Effective instructional design requires a foundational understanding of the different theories and perspectives of how people, adults and children, learn. Without knowledge of how people acquire knowledge and skills, a designer simply cannot create something that has a high likelihood of resulting in that acquisition of learning the targeted information or skill.
Let’s think about teaching something like math, for example. An effective math tutor or teacher needs to have not only the knowledge of the math concepts, but also the ability to teach others those concepts. Most of us have encountered some brilliant people who are very poor teachers. Some of my own professors in my undergraduate studies come to mind! So what makes for a good or effective teacher then?
In the casual sense, an effective teacher, tutor, coach or mentor needs to be attuned to the learner, watching for their cues of understanding or confusion. Does the student appear anxious or upset even before the lesson? The teacher then needs to adapt their own teaching to be able to meet the needs of the student, using techniques to calm anxiety, suggest ways to get in the right mindset for learning, changing phrasing of information until understanding is reached, giving examples, letting the learner try and perhaps offering hints or cues as the learner works. Maybe the teacher gives a few problems to try independently, followed by praise and/or feedback to the learner. These things are all tools a teacher may use with a learner. But what about if the teacher is not actually interacting with the student, as can be the case of an instructional designer?
In the above math teacher example, those techniques that could be tried all had ties back to research on how students learn material. Practice, feedback, mindset, real-world examples or scenarios all stem from perspectives on how people learn and what is effective. They are not all from the same perspective. Repeated practice and feedback aligns with behaviorism, but also could align with cognitivism. Watching a learner during problem solving and giving cues as you gain insight into the learner’s processes aligns with cognitivism. Making sure your examples and problems are in a real-world context aligns with constructivism. In a face-to-face teaching example, the teacher can adjust and pull from understanding of learning theory to best fit the situation at hand.
An instructional designer also needs to be able to pull from an extensive background knowledge of different perspectives on how people learn. These perspectives need to be incorporated into the very design of the product though rather than employed at the time of teaching. The theory is then matched on a task by task basis to all steps of the learning design, choosing the particular theory most relevant to the material to be learned at that step. One completed design task might incorporate ideas from a variety of theories, relying on the instructional designer to expertly mix and match techniques as needed to produce an effective end design. An instructional designer without adequate background knowledge is pulling from a reduced set of techniques or tools, perhaps reducing the effectiveness of the end product.