Comments on: Point/Counterpoint with an academic and a practitioner: On Cammy Bean, certification, and instructional design

By: Point/Counterpoint with an academic and a practitioner: On Cammy Bean, certification, and instructional design | effectivedesign.org

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 16:29:19 +0000

[...] Point/Counterpoint with an academic and a practitioner: On Cammy Bean, certification, and instructio…. [...]

By: Kai

Kai — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:57:28 +0000

instructional design certification…

I can’t believe I missed this! I’m going to have to do some more reading me thinks….

By: Cammy Bean

Cammy Bean — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 14:06:37 +0000

To Jeffrey’s question…I think trying to have a central ID approval board would be like requiring people to get certification in order to cook a meal in their own homes.

By: Jeffrey Keefer

Jeffrey Keefer — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 15:36:26 +0000

This was fascinating to see the discussion all in one place. As an instructional designer myself, it raised a number of issues, one (of many) is who will the certifying body be, especially given that there is not even a single central organization for ID’s.

I suppose that is what the online community that is reading this is to decide.

By: jadekaz

jadekaz — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 16:01:55 +0000

As a current grad student in IPT (Boise State) and a beginning instructional designer in the Corporate world and experienced developer of elearning, I can’t help but be fascinated by this discussion. I’ve been following along across the blog lines. I had these internal conversations/debates with myself many times, before and after enrolling. Academics vs Real World. Designer vs Developer. Where do I fit in? Where will I go? What will I believe? What do I want? Thanks for helping add to my confusion!

By: Liz

Liz — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:44:25 +0000

And here I was thinking I was all alone. What a wonderful conversation. I work for a company that partners with universities to “do” instructional design for online degree programs. The lines are blurred in many ways here between academe and corporate, as well as between the roles of “designer” and “developer”. I stay mostly in the technology part, but have also done design. I do not have a degree in ID, but just happened to stumble across a great position with the best possible timing I have ever seen. Most people in our department come from varied backgrounds: corporate/military ID, public education, programming, and psychology; all of which provide for a very wholistic mix of opinions. This conversation helped me a lot and I am very thankful for stumbling across this blog…I am looking for more conversations in this area as well as some mentoring.

By: Michael Staton

Michael Staton — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 01:09:27 +0000

I like Gagne’s 9 there.

By: dr.curry

dr.curry — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:04:07 +0000

Christy–

THAT’S HILARIOUS!

jhc

By: Christy Tucker

Christy Tucker — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:00:49 +0000

Tongue firmly in cheek here, but I found this anonymous quote and it reminded me of this discussion…

“Professionals built the Titantic. An amateur built the Ark.”

By: Chris Duke

Chris Duke — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 18:51:39 +0000

In regards to certifications for “instructional design” type skills, they’re all over the place, right? For industry, ASTD’s CPLP (http://tinyurl.com/344j2v), ISPI’s CPT (http://www.certifiedpt.org/), Training Magazine (http://tinyurl.com/2qgovs), Texas A&M (http://tinyurl.com/39rl4v), Univ Houston Clear Lake (http://tinyurl.com/38fvoe). For education, Washington State (http://www.idesign.wsu.edu/) & Indiana Univ (http://tinyurl.com/3dxggf) as specific examples, but you could basically pick an graduate, College of Education program with instructional technology, and they’ll likely offer a certificate of some sort. And, there’s even a certificate offered specifically for those that train faculty, by NCSPOD (http://tinyurl.com/2ovmuz). What certificate do you suggest is needed? An AECT sponsored certificate?

As far as the role of an instructional designer vs. instructional developer, I think that distinction has been slipping away for some time now – except perhaps in programs focused on the academic study of instructional design theory. No institution can really afford to have an instructional designer that does ONLY design; they may be able to employ instructional developers, but a designer has to have SOME development skills – even if that amounts to the ability to load content into an LMS (which isn’t always easy… WebCT cough cough). Besides, once you get to the practitioner level, it becomes meatball instructional design anyway. You do what you have to do to help people learn and improve as efficiently as possible; you develop as quickly as possible – likely designing as you go. You don’t have the time to work through all the theoretical paperwork about what you’re going to design. Sure, you’d end up with a better product if you spent more time designing before developing, but that’s the ideal situation; that’s the exception rather than the rule.

I believe I commented this before in this same blog space when this thread began. I do believe knowledge of instructional design and learning theories is valuable to anyone working in any capacity to improve human performance – on the job or in the classroom. However, I don’t think it’s an absolute critical skill to be an effective training developer in the private sector; on the job training, experiences or mentoring with an experienced training professional (that’s likely learned much of those ideas on the job through trial and error) will produce an effective training professional. For educators working in K-16? I think it’s more important to know the learning theories – to understand the developmental cognitive stages people go through.

-Chris