Instructional designers must have strong technical skills.
According to Professor Sara McNeil, instructor of the Instructional Design Course at the University of Houston, instructional design can be defined as a systematic process of translating general learning and instruction principles into plans for materials and learning. Instructional designers are professionals who use their training and knowledge of how people learn to convert information into coursework that is useful and applicable to the student. Some of the skills required to become a successful instructional designer include a strong passion for learning and sharing knowledge, technical proficiency, good people skills, and an ability to analyze problems and create effective solutions.
Passion for Learning
Understanding the principles behind learning is an essential requirement for instructional designers in order to create effective instructional materials. Beyond this, instructional designers should enjoy learning about new topics. An essential component of an instructional design position is working with a variety of knowledge experts to distill their knowledge into a form that transmits needed and useful information to the student. This means that an instructional designer must be capable of quickly learning and analyzing information on new and unfamiliar subjects. An instructional designer must also be self motivated to continually learn new technologies and learning theories so that he can always offer the most effective and appropriate learning strategies to his employers and students.
People Skills
Instructional designers should have strong people skills. Most positions require the instructional designer to work closely with knowledge experts, students with varied levels of subject understanding, and company or organization leaders. An instructional designer needs to be able to communicate effectively both verbally and in writing, build rapport, establish trust, mediate and resolve conflicts, and influence people as they work toward the goal of creating effective instructional systems.
Technical Proficiency
Instructional designers must be proficient with a variety of standard office equipment like computers and office software such as Microsoft Powerpoint and Adobe Photoshop. In addition, instructional designers are often expected to be the organization experts on learning technologies, which would include distance learning technology, specialized electronic learning software, Internet-based learning programs, virtual classrooms and any other applicable technologies as they arise. Technical proficiency would also include the ability to conceptualize, design, and edit technical documents and interactive media as needed.
Analyzing and Problem Solving
An instructional designer is expected to create instructional programs that help organizational members learn the new information they need to perform more effectively within the organization. An instructional designer must be able to digest and analyze a wide range of information to create effective learning solutions. This requires being able to completely understand the goal of the project, performing research to understand the subject matter, determining and developing an outline of the most important information, and finally, creating and implementing a plan to transmit that information effectively to the learner. Instructional design professionals must be confident in their ability to do the analysis and problem solving necessary to solve an organization's knowledge problems.
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