Design & Development

The ultimate purpose of designing any instruction is to promote learning. This purpose of instructional design demands an in-depth knowledge of the target audience (includes knowledge about learners’ age group, prior experiences with the subject at hand, learning preferences, etc.) and learning outcomes (e.g. to improve organizational performance).

Over the past few years, I have had the pleasure and opportunity to learn about different K-12 and adult learners (business customers, employees, teachers, college students, and middle school students), and designed instruction to promote their learning. I have used instructional design software (such as Adobe Captivate, Articulate Storyline, LMS platforms, etc.) to complete instructional design projects of varying subjects (math, HTML, leadership, real estate, website management, etc.). Here are some lessons (few listed here) I have learned about the instructional design process:

1.  Effective communication with stakeholders (especially Subject Matter Experts and funding agencies) is critical. Stakeholders of the design process should be involved from the beginning until the end. This ensures that all parties are on the same page, saves time, and prevents the redoing of already completed work.
2. Not all your brilliant ideas for a design project will be embraced, and that is okay. It comes with working with others: everyone’s voice should be included to be representative of the collaborative work done.
3. Simple is always better, as long as learning takes place, Sophisticated design and technology integration is not always the solution.

A summary of my relevant instructional design work I have done so far is listed below.