Instructional Design with Humans

Instructional Design with Humans

Instructional designers--like rockstars--love models. Our models aren't the kind who walk runways, though. We fall for models like Action Mapping, Agile, Backwards Planning, SAM, ASSURE, and ARCS. (And who could forget our first love, ADDIE?) Even the renegades who reject all formal models have their own implicit mental models for how to get things done.

And, unlike rock stars, whose affairs with models usually end in heartache and heroin addiction, our infatuation with models is essentially a healthy and wholesome kind of love. Models are about structure. Structure is good. Structure is necessary. Without it, our efforts to create learning become agonizing fever dreams of chaos and frustration.

Without structure, we produce learning that accomplishes nothing at great cost.

But even the best models are simplifications of reality. When our models fail to give us useful guidance--and they do fail--it's because real life is a messy, confusing business that defies simplification. 

Consider, for example, how much time we spend talking. We're constantly talking to customers, learners, SMEs, managers, and executives. We probably spend more time in conversations than any other single activity.

Our models represent these conversations as simple, bloodless affairs. You ask questions, you get answers, you move on to the next step of the process. 

But real life conversations are rarely this straightforward. Stakeholders aren't "inputs." They're human beings. And when they meet with us, they bring their assumptions, opinions, agendas, thoughts, and feelings with them.

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The manager who requested time management training for her team doesn't know why you're wasting her time with a needs analysis meeting. Why can't you just deliver the training so she can get on with the dozen other priorities she has to deal with that day?

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The subject matter expert who's supposed to be sharing information about how to carry out his one-of-a-kind task is deeply suspicious of you and your project. If you succeed at training a bunch of other people to do his job, maybe the company won't need him anymore.

Our models can give us tunnel vision. They condition us to focus so intensely on the project that we treat other people as tools for achieving our goal--or, even worse, as obstacles standing in the way of project completion.

If you want to be a good instructional designer, and not just an order-taker, you've got to get good at working with people. Our models don't tell us how to do that, and neither do our academic programs or workshops.

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One important skill to cultivate is perspective-taking. As the name suggests, this means putting yourself in the shoes of other people and looking at the world through their eyes.

Before you meet with Joe or Jane Stakeholder, pretend to be Joe or Jane Stakeholder and ask yourself these questions:

  • What do I know about this project?
  • What don't I know about it?
  • What am I thinking?
  • What am I feeling?
  • What am I anxious about?
  • What do I want to accomplish?

Your assumptions won't always be correct, of course, but you'll walk into that conversation better able to treat the other person as a human and not just an "input."

Nyla Spooner

Learning Experience Designer | Content creator

4y

I took a consulting class in grad school that was solely about the art of dealing with clients, both externally and internally. It was one of the most valuable classes I ever took because it discusses how to handle these very issues you have written about today. Even with that class though, putting what I learned into practice with REAL clients continues to be an ongoing challenge. It takes practice. Great article!

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