content briefs, set sensible deadlines and provide your SMEs with enough context to make their work easier. It’s often effective to call a short meeting where you guide SMEs through your storyboard and show them what you need, rather than going back and forth over.
Effective collaboration with your SMEs is paramount for making the eLearning development process a joy, rather than a chore. In SessionLab, you can tag your SMEs in your storyboard directly and make requests for content with ease. It can really help save time during development and make content sourcing and implementation a simple, systematic process.
The learning objectives of your course are your north star while designing and developing your learning solution.
Everything you put in your course should be developed with these in mind and as such, they need to be good! There are a heap of ways to set an effective learning objective: using Bloom’s taxonomy (and the verbs and questions therein) and a proven method, though you might also find that asking your stakeholders and participants what they would like to achieve is a good place to begin.
Ensure your learning objectives are measurable (either through learner assessment or the tracking of business goals) and that you clearly reference what learners should come away with or be able to do by the end of the instructional program.
Whatever you come up with, get feedback from stakeholders and where possible, your ideal participants too. When designing learning objectives, I like to think of Einstein’s assertion that if you can’t explain something to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it deeply enough.
I’ll always try to aim for simplicity in the final version. If what I’ve written is too complex, confusing or isn’t clear to all stakeholders, it likely needs another draft.
So this advice comes in two parts. First, I’d absolutely recommend creating a storyboard for any eLearning project or online course.
Creating a storyboard will not only help you create an engaging learning flow –it’s also a vital part of an instructional design process and you’ll often use it to communicate your design to stakeholders, SMEs and developers.
Skipping this step can lead to wasted time creating content you don’t actually need or later realizing you have an imperfect flow that won’t satisfy your training needs.
Secondly, I would recommend creating a completed storyboard before moving into your content authoring tool or LMS. In my experience, as soon as you start working in your content authoring tool, it’s easy to get lost in page design, button interactions and the technical nuts and bolts of your course. While these are all important, they don’t guarantee a well-designed and structured learning flow.
I always create a storyboard and review it multiple times to ensure I’m meeting the desired learning objective of the course before I get started in an eLearning authoring tool. It’s easier to overview the learning experience from start to finish and ensure the training material I’ve designed follows a logical flow.
Use an instructional design template
Most instructional designers have their own preference of storyboard format. I’ve seen dozens of variations in storyboard templates that factor in everything from the eLearning format to chosen learning theory or the knowledge and skills being applied by learners.
Save time in your development process by copying what works, reusing a proven template or even creating your own template from your favorite storyboard design. Personally, I favour storyboard templates that have a repeatable slide structure for easy iteration and have some implicit structure based on an instructional design model. See a sample storyboard using Gagne’s principles here.
In SessionLab, you can create a library of your best storyboard templates to reuse whenever you need. I tend to have a heap of variations based on the kind of project I’m working on and even the choice of platform of LMS my client might be working with.
Keep your training materials organized and label them diligently
Online courses can easily become sprawling projects with pages and pages of content, storyboards and assets. Dumping everything in a single folder called My great online course is a recipe for wasted time and frustrating collaboration. Take the time to file, name and organize your materials for a more effective process and to ensure you don’t lose anything important.
In SessionLab, you can attach course materials directly to the relevant slide in your storyboard so its easy to find and keep organized. Settle on a slide naming and numbering convention with your development team so it’s easy to follow and implement later.
Account for limiting factors like course platform or development time
With all the time and resources in the world, many instructional designers would go to town with bespoke interactive games, professional quality video and more. In reality, the turnaround for a project or the course platform being used can create constraints or caveats the instructional design must consider when design their content.
Ensure you know what tools you or your developers will be using to create and implement your course content and design accordingly. Scope out the key logistical details of project at the outset and get a clear sense of what’s possible. Nothing is more gutting than having to go back to the drawing board because your vision simply can’t be implemented with the time and resources available.
Bring learning theory and instructional design principles to your course design
When putting together this list, so many small tips came to mind regarding cognitive psychology, human learning design and instructional design theory. Learning theorists and instructional design experts have charted this territory far better than I ever could and my advice here is to learn from them, borrow from them and use those principles to inform your course design.
Going it alone or using your gut can get you so far, but you run the risk of creating disengaging courses or failing to satisfy training needs. Do your research, commit to your own learning and use everything from instructional design models to adult learning theory to ensure your materials are the best they can be.
Conclusion and next steps
Instructional design is a dynamic field that blends learning principles and educational theory with technology and creativity to create effective learning experiences and instructional materials. It’s also a skillset and methodology that can be used by everyone from instructional designers to trainers, facilitators and educators.
It’s an exciting profession that is only likely to grow as more companies use eLearning to train employees and resolve skills gap in their teams and organizations.
We hope that we’ve helped you understand the fundamentals of instructional design and gain some insight into how you might improve your practice and design even better online courses and training sessions.
Want to learn more? See how Vlerick Business School deploys instructional design practices across their team and how they use SessionLab to improve instructional systems design at scale.
Developing an eLearning storyboard? Check out our post on how to create an instructional design storyboard to better understand how it fits into instructional design processes and create more effective storyboards too!
Designing instructor-led training? Explore our guide on creating an unforgettable training session to ensure your next course is an engaging experience for all participants.
James Smart is Head of Content at SessionLab. He’s also a creative facilitator who has run workshops and designed courses for establishments like the National Centre for Writing, UK. He especially enjoys working with young people and empowering others in their creative practice.
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