Systems Thinking For Instructional Designers

Systems Thinking for Instructional Designers offers real-world cases that highlight how designers foster continuous improvement and manage change efforts across organizational contexts. Using a systems thinking approach, each case describes a holistic process that examines how a set of interdependent elements can be analyzed and coordinated to influence change. Instructional designers, faculty, program directors, digital learning leaders, and other development specialists will learn how systems thinking can solve authentic, real-world challenges. The book’s rich narratives cover both successes and failures of meaningful growth, paradigm shifts, and large-scale problem-solving in a variety of settings, including education and industry.

In our contemporary learning society, expectations about the contribution of education and training continue to rise. Moreover, the potential of information and communication technology (ICT) creates many challenges. These trends affect not only the aims, content and processes of learning, they also have a strong impact on educational design and development approaches in research and professional practices. Prominent researchers from the Netherlands and the USA present their latest findings on these issues in this volume. The major purpose of this book is to discuss current thinking on promising design approaches and to present innovative (computer-based) tools. The book aims to serve as a resource and reference work that will stimulate advancement in the field of education and training. It is intended to be useful in academic settings as well as for professionals in design and development practices.

This book deals with large-scale or macro-level instructional design, which is referred to by other authors variously as curriculum development, course design, training system design or instructional systems design. The emphasis throughout the book is on the application of a systems approach, which implies both a way of thinking about the problem and a methodology for seeking and developing solutions. Thus the approach of the book is problem-oriented. The successful problem-solver requires more than a technique or procedure. He requires experience of similar problems, some general principles that he can apply to the class of problems and a great deal of creativity to develop an optimal method of solving each problem. This book brings together the theories and practical experience that have been built up by instructional technologists over the last two decades, the techniques that are currently most used for the analysis of problems in education and for their solution, and a range of new ideas specially developed by the author to encourage the creative element (so often missing from educational materials). This book is intended for anyone involved in instructional design. It is designed on a ‘grid’ structure to facilitate the reader’s choice of chapters. Those who wish to gain a general overview may concentrate on the chapters at the theory base and analysis levels. Those more practically concerned with course design will find much of use in the synthesis and evaluation levels. Those who wish simply to discover ‘what’s new’ in this book and its treatment of instructional design will find what they are seeking principally in the analysis and evaluation levels.

The Instructional Design Trainer’s Guide provides foundational concepts and actionable strategies for training and mentoring instructional design and educational technology students to be effective across contexts. ID faculty are charged with bridging the gap between research and practice preparing graduate students for the real-world workforce. This book provides trainers and university programs with authentic learning experiences that better articulate the practices of and demands on design and technology professionals in the field. Through this enhanced perspective, learners will be better positioned to confidently embrace constraints, work among changing project expectations, interact with multiple stakeholders, and convey to employers the skills and competencies gleaned from their formal preparation.

Winner of the 2014 AECT Design & Development Outstanding Book Award An Architectural Approach to Instructional Design is organized around a groundbreaking new way of conceptualizing instructional design practice. Both practical and theoretically sound, this approach is drawn from current international trends in architectural, digital, and industrial design, and focuses on the structural and functional properties of the artifact being designed rather than the processes used to design it. Harmonious with existing systematic design models, the architectural approach expands the scope of design discourse by introducing new depth into the conversation and merging current knowledge with proven systematic techniques. An architectural approach is the natural result of increasing technological complexity and escalating user expectations. As the complexity of design problems increases, specialties evolve their own design languages, theories, processes, tools, literature, organizations, and standards. An Architectural Approach to Instructional Design describes the implications for theory and practice, providing a powerful and commercially relevant introduction for all students of instructional design.

​This book is the result of a research symposium sponsored by the Association for Educational Communications and Technology [AECT]. The fifteen chapters were developed by leaders in the field and represent the most updated and cutting edge methodology in the areas of instructional design and instructional technology. The broad concepts of design, design thinking, the design process, and the design studio, are identified and they form the framework of the book. This book advocates the conscious adoption of a mindset of design thinking, such as that evident in a range of divergent professions including business, government, and medicine. At its core is a focus on “planning, inventing, making, and doing.” (Cross, 1982), all of which are of value to the field of educational technology. Additionally, the book endeavors to develop a deep understanding of the design process in the reader. It is a critical skill, often drawing from other traditional design fields. An examination of the design process as practiced, of new models for design, and of ways to connect theory to the development of educational products are all fully explored with the goal of providing guidance for emerging instructional designers and deepening the practice of more advanced practitioners. Finally, as a large number of leading schools of instructional design have adopted the studio form of education for their professional programs, we include this emerging topic in the book as a practical and focused guide for readers at all levels.

The Multi-Disciplinary Instructional Designer explores how the instructional design and development process can be energized and deepened through principles gleaned from other fields of academic study. Despite their shared academic preparation and theoretical foundations, many instructional designers come to the profession also bearing formative knowledge from a diverse range of other subject areas, career tracks, creative practices, or intellectual pursuits. Their training, however, typically does not prepare them to leverage these specializations into the creation of more effective educational experiences and materials. This first-of-its-kind book guides instructional designers to apply key concepts, strategies, and lessons learned from a variety of disciplines – spanning the social sciences, arts and humanities, and STEM – to their practice. Chapters replete with example scenarios, reflection activities, and field-tested strategies provide an expansive yet actionable reframing of the profession’s potential. By seeking inspiration across disciplines and from the world at large, instructional designers will emerge with robust and revitalized toolkits, ready to enrich their approach to teaching and learning.

This book provides the most current and complete version of statements defining a competent instructional designer, for those who are or aspire to practice in virtually any context, anywhere in the world. The research conducted to update and validate these standards included obtaining feedback from over 1000 senior to novice practitioners and scholars working in the North, South, and Central Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and African nations. This book is intended for those who hire, train, and prepare instructional designers and those who work (or plan to work) as instructional designers. It provides an updated description of the profession. It lays out the most critical competencies (e.g., knowledge, skills, and attitudes) of the successful instructional designer, regardless of the context in which they work (e.g., K-12, higher education, business and industry, government and military, private consultancy, informal or formal), the location in which they practice (e.g., the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia), and the type of delivery for which they design (e.g., face-to-face, paper-based, digital, blended). There have always been questions about what instructional designers do… such questions led to the creation of ibstpi more than 30 years ago. Yet, this questioning is especially true today with the growing call for developers of e-learning and other technology-supported instruction. The term ‘instructional designer’ seems to have become a generic phrase that now lends itself to a broad range of meanings, and yet, it is a definitive profession with a specific scope and focus. The more widely the label ‘instructional designer’ is used, the more room there is for misunderstanding about what is called for in skills, behaviors, competencies, and outputs. What is called for in the midst of this learning boom is clarity, direction and uniform expectations. With a common understanding, we can help avert poor design, especially in e-learning and technology-supported instruction, which often fails learners or has high attrition rates. Grounded on rigorous research, consulting hundreds of practitioners around the world, this book articulates and explains what is required to be a competent instructional designer. It includes the set of standards that clarifies the profession and provides a set of competencies for creating hiring schemes, professional development guidelines, performance assessments, work plans, and curriculum to prepare instructional designers.The instructional designer profession continues to grow in wake of emerging technologies, new pedagogies, and virtual learning environments. However, many educators, instructors, and even training specialists often lack the competencies to design, develop, implement, and evaluate these newer types of instructional solutions. This book articulates and explains the competencies that are required to be a competent instructional designer.