Systematically Removing Creativity
Archived Post (8-Apr-2009)
I was just reading a post by Gina Minks on her blog, Adventures in Corporate Education. In her piece, she mentions instructional design (ID) by Dick and Carey. While I like the methodology from Dick and Carey, I have come to be more aligned with Piskurich in his Rapid Instructional Design methodology. However, her post caused me to finally express an outrage. I am outraged at what I perceive is a misuse of instructional design. (Note: My outrage is not directed to Gina. I think she gets it. Her posts simply caused me to think more directly about ID.)
Instructional Design is, in my opinion, like any other design process. It is part creative and part systemic. However, there seems to be a pervasive belief in the HRD and ID communities that good courses can simply be created by following some model of ID.
What upsets me is that the creativity in the ID process has been so downplayed that it is virtually overlooked. No one in their right mind would ever propose that a purely systemic method to painting is the best, and downplay the creativity. If you did, you’d see paint by numbers in the Louvre. So far, I don’t recall those in the Louvre’s collection. Nor would you ever downplay creativity in writing to be replaced with systemic models. If you did, all you would have is formulaic movies instead of fantastic novels and short stories.
Instructional Design models or methodologies should more properly be referred to as frameworks. Just like there are frameworks for writing novels, short stories, poems, and epics, and frameworks for painting like oil paintings, watercolors, portraits, and still lifes, we should consider ID models to be nothing more than frameworks. They are starting points for good ID. From there, creativity should start and rule the process. The creator should be able to completely eliminate anything from the framework as long as they do so knowingly. I’d rather have an outstanding course than broke every rule of ID than yet another formulaic course that had eagerly checked off all the points in any particular ID model’s checklist. ARGH!
More importantly, HRD and ID should be taken more seriously, especially by the companies that pay for their products. The same companies that would NEVER consider spending millions on their annual audits with a local accounting temp agency as their auditor are spending millions on HRD from people who merely claim to be experienced at HRD. Now, there is a big WOW for you.
- gminks Says:
I totally agree with you - and I should have mentioned someplace in the post that this design process is a framework. That you don’t follow it like a checklist, but you use it as a guide to make sure you are meeting the needs of your learners (and in my case the overall organization).Thanks for calling me on it. And thanks for not being outraged at ME!
One of the main purposes of my post was to explain that there is more to training than throwing some slides up and marching everyone through them…you have to think about what you are delivering, why you are delivering it and to whom it is being delivered. I think that is where the creativity you are talking about comes in … right?
- Admin Says:
You got it. And, there are also organizations who believe that something developed in lock-step with an ID model must be good. I have seen more than my share of crap developed following ID models. The fault was not the model, but the belief that any model is complete and creativity is an unnecessary and costly add-on.