As instructional designers, we do not think of ourselves as service professionals, but maybe we should.

As instructional designers, we do not think of ourselves as service professionals, but maybe we should. In education overall, teachers are encouraged to move away from seeing themselves as knowledge presenters and toward being facilitators of learning. In the same way, we must move away from seeing ourselves as experts on learning to see ourselves as facilitators of learning development. It may sound like semantics, but it is an entirely different frame of perception.

Photo by GRAHAM MANSFIELD on Unsplash

There is an old saying: If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. As experts in learning, we provide the information directly—we are giving a fish. As facilitators of learning development, we teach others to share expertise more effectively—we teach them to fish.

Learners

As instructional designers, we serve our learners. As we analyze learners’ characteristics and look at data, we may forget there is a human component to what we do: the learner. Learners are not a collection of characteristics, skills, and data points but actual living, breathing individuals (usually a collection of them). 

How do we serve our learners better?

We provide opportunities, insight, and translated subject-matter expertise. The specifics on the most appropriate way to serve our learners naturally relate to our industry and learners. Still, the service frame of reference will prevent you from mandating unnecessary resources, eliminating choices, and locking down modules to ensure everyone follows along (unless it’s mandated and outside your control, of course).

As instructional designers, we serve living people with lives, hopes, dreams, and limited time. Is your resource worth the time it takes to devote to it? If the answer is no, then we can do better. There are many options, and while we might be required to adhere to certain requirements, our creativity allows us to create resources that do not waste our learners’ time.

To be frank, learners are not usually the top priority for organizations. They are more worried about organizational performance, adherence to the mission statement, compliance with mandates, etc., which is okay because different frames of reference within an organization enable the organization’s success. If no one is worried about organizational performance, the mission statement, or mandates, the organization won’t last very long. As an instructional designer, you should understand these areas and their importance, but consistently advocate for your learners within them.

Organizational performance is essential, but unhappy learners forced to endure twenty hours of boring, unrelated training will probably not be motivated to improve organizational performance or support the related mission statement. If we serve our learners, they will be more satisfied with their work, leading to better performance and more substantial support for the organizational mission.

 

Subject matter experts are masters of their content. They understand everything about it. However, when you reach that level of expertise, you don’t typically remember what it is like to be a novice learner.  Your frame of reference has changed. Instructional designers are subject-matter experts who translate expertise into a form that novice learners can process. We provide this service to our subject matter experts.

Working with subject matter experts is one of the biggest challenges for a beginning designer. Why? Because subject matter experts are passionate about their expertise. They want to share every piece and demonstrate what they know. It’s a reasonable reaction to spending 20,000 hours working in an area of knowledge. However, what tends to happen is that the Instructional Designer comes in and says, “Well, our learners don’t need to know this or that. It’s not important”. From a subject-matter expert perspective, the response is usually, “What do you mean? Of course it’s important; if it weren’t important, I wouldn’t have shared it with you.” Instant division!

If we approach our subject matter experts from a service perspective, we can frame the interaction in a completely different way. We help our subject matter experts frame their perspectives so novice learners can understand them. In my experience, that is why most subject matter experts share: they want to provide this knowledge to novice learners. Start with this common ground. Ask many questions. Then rephrase what the subject matter expert tells you to ensure you understand. After all, instructional designers are not the experts in the content. They are experts in translating it.

We serve our subject matter experts best by employing our expertise in a way that allows their expertise to shine through.

In the past, Instructional Designers, as experts in learning, guided the conversation on what may be needed. However, in the current market, everyone, especially upper-level leadership, wants to believe they have the answer. If we approach organizational leaders as experts, we will create an environment of contest rather than collaboration. In contrast, if we approach organizational leadership as a facilitator, we start where the leader is and walk the path with them.

In my experience, an organizational leader will always know the problem. Granted, they are human and may not have the root cause exactly correct, but they know what they want. We must start by listening and asking clarifying questions. Whether we are contractors or employees, we provide a service. Our service clarifies problems and identifies root causes, enabling them to be solved. We can’t fulfill this role if we do not listen.

The industry has moved to a plug-and-play approach, in which Subject Matter Experts and leaders provide documents that the Instructional Designer intends to turn into a learning experience. This is fine if the objective is to develop materials as quickly as possible, but there is always something lost in translation. I would encourage those in organizational leadership to consider that an hour of their time with a highly accomplished Instructional Designer may save them hours of development and resources in the long term.