New Skills for Instructional Designers

The annual Learning Solutions 2010 Conference put on by Learning Solutions Magazine and the eLearning Guild was held this week in Orlando.   Think of it as sort of a "spring break for elearning geeks."  Unfortunately it was not in the cards for me to attend.   But no matter; in this age of social media, it is pretty easy to pick up the highlights of an event through twitter, YouTube, SlideShare, etc.  So the only thing you really miss is the opportunity to say hello to friends that you haven't seen in a while, or colleagues that you have only met on line.

One of the sessions that caught my attention was titled New Skills for Instructional Designers presented by Cammy Bean, Koreen Olbrish, and Ellen Wagner.  They introduced a fresh take on the skills used by instructional designers depicted in the four-quadrant diagram above.  It incorporates Learning & Performance, Creativity, Technology, and Business Insight to describe the role.  Essentially, their message is "to be an instructional design professional, you need to attend to all four quadrants."

I was able to piece together a few items related to their presentation:

Here is a description of the four quadrants, courtesy of Claudine Caro's blog:

I = Learning, Pedagogy & Assessment

• Adult learning theory
• Instructional Design theory
• Assessment and quizzes
• Curriculum Design
• Defining learning objectives

 D = Creativity & Production

• Facilitation/ instructors
• Writing
• Video Production
• Audio
• Graphics Design
• Games Design
• Animation

 I = Business Intelligence

• Business needs assessment/analysis
• ROI
• A seat at the C-level table
• Project Management

T = Architecture & Implementation

• Authoring Tools
• Programming
• SCORM / AICC
• Learning Management Systems
• QA
• Tracking and Reporting

Check out the presentation deck from their session, courtesy of SlideShare:

New Skills for Instructional Designers

 And check out Ellen Wagner delivering her segment of the presentation on the Secret Handshakes of Instructional Design, courtesy of YouTube.

I thank these folks for their great presentation. I think we are going to be seeing and hearing more discussion about this set of skills in the near future.