Week 3 Reflection on Chp. 1 & 2

The first couple of chapters in the book gave me a lot of food for thought because I had not really considered instructional design in relation to other design disciplines. My previous experience with instructional design has focused more on needs analysis, learning objectives, assessment, and choosing appropriate instructional strategies. I had not thought much about how instructional design compares with fields such as architecture, art, or science.
 
After reading Parrish’s view on instructional design, I can appreciate the “out of the box” thinking while disagreeing with some of his comparisons. For example, he writes that artists and instructional designers both create experiences that can change perceptions, raise curiosity, and generate emotional responses. I can see curiosity as an important part of learning, especially when trying to get learners interested in a topic. However, I am not sure that changing perceptions or generating an emotional response is always a goal of instructional design. Sometimes learning is simply about gaining new information or developing a skill the learner did not have before.
 
Parrish also describes a generalized design process across disciplines that includes yearning, gathering, envisioning, depicting, transforming, and learning. I understand the value of identifying similarities among design fields, but I still think the work of an architect or fashion designer is substantially different from the work of an instructional designer. What I found more useful was Nelson’s distinction among science, art, and design. His argument that design is concerned with both the process and the desired outcome makes sense to me, particularly in instructional design, where we are concerned not only with how instruction is developed but whether learners actually achieve the intended result.
 
Bannan’s chapter connected more directly with my own experience. She argues that traditional instructional design models can oversimplify what is actually a complicated and sometimes messy design process. Today’s learning environments can involve multiple audiences, multiple goals, different technologies, different settings, and many stakeholders. That idea resonates with my current work in higher education. Supporting faculty with an LMS may look straightforward from the outside but, the same instructional problem can require very different solutions depending on the instructor, the course modality, the students, the technology being used, and the amount of time or support available.
 
This also made me think differently about the instructional design models I have learned. Models such as ADDIE are useful because they provide structure, especially when learning the field, but real situations do not always unfold neatly in stages. Bannan argues that stage models cannot fully represent the changing and interdisciplinary nature of actual design practice. That raises a question for me: At what point does following an instructional design model help a designer, and at what point can it begin to limit creativity or responsiveness to the situation?
 
Gibbons’ response adds another idea I found interesting: design abduction (pulled from Dorst’s work). In this type of reasoning, designers begin with a desired outcome but still have to determine both what to create and how it will achieve that outcome. I think this describes a lot of instructional design work. We may know what we want learners to accomplish, but there may be several possible ways to get there. The designer then has to consider the learners, available resources, technology, time, and context before deciding what solution makes the most sense.
 
The readings also leave me wondering how instructional designers develop that kind of judgment. Models and theories can be taught, but the ability to recognize when to follow them, adapt them, or move away from them may come largely through experience. That may be one of the biggest differences between learning instructional design and practicing it.