I have been an Instructional Designer for ten years now and wondered how this profession started. According to Wikipedia, Instructional Design (ID) or Instructional Systems Design (ISD) started…

… during World War II, when a significant amount of training collateral for the military were designed based on the principles of instruction, learning and human behaviour where candidates were screened through assessment tests of their learning abilities. The success of this practice has forced psychologists to look at training as a ‘system’ which led to the development of analysis, design and evaluation methods.

This practice, as well as the profession, have evolved through the years and nowadays, the terms ID and learning design are used interchangeably. But are they the same?

What’s the difference?

The internet has no shortage of information about the topic and some provided useful academic perspectives. Here are some of them:

The term instructional design refers to the systematic and reflective process of translating principles of learning and instruction into plans for instructional materials, activities, information resources, and evaluation. An instructional designer is somewhat like an engineer (Smith & Ragan, 1999.)

Instructional design practices have broadened so that many of the concepts associated with the performance improvement movement are now regularly employed by those individuals who call themselves instructional designers (Reiser & Dempsey, 2012.)

 The term learning design is often used today to describe the outcomes of the process of designing, planning and orchestrating learning activities. In much the same way as a blueprint is produced when one designs an engineering entity, or an architect’s drawing is used to show the design of a house, a learning design is the product of a deliberate plan for a learning activity (Goodyear, 2005).

 A learning design documents and describes a learning activity in such a way that other teachers can understand it and use it in their own context. Typically, a learning design includes descriptions of learning tasks, resources and supports provided by the teacher (Donald, Blake, Girault, Datt, & Ramsay, 2009).

It seems to me how we use the terms depends on the agenda of the stakeholder. From the learning architect's point of view, are we designing learning or instruction? Aren't we doing both as they are intimately linked? Instructional Designers are generally concerned with methods, conditions and outcomes – how about the learning designers? Are they concerned about the learning environment? As I stated earlier, ID has a significant history compared to learning design which is relatively new in the scheme of things.

One consideration (at least in my professional background) is that there are some important differences between education and training, but instruction seems to cover both. Similarly, there is a difference between students and trainees, but learners cover both in a general sense.

Which one do I prefer?

I guess it’s a dead giveaway when it comes to my preference naming this site ‘I Design Learning’. I realise that this might seem naïve but, in my opinion, Instructional Design focuses on the trainer and what the trainer does, while learning design focuses on the learner and what they do. While the two go hand-in-hand, I feel that learning design is more important, since you start with what you want your learner to do and from there, understand what the trainer does.

I also think that ‘instructional design’ is very much an American term, and it tends to be linked to ‘training’ rather than ‘learning’. Having said that, the literature is puzzling, and I know others will have different opinions.

What do you think?