ISD

ISD (Instructional Systems Design/Development) is just an idea. It embodies a set of reified processes, each with its particular goal. It expresses an order of design and a dependency between design processes. In this way it guides the designer in prioritizing and sequencing decsion-making during instructional design. Embedded in the fabric of ISD  are many implicit categories that shape and condition the designer's thought, usually without the designer's awareness.

The invention of ISD was a major leap forward in its time. In a period of rapidly increasing size and complexity in electronic systems, including among other things computers and radar, ISD brought sanity into an otherwise chaotic instructional  design world. The order ISD brought to instructional design was highly desirable when compared with the lack of systematic design thinking that existed before it. Many benefits have accrued to instructional designers. It has become a standard design process--the water that design-fish no longer even have think about.

And that is the danger associated with it. Taking ISD for granted and applying it too literally has been overwhelmingly the rule. This led at one point to voluminous and highly detailed descriptions of the ISD process. It also led to the belief that ISD could be used by non-trained designers as a substitute for informed, skilled, and insightful instructional design. Untrained designers pressed into service in unfamiliar design tasks turn the ISD crank for comfort and assurance, turning ISD into an substitute for thought rather than a problem-solving tool and guide. The long-term disappointing results produced by these trends has led to a general questioning of ISD and a search for something else.

It is likely that we have been like the cook that forgot why it was important to cut the end off the ham before cooking it. We have lost the question ISD was trying to answer, and we need to find it again.