Tools as Constraints in Instructional Design

We as Instructional Designers don’t have to think or communicate within the limitations of the tools we use, but very often we do.

I think it’s a pervasive problem for humans in general, either because we don’t really understand the underlying concepts, or that the tools we have are so limiting that thinking beyond them is just plain frustrating. (Probably some other reasons too, feel free to comment with your favorites).

Yes, we all have more than our share of elearning vendor gripes. This post isn’t about that, but rather our content mastery.

When we’ve not cared enough to put sufficient effort into our own conceptual understanding, I argue that we’ve not done our job well as Instructional Designers.

Because when things don’t make sense to us, the ones doing the Instructional Design, how the heck are these same ideas supposed to make any more sense to anyone else? Sure, the SMEs may approve, but they are by definition outside of our target audience, so their approval doesn’t really tell us much.

Tool-specific trivia and navigation-level instruction is only appropriate when it is building on a conceptual framework that actually works, in my view. When we know the problem our audience is trying to solve, and where they tend to get stuck, then we know what problem we’re trying to solve.

In my experience, this is not generally a tool problem. It’s an idea problem. Trying to solve it with tools might kinda look like it works, but… does it ever actually happen that way? I maintain that it’s the idea or explanation that we deliver via a given through the tool that makes the solution.