Role of Instructional Designers
Instructional designers—also called instructional developers, instructional technologists, or adult education specialists—are people trained to do the following:
- Collaborate with one or more “content experts” who are familiar with tasks and skills that need to be taught to develop training programs;
- Design a training plan that will accomplish the organization’s goals and enable trainees to achieve specific objectives;
- Apply principles of adult learning to the training development process such as ensuring training is grounded in the target audience’s real-world work environment; and
- Collaborate with a team to develop manuals for the instructor and trainees so that training can be replicated.
Experts in instructional design can be found at universities and community colleges, working as consultants (often for management consulting firms), or working through government-sponsored technical assistance centers such as the
Addiction Technology Transfer Centers, which is sponsored by the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment. The development process is likely to be most efficient if you are able to find an education specialist who knows your audience and has worked on similar training programs.
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