An instructional designer is known by many names. I have been called a courseware developer, learning specialist, course writer, and other many other names but they always mean the same thing. I wrote an article that was published by the Air Force about what it means to be a Courseware Developer. I included it below.

On the cubicle desk is an odd assortment of items. An LCD projector, a wooden figure that can be posed, several typed pages with scribbles, circles and other edit marks, an assortment of colored tags, a handkerchief, a bottle of soda that is nearly gone, a notebook, a tie, and a mock newspaper that reads “North Korean Communist.” In the chair of this cubicle sits the courseware designer who looks over the eclectic set of items and take a moment to reflect on the last four hours used to deliver the latest course – NWRM.

The job of a courseware developer seems to consist primarily of creating PowerPoint presentations that will be read in front of a classroom by a trainer who seems intent on making class participants lose consciousness. There is actually a name for it – “death by PowerPoint.” The only job more closely associated with death may be mortician. Thankfully there is much more to designing courseware or the only people that it would attract are the hopelessly demented.

To explain what a developer does we could take two different roads. We could describe the mechanical step by step process used in creating a course that may end up reading like stereo instructions. The other road explores the human aspect of developing a training course that may prove to be more entertaining than practical but will be infinitely more readable.

The process used to develop a course should always begin with a proper needs assessment, a learner profile, a set of clearly defined objectives, and enough time to build the course. Unfortunately circumstances in life rarely provide command with a warning letter that a problem is about to happen. Because we live in the real world we must be ready and able to respond with courses that will close skill gaps, knowledge holes, or performance problems. But when that happens our team works exceptionally well – except for whatizname...

Courseware developers don’t always have multiple personalities but it helps. Because we need to learn new processes very quickly we often must rely on some good natured soul to explain the overall steps to us. We must be able to be Sam the mechanic, Ethan the computer programmer, and Stella the management expert at a different point in the same week. We use our various personas to help us see through the eyes of the SMEs (subject matter experts) that get assigned to “help the training person.” We also use these different approaches to help us understand the various instructions and tech data we must digest in order to write the courses.

Developing a course is not too much different from making sausage – it can be messy, frustrating, and there is a real threat of getting put through a grinder if we aren’t paying close attention. This is particularly true of high profile training courses. Nothing is more stressful than delivering a course with a senior official in the room who is shaking her head and mouthing the words “What a waste.” In the first paragraph we mentioned the handkerchief. This item is extremely important for dabbing away the sweat that immediately forms on the forehead in such instances.

Courses are living organisms that have many parts that must be synchronized. Good developers hate for their courses to be instructor dependent so they create leader guides to make sure the training is always the same. A leader guide is a good idea so why not have a participant guide. The participant guide was a smashing success so let’s add a job aid and so on. At the end of the course there are many documents that must be coordinated each time a change is made. It is not enough to simply change the PowerPoint presentation. That brings us to the document on the desk in the first paragraph. The document is overflowing with edits, arrows, strike-throughs, and more.

Once the course has been constructed, we take it before those decision makers and process experts that have the ability to point out every possible mistake. It’s during this meeting that we suddenly have the thought “What if everyone I spoke to was giving me bad information. I’ll look like a fool.” Handkerchief please. The review goes off fairly well in most cases though there are some mistakes that are difficult to live down. For example there was a developer named Gary that used the review to push his idea to the colonel that TO’s were “to be followed when convenient.” We sometimes wonder what Gary is up to these days.

The time comes and we eventually get to deliver the shiny new course. It’s like prom night and our dates are a class room full of subject matter experts designated to be the “pilot” group. As usual nothing works because it’s the first time. The projector on the desk in the first paragraph belongs to one of the trainers because the five we tried had a variety of problems. We use a laptop loaner because the monitors for the class were apparently diverted during shipping and stolen by pirates. Naturally the colonel attends so we begin to wonder if trainers can be arrested in certain cases where a training course is bad enough.

At the end of the course we sit down and begin to review the “smile sheets” the participants have completed. There are some with high marks but we wonder if that is the fastest and easy way to mark the form. The remarks made by one of the participants makes us think that maybe we should have taken that job with the fire department after all.

Returning to the office we sit in our ergonomically designed chairs and relax for a moment. Some trainers remove their ties, others site in quiet contemplation - motionless. The training has been a success. Not for the work of any one individual but because of the combined efforts of subject matter experts, mechanics, supervisors, shop chiefs and other senior level people. The tireless work of our NWRM guru has been extraordinary. But ultimately it is the contribution of everyone involved that have made the course a success. When we look back on the course we will count ourselves fortunate for having been involved.