What Do Instructional Designers Actually Do? An Initial Investigation of Expert Practice

Abstract

We have a large body of literature that describes and prescribes how to design instruction but a poor understanding of what expert instructional designers actually do in practice. This paper describes a study in which expert and novice designers were asked to think aloud as they solved a design problem. The resulting protocols were analyzed and compared. Important differences were identified between experts and novices and between apparent characteristics of expertise and descriptions of instructional design in the literature. The implications of these differences for assisting and training instructional designers are discussed.