Understanding what's involved in Instructional Design can be really confusing. So my aim for this video is to exactly what an Instructional Designer does.
I'll start by breaking down the Instructional Design process as a whole, and then I'll explain what an Instructional Designer is responsible for throughout each phase of that process. And if you're working , hopefully this will really help you identify what skills you need to be focused on to be a successful Instructional Designer.

My most popular video is a video I posted three years ago, which has exactly the same name as this one. I'll pop a link here so you can go and check that out. But I thought it was high time for an update. And if you're only interested in watching a specific part of this video, please use these to skip to the relevant part.

Now before we start talking about what an Instructional Designer actually does, let's look at the Instructional Design process as a whole So we can see what goes into it.
Now if we go to Wikipedia for a definition, it says: Instructional Design is the practice of systematically designing, developing and delivering instructional products and experiences, both digital and physical, in a consistent and fashion toward an efficient, effective, appealing, engaging and inspiring of knowledge.
It's a bit of a mouthful, but if we boil that down, what it essentially is saying is that Instructional Design is the end to end process of creating something that's gonna help somebody learn. So let's break this down a little bit.

The first step in designing something is probably the most important and that's figuring out the goal.
Now obviously, we don't want to create training for the sake of it. If we're involved in , often the goal is to performance or if our focus is more on the academic side of things, our goal might be to pass an exam. So in most Instructional Design models, this part the process is called analysis.
Next, we need to design a solution that will help our goal. After that we develop the solution, then we it. And the final step is to evaluate whether it worked or not. So historically, this process is known as ADDIE.

But these steps don't always need to be totally . For example, I'm currently working on a big project with a global client. And our strategy is to test our solution on a small pilot group, and then evaluate the outcome before we it to a bigger audience.
So this gives us a chance to go back to the and adjust anything that didn't work. So that's an example of how we're taking this ADDIE model and making it more .
But essentially, these are the that any Instructional Design process needs to follow. So now we know what the Instructional Design process looks like, you could argue that theoretically, an Instructional Designer should be able to carry out, you know, all of those from start to finish by themselves and if you look on job websites, for many Instructional Design roles, you'll quite often see that you know, they're looking for somebody to do everything. So that could be the end of the video.

But is it realistic to expect one person to be able to do all of these things by themselves?
Before I answer that, let's go through each step and actually see .
So the first step is analyzing the . So this involves being a good and asking the right questions. This is sometimes called consulting and mainly involves to try and weed out the reason that training was requested in the first place.
So this phase requires good people skills, strong communication skills, and the ability to ask questions that maybe than the client .

If we look at the design phase, this is where you design a suitable framework for the training to be delivered.
So this part of the process you to look at the project from a bird's eye view, and design the journey that a learner goes through from start to finish.
And then once you've decided on that journey, you need to create a blueprint from which the solution can be developed. This is often called storyboarding.
So this includes the script, what the learner's gonna see on screen and any instructions for the on how it all works, in the storyboard, you'll have to add to make sure the content is actually engaging and it's actually helping somebody learn and if that's not enough, another aspect of the design phase is the visual design side of things.
So if you're designing elearning, or video or presentations, you have to decide how it all looks. So the colors and the and the user interface, that kind of thing. So obviously, for that, you need to have strong .

The next step is development. Now in the world of elearning, development is usually done with rapid authoring tools like Articulate Storyline, and Adobe Captivate, but it should also include other types of content such as video, audio, podcasts, mobile apps, interactive PDFs, things like that.
There are literally thousands of tools that could be used in the . And so this part of the process really focuses on having those strong technical skills.
And this is why tools like Articulate Storyline are so popular because you don't need to have to build interactive content.

After that we have . How will our solution be delivered? it might be that we're using a or an LMS.
So knowing how these platforms work could be useful. Or if you're delivering the training in a classroom, you might need presentation skills.
So these are very different skill sets, depending on the type of solution you're creating.

Now, the final step is the , which often gets forgotten about, but if we've done our analysis correctly, at the beginning of the project, we've identified a goal and when we do our evaluation, at the end, we'll know whether we've achieved that goal, then we can use that data to evaluate whether the project's been successful.
So this will require research and . You might have to implement and get get feedback from people on what worked and what didn't work.
So as you can see, there's a huge list there of skills that you need to have to be the complete instructional designer and not to mention if you're a , you also have to learn how to run a business as well.

So going back to our original question, is it realistic to expect one person to be proficient at that whole Instructional Design process?
Well, in my opinion, the answer is no. And there's a lot of people that disagree with me about this.
But my advice is to pick one specialism as your primary focus, and then try and supplement that by learning the basics of the other roles. And this is known as being a T-shaped person. You have a in one area, but a broad base of general .
So if for example, you might decide that you're really passionate about crafting learning experiences, but you don't really enjoy the needs analysis, visual design or technical development side of things. So you can just focus your energy there and just build up some basic knowledge of the other roles.
And the reason I say this, if you try and do everything, you'll end up spreading yourself too thin, and you'll end up being at everything, which means that in the end, we'll get mediocre results.

And as somebody who's hired instructional designers, both in the corporate world and then following that, as a freelancer, I'd much rather work with somebody who holds their hand up and says, I'm an expert at this one discipline. But you know, my skills are in the other , rather than working with somebody who, you know, pretends to be good at everything. Now, you'll often see different job titles being used.

So before I sign off, let's go back to our diagram and look at how these different job titles are used in the industry.
You can see here during the analysis phase, this role is sometimes called a , or Performance Consultant.
The design phase is often called an Instructional Designer or a Learning Designer or if we're talking about the visual side of things that role might need a or or designer.

The development phase is sometimes known as an or a . And regarding the implementation phase, and the evaluation phase, I'm not familiar
with any specific job titles that are focused on these roles, but you'll find LMS or Learning Management System Administrators who are responsible for managing the via the LMS platform.

And the evaluation phase aligns very closely with the analysis phase at the start. So I would put the learning or against that phase of the process.
But anyway, I hope that was useful. I'll leave you with a couple of links to other relevant videos that continue this conversation and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.