Humanity, Designed? 3 Reasons To Go Into Instructional Design
There are thousands upon thousands of fields of study to go into when pursuing education, from vocational training to pure academia and everything in between. But have you ever found yourself curious to learn about learning itself and how that process works for human beings? If so, you may want to check out the field of instructional design, which focuses on improving the learning process.
So if you think you might be interested in instructional design and are wondering if you should make a career out of it, then here are three reasons to go into instructional design.
1. It's No Flash-in-the-Pan Field
While humans have been testing new ways to learn since they first started walking on the Earth, the science of instructional design goes back to World War II. During the war, military training materials took the (then) unique approach of analyzing human behavior and administering tests to understand how adroit a person's learning capacity was, and in what way it worked to screen candidates.
Since then, the field continued to grow thanks to the efforts of instructional design pioneers such as Edgar Dale and Benjamin Bloom who popularized the use of leaning tools like clear learning objectives, immediate feedback, and the ability of a learner to pace themselves according to their own internal learning speed, rather than the speed of the teacher or of other learners.
In the 2010s, universities such as Harvard, Penn State, and others offer degrees and training in this field of study.
2. You Learn About Humanity
While instructional design is concerned with learning, at the heart of its methodology and purpose are human beings themselves. Creating a career out of instructional design allows you to observe how humans operate, studying everything from how reward systems encourage the brain to pick up new skills to how to activate interest and the desire to learn in others through a stimulus that gets the learners' attention.
3. It's Useful Everywhere
Some career paths give you skills that are extremely useful in the workplace but don't have as much potency out in the everyday world. Instructional design, however, is not one of those; learning how others learn and are motivated to learn can help you when dealing with others outside of work.
Understanding motivational paradigms can help you deal with a child who doesn't wish to do their chores, while an understanding of the benefit of immediate feedback can help you instruct subordinates in an office setting without coming off as pushy or domineering.
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