eLearning Roadtrip

Walk Before You Run

Ellen Wagner is a learning industry analyst with a passion for sustaining innovation and accelerating enterprise adoption of technologies for education, training and performance support. This is her blog.

I closed my last post by saying that, when I envision my ideal instructional designer, my ID looks a lot like a decathlete. As part of this visioning exercise I had planned to think of the top ten events designed to demonstrate the levels of excellence of what I think the quintessentially excellent ID should achieve. My reason for this is simple - If we want to ensure that ID as we the practice defines it will be relevant in the  RIA-driven, cloud enabled, UGC-powered, multi-dimensional learning metaverse then we're gonna have to know what to do, and we're gonna have to show that we know what to do.

I'm not using the ADDIE model to frame my thinking. Not that there's anything wrong with good old ADDIE. It was always intended as a way to teach people about the processes that instructional designers use in their work. With all due respect to those who use it, it serves as a reference model for newbies. Looking forward, it is going to take thinking differently about what we do if we ever hope to get different results than the ones we've always had.

ADDIE is used something like this - "First, you analyze the situation. Then you figure out how to design your idea, then you produce (develop) it all of the things you need for your idea to work, then you implement it, and finally you evaluate it to see if it did what you wanted".  These are not a bad things to think about, especially if you have to start planning for a class project, or a grant proposal or a beginning brainstorming session where you don't have to worry about external constraints. If one is trying trying to put instructional design to work in a "business" setting - and my that, I mean any kind of situation where there are stakeholders to be served through your efforts - then there are a a lot of other things you need to be thinking about BEFORE you start planning an intervention, as well as after you put it in place. ADDIE ends up being one of a number of process models linked together over an extended learning value chain.

And that really is the place that ADDIE is insufficient. It's simply one link in a much longer chain. Practitioners need to know that there is much that comes before, and much that will come after, that has more to do with the ultimate life or death of an idea-as-solution than will the instructional design. If ADDIE falls short, it's because we expect it to do more than it was ever intended to do.

So maybe, before we jump from ADDIE to the TOP 10 ID COMPETENCIES OF ALL TIME  and start getting too focused on what the ultimate performances of our practice should be, that maybe we can start at the baseline requirements one must meet to metaphorically qualify for the events. Pre-ADDIE stuff that anyone who has held down a few ID (and related) jobs can tell you. Some things that every single one of us should be able to do.  Then maybe with each level of competition - e.g. whatever analogy we can come up with for regionals, sections, divisions, leagues, etc - we can start raising the metaphoric bar for the performances we expect.

I started making a list of all the things I think a competent ID should be able to do, and I have to tell you that my list looks very little like ADDIE.

More on that in my next post.

Competing in today's "ID-cathelon"

Welcome back to the eLearning Roadtrip. Have you said your daily ID affirmation?

In the last post I had suggested that maybe the best way for IDs to start reasserting the value of our practice is to start with a bit of self-reflection, maybe even starting the day with something that goes something like:

IDs help transform intangible information assets into things of great business / epistemological value*. 

(*feel free to pick one or the other. Academics seems to prefer the e-word, while business types prefer the b-word.)

I had also suggested that every time someone said it, he or she needed to think of what they do to make this true. My point was that if you can't name something you are doing to drive value that is concrete and operational and measurable, it's time to do more than think about it.

And the more I thought about that, the more I realized that it might be time to think about spring training. You would never expect to run a 10K race without training for it. For many of us, the evolving expectations for operating as a competent professional in the learning technologies metaverse may be the professional run of our lives.

ID is actually more like a decathelon than a 10K race (which is all the more reason for more training!!) You may remember that decathelons feature 10 track-and-field sports events where aggregated results of all events determines an overall winner. In ID, instead of 10 events we have ADDIE and the five-step process model to guide our success. For ID types, ADDIE is sort of like the "Holy Trinity"  although in ADDIE's case there are 5: Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation.

When you're actually doing ID work, it is really nice to have these 5 ideas as a checklist to navigate one's way through whatever part of the learning metaverse you happen to find yourself in. But it's even more important to have the skills and competencies you need so that the activities called for in ADDIE can actually be implemented. You need to be "good enough" to stand toe-to-toe with experts working along the long value chain where ideas and information are transformed into achievement and results.

This tends to draw a certain kind of person to the practice. The best IDs I've known are great team members. IDs like to bring a better sense of order to a situation so that things can get done. Competent. They are there to make others look good.  Maybe our best IDs don't get the rewards or recognition of, say, a scholar - or a designer - or a business leader. People drawn to being an ID aren't necessarily looking for rewards. But recognition is certainly in order. Particularly during times when we are going to see a lot or organization change, where those who thrive will be those who are relevant for the demands of the day, and can flex to anticipate the needs for tomorrow.

When organizations need to restructure, reorganize or resize, it is really important for contributors to demonstrate value. Even more importantly, when organizations are in the midst of their own reorganizations, IDs need to have a better sense of where they stack up given what is hot and trendy and hiring in the current marketplace.

Let me just say that I do think there is value in the MA courses and programs offered by many of the institutional out there, My remarks are not meant as program dings. It's just that when I think about what it is that most IDs learn in school, and what IDs actually do once they get hired to work as IDs, I think there's an opportunity for fine-tuning ones experiences through which competencies are developed and maintained.

Additionally, when I look at some of the industries experiencing growth where ID may be able to make a contribution if willing to stretch a bit it offers another reason why IDs may want to get in better shape for the opportunities that will be available in the months ahead.

So - the answer to the question of yesterday's question of "Who is my ID?" My ID is a decathlete. There are 10 Events in the "ID-cathelon" that I see in today's market. I will take a look at them in the next post.

FINAL NOTE: Regarding questions I asked about  in yesterday's post are (1) At Adobe it depends on the business unit you ask. (2) At various points in Macromedia's history it was Authorware, Director, Flash, Dreamweaver, Breeze and Captivate.

   

Who's your ID?

This line is now the first item appearing on the Sage Road website, so an introduction seems in order. Welcome to the eLearning Roadtrip. My name is Ellen Wagner. I'm an analyst at Sage Road Solutions.

One of the things I love most about the connected web is the way that you can watch ideas and information ripple around the learning metaverse. Let's take the topic of, say, Instructional designers - IDs.

With change all around us, it seems as if lots of IDs are getting a clue that these may be just the right times to get better organized, at least in our way of thinking about the value that we drive.  Just yesterday I was retweeting Cammy Bean's request for IDs to respond to Clive Shepherd's call for eLearning Network ID skills survey participation. A few days before, Sreya Dutta shared a list of ID competencies in the blog comments. eLearning Guild AG09 resources are making their way to people who couldn't make the trip to Orlando, many of them dealing with ID full-on, thanks to Jean Marrapodi's ID Zone .

In other parts of the connected web, SXSW sounds like it was a new media madhouse. The tweets, posts and feeds from GDC this week in San Francisco have already been pretty interesting. Jay Cross is hosting a group of his Learning Irregulars over in Berkeley today; as "unlearning" old design metaphors and making room for new ones is Jay's passion, I have no doubt that unlearning ID as we've known it is explicit or implied in many of those conversational threads. I'm still watching how Kim Foreman's ITEC 830 class is exploring different ways to engage learners with Web 2.0 media, and how they are sharing what they are learning on their Ning site. Shaun Hammer has shared some of the stuff his Mobile Learning class at Indiana University is doing this spring in the blog comments from a few days ago.

You may be wondering why I went through this list. You know how it is when you have a hammer in your hand, and all you can see are nails to pound?? I have come to see clearly that as IDs we come in so many different kinds and stripes and sizes that sometimes it is hard to see IDs and the broad sweeping domain we manage very clearly. Every one of the people mentioned above has a very different way of approaching ID work, and yet we IDs recognize them as IDs. Would others outside our "field" recognize us?  So the nail I am pounding is IDs self-awareness and self-improvement to deal with the realities of today's changing marketplace.

Let me lead with a concrete example of how different people see very different things when they look at learning professionals. When I worked at Adobe, if I were to say "ID", guess which product most of my co-workers would name? At Macromedia, guess which product most of my co-workers would have named? (NOTE: I will talk about this in the next post, so I actually would be curious to hear what you think the answer to these questions are.) And I guess that is really at the root at why I am so jacked up on this topic.

Three questions for you to ponder:

• An ID is apparently a figment of our collective imagination. Did you know that there is no job category for Instructional Designers in the US Labor statistics? There are Instructional Coordinators. And of course the other usual subjects that we've been talking about - graphic artist, web designer, trainer, teacher. Educational technologists. Nothing for instructional designers.
• Have you ever noticed that when you go to fill in a form for a white paper download or a magazine subscription (or whatever else you request from online vendors) that you have a hard time finding the job classification that fits what you do or who you are in your organization?
• Do you still struggle to precisely describe what it is that you do for a living?

When I used to be working in academic life it was easy to say something like "oh, you know, it doesn't really matter what people call us. As long as WE in the field know, we'll be okay, because we are so fundamental to the process of converting ideas and information into value." In fact, I had this exact conversation with an academic friend just yesterday.

I am here to share a different bit of news. It does matter. Let me say that one more time in a slightly more direct way. It is a bad thing when people don't know who you are and what you do, if you have any expectation of being seen as a valuable contributor to the health and well-being of your organization. When enterprise targets and strategic plans and budget and resources and staffing are being negotiated, if you cannot be seen, you will not be invited along.

So this is something that each one of us needs to say each and every day:

IDs help transform intangible information assets into things of great business or epistemological value.  (Note: You can choose one or the other highlighted term, which ever one you think is more fun to say out loud).

Every time you say it, you need to think of what you do to make this true. If you can't name something concrete and operational, you need to do more than think about it.

Um...not to put fine a point on it, isn't this the kind of problem-solving at which IDs are supposed to excel? Performance improvement, learning solutions and all that.

Maybe we need to ask another question.

Who's your ID?

Getting down to business

eLearning has been a relatively bright light in the economic downturn, particularly in essential vertical markets such as education, government and health care. When travel dollars gets cut, when services are needed but there are fewer people to provide them, when it's time to get serious about developing new job skills, it is no longer a hard sell to get decision-makers to see that elearning offers solutions for getting smarter faster in a variety of different technology-mediated ways.

Even so, it's a relatively difficult environment to get business decision-makers interested in doing work differently if there isn't a good business case for implementing changes. Many of the IDs I know have not had much experience working with line of business operations, annual plans, budgets and forecasts, revenue and expenses, so we lack the language and the skills to effectively communicate with business owners. It's hard to change a business owner's mind when we talk about learning, change or professional improvement. For better or worse, if one can speak intelligently about year-on-year growth or opportunities for new customer segments, it's a whole different conversation.

From my perspective, IDs owe it to ourselves to be more effective at flexing our business muscles. For all of the conversations, and books, and lists and surveys describing all the things that IDs do - content analysis and storyboarding and web production and video production and assessments and the like - one of the things that IDs rarely address is developing any business acumen.  It never really entered my mind that I would need to know financials until I found myself running a growing ID company and spending a lot more time on things like pricing and cost analysis, building bottoms up budgets and revenue forecasts, worrying about pipelines and lead conversion. It made me come to realize that questions really need to be answered before diving into the middle of an audience analysis -- such as "How many people out there are likely to care about this?", and "what other alternatives exist" and "What are the problems that my innovation can solve, and how much is it worth it for me to solve it?"

To repeat the point I used to close the last post - An innovation without much likelihood of adoption may be a great intellectual curiousity, a worthy candidate for a research project. But during times when "just the right app" may be just the right thing to spark new business success stories, we need to know how to figure out "who cares" and "how much" right along with "what if". Metaphorically speaking, it's all part of learning to skate to be in just the right place at just the right time.

Skating to where the puck is going

I have been thinking a lot about Kendall Whitehouse's March 18th interview with Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft, in the recent issue of [email protected] . Having connections to both men help make the interview particularly enjoyable; I had the pleasure of getting to know Kendall and his team from the Wharton School when they were the rock-star, go-to team for telling the Macromedia Flash platform story in education and I have continued to be an avid reader of their [email protected] e-zine since those days. Stephen was our EVP of the worldwide field organization at Macromedia when I started working in solutions marketing, and my boss, Penny Wilson, was a direct report of Stephen's, so I have my "close to greatness" connections here as well. I have positive memories of Stephen's leadership at both MACR and ADBE, so it was great to catch up on what he is doing up in Redmond.

In the interview, Stephen shares a great point with Kendall, about how in tough economic times it is incumbent upon smart companies to think about where they want to be when things improve and to make investments in those areas to build future capacity. I do remember his talking on this topic in a number of education customer meetings - when there's no market for your goods, don't spend your money where it won't matter. Instead, invest in where you want to be when the markets turn around. This was regarding the Macromedia decisions to focus on Flash research. One direction, looking at RIAs Flex and AIR, is now the daily bread of many a developer. The other direction, Flash on mobile, is now coming into its own as an issue for North American businesses to attend to, finally.

Stephen's point is reminiscent of the advice that was supposedly given to Canadian hockey legend Wayne Gretsky by his father when teaching his son how to play the game. Walter's advice included to "skate where the puck's going, not where it's been."

Two parallel thoughts. One relates to the ongoing discussion I've been having with industry friends over the past several weeks about how now is the time for forward thinking individuals and enterprises to consider how to take advantage of the great economic and market changes that are going on around us. The other relates to my recent diatribes on the topic of rethinking professional preparation for instructional designers so that this profession has a shot at ongoing relevancy.

I think it would be enlightened self-interest to demonstrate the value of crawling beyond the online course management swamp, sharpen our learning, programming and production skills and reach out into the metasphere, the game zone, the mobile web and the cloud. We owe it to ourselves to learn how to flex business muscles. Big questions really need to be answered before diving into the middle of an audience analysis, like "How many people out there are likely to care about this?", and "What are the problems that my innovation can solve, and how much is it worth it to them for me to solve it?" An innovation without much likelihood of adoption may be a great intellectual curiousity, a worthy candidate for a research project. But during times when "just the right app" may be just the right thing to spark new business success stories, we need to know how to figure out "who cares" and "how much" right along with "what if". Metaphorically speaking, it's all part of learning to skate to be in just the right place at just the right time.

Taking the Roadtrip on the Sage Road

I usually use this blog as a place to share ideas and information about what's going on in the learning and technologies industries. Today I am taking a brief break so I can share some news from my part of the world.

Beth Davis and I are happy to tell you that, buoyed by the success we experienced while working on several projects as Sonoma Partners this past year, we have launched Sage Road Solutions, LLC. New web site is up, new phones are turned on, new email is working. We created this joint venture to work with innovative companies, forward-thinking businesses and educational organizations to help them maximize their success in today’s learning technologies marketplace.  We are a North Carolina-based management consulting company with offices in Chapel Hill and Sonoma, CA.

Beth and I were very successful and had a lot of fun when we worked together on Macromedia’s higher education business (you can read more about that, and some of the work we've done, by perusing some of the other pages on this blog site), and we continued that success at Adobe following the Macromedia acquisition. Over the years we realized that we share a passion for empowering learning professionals and the businesses that support them. Working together – with Beth’s business acumen keeping our feet on the ground and Ellen’s forecasting expertise keeping our eyes on the horizon - we help companies derive more value from learning technology investments, whether changing business models, creating new products or adding new lines of digital products and services to existing portfolios. We specialize in help tech companies size markets, talk to customers and sell more effectively to the IT teams that support them.

You can learn more about our business on our website: http://www.sageroadsolutions.com

You can follow Ellen Wagner, (that would be me, I'm the Principal Analyst), on Twitter: http://twitter.com/edwsonoma, or reach me via email at [email protected], by calling my office at +1.707.933.8471.

You can reach Beth Davis, Managing Director, via email at [email protected], or by calling her office at +919.403.9335

Thanks for your past interest and support. We look forward to connecting very soon.

iPhone 3.0, mobile learning and the ID

The blogs and news feeds have been filled with news from yesterday's Apple's press event during which the iPhone 3.0 was announced and profiled. There are many learning industry practice leaders who believe that Apple's iPhone has jump-started the long-anticipated adoption of mobile devices, products and services for learning and performance support. Therefore, yesterday's press event announcing a new iPhone version certainly attracted the attention of many of us from the elearning side of life who like to keep an eye on what the mobile tech leaders are doing.

Ian Thain has written a nice summary of yesterday's Apple event.  His Apple mobile stats are impressive:

• iPhone now in 80 Countries - 13.7M units in 2008
• 17M altogether.,.. including iPod Touch 30M units
• 800,000 downloads of the SDK & 50,000 companies & individuals join the Apple iPhone Developer Program (62% never developed for Apple before)
• Over 25,000 Apps Submitted 96% approved... 800,000 downloads

This still represents a relatively small percentage of the overall market penetration for smartphones, but the growing ecosystem around the Apps developers has been seen by many to be a transformative aspect for the mobile industry at a time when the rate of device adoption seems to be slowing. In another related article Thain goes on to predict that iPhones will be the most adopted enterprise smart phone for 2009.

As a mobile learning fan, it pleases me to see these discussions taking place. As the mobile web goes, so grow the opportunities for new and improved mobile learning applications.  As we're hearing from Apple about iPhones, from Steve Ballmer and Microsoft about the improvements in Windows Mobile OS, as RIM continues to rock with Blackberries for all, more Android and the G1 phones are on the way for 2009, and as Pre may give Palm another shot, there seem to be a number of places where US-based app developers can begin to anticipate what mobile learners want.

So, back to a point I had raised in the past couple of posts - a knowledge of learning theory and practice can be a great secret weapon if you happen to find yourself in a discussion on how to design games, apps and experience. Do not assume that many of the people currently involved in developing apps for learning have any background in learning. They may be great developers - or artists - or programmers - but they may not have much background with things like performance objectives and learning goals. Game and experience developers have recently come to understand that they have an opportunity to share what they know about mobility and games with the education and learning communities, and that we have some things that we can share in return.

But the learning community often presumes that those from outside learning are hungry to learn all about learning. And that is so often not the case. They just want to know how our knowledge of learning and cognition can make the game or mobile app better. We need to be mindful not to prosletyze ID methods and to focus on results, so we can let the results speak for themselves. With all due respect to Mark Prensky and his poke at ID fun-suckers, the 2007 Slate magazine piece entitled World of Borecraft also spawned much discussion about how educators often underestimate how hard it is to create something fun that has learning objectives.

We also often come to these conversations without the technical acumen needed to understand what some of our cognitive design specs entail.  I am so grateful for my years at Informania, Macromedia and Adobe for giving me exposure to really smart engineers who helped me understand the world of IT. It's hard for an ID to be credible if we don't know the basics of the technologies affecting our practice.

Out of curiousity -- how many IDs among us have ever tried to design a mobile learning application? Would you know where to begin?  Would you know when to hand it off?

Making ID Relevant

I asked a rather pointed set of questions when closing my last blog posting about the role of instructional designers in the emerging new world order of technology mediated learning, education and training.

Are IDs really still as relevant as we want to think we are? Especially as all kinds of new media like games and mobile are purported to be the future of elearning, and as IDs aren't necessarily finding themselves working on the cutting edge of Web 2.0, mobility, games, video, and rich internet applications in their learning, training and performance improvement endeavors.

There IS a relatively straightforward answer to the questions. Yes, IDs CAN still be as relevant as we've always been. But we need to figure out better ways of developing essential skills relevant for the kinds of jobs most of us get hired to do when we finish our academic programs in today's marketplace.

We have to understand that our knowledge of learning and instructional design principles can be amazingly effective secret weapons when designing and developing new media interventions, but that we have to be skilled enough on the media development side that the learning "value-add" is obvious and self-evident. Knowing a bit about the different theories describing schools of thought around human cognition really isn't enough to create experiences that leverage theoretical constructs in a meaningful way. Knowing a bit about how a multimedia presentation is supposed to be produced probably won't be enough to empower someone to actually design and produce multimedia assets that can be integrated into an LMS, distributed in the context of an online learning experience or used in a professional setting.

If you can't actually perform the tasks that are outlined in the ADDIE model, you may not be ready for prime time. If you can't think beyond ADDIE, you may not have a shot at seeing where our practice is coming from.

There is just way too much very interesting stuff emerging in the worlds of Web 2.0 games, video and rich internet applications for IDs to miss this next wave of innovation and adventure.  I wonder who among us will be invited along for the ride.

IDs - It's time for some seriously tough love

The best thing about this week's eLearning Guild's Annual Gathering (AG09) for me is that it brings practitioners together for the ultimate social networking experience. And now that we can tweet and blog and email and - yes maybe even call each other while we're there - events like this become even better catalysts for engagement, connections and reconnections, maybe even a new idea or two.

This was my "ID (Instructional Designer) Moment" year. I didn't want to go into this past Thursday's Great ID Debate with Curt Bonk armed only with my personal opinion. So I reviewed job descriptions for instructional designers. I went and looked at academic programs at a number of universities. I organized my thought enough so that I posted a blog about it. Curt and I got together about 45 minutes before the debate. He'd prepared a list. We started talking about it, jotting down a few words, and then it was off to the races.

Everybody pretty much agrees that IDs do a lot of things, and job postings reflect that: content analyst, technical writer, screen writer,  video producer, project manager, budget manager, evaluator, test-writer, statistician, graphic artist, web designer, content author, scripter, coder, analyst. Manager of the LMS. Trainer. Teacher. People continue to agree that nobody outside "the field" really understands what IDs do.

But people believe that the role of ID continues to be important, even more important today and going forward as people are finally really seeing the value of elearning in all of its forms. It's finally accepted as a solution to doing more with less without sacrificing quality. 'Bout damn time.

There was general but not complete agreement that it is still really important to have an ID degree from a credible institution, and that an understanding of learning theory continues to be essential for the basis of our efforts. But given the number of things that IDs are expected to do, it's getting really really hard to find programs that give people ALL the skills that are needed to be successful today. I also heard that graduate program enrollments in ET/ID/IT seem to be suffering, especially at the Ph.D. level.  It's getting harder to find ET/ID/IT faculty. This is important, because as several of we seasoned professionals noted this past week....SOME of us are getting mind-numblingly old and really do need to retire. From the industry side a few of us expressed our concern that its getting harder to find graduates who can do the things they need to do when they find themselves on the job.

I wonder how many ET/ID/IT programs know that this is the week of SXSW, a music, film, multimedia, video game, new media, design, trend-setting, opinion leading festival that is THE place to be if you are anyone in the design, media and entertainment industries. I'm sure you have seen the many tweets from the industry cogniscenti who have descended upon the City of Austin, Texas. Very happening. Amazing energy. Lots of stuff. Lots of young designers, producers, entrepreneurs.

And that next week is the GDC, the Game Developer's Conference. This is the very influential, see and be seen gathering of the game industry. From casual games to edutainment, Wii to 3D, MMOGs to geo games, the GDC is a meeting ground for developers, producers, distributors and pundits. Lots of young designers, producers, entrepreneurs.

When you look at the job titles, you see things like content analyst, technical writer, screen writer,  video producer, project manager, budget manager, evaluator, test-writer, statistician, graphic artist, web designer, content author, scripter, coder, analyst. LMS manager. Trainer. Teacher.

They are coming from design schools, art schools, multimedia departments, computer science departments, engineering, video and film, media and advertising. Business schools. They don't seem to depend so much on learning theory.

Does anybody else see anything wrong with this picture? Especially as games, Web 2.0 and new media are purported to be the future of elearning, and this is what IDs typically design?

Are IDs really still as relevant as we want to think we are?

The Great ID Debate

On March 12, Dr. Curt Bonk and I are going to be featured debaters at the eLearning Guild Annual Gathering's ID Zone in Orlando, Florida. I'm very glad to be a part of this debate - am amused that I am going to be an ID defender. Instructional design has always been a big part of my professional life, one way or another. (e.g., I did my doctoral research on instructional message design; I was a professor of instructional design, taught graduate level instructional design classes and supervised doctoral dissertations for more than a decade.  I worked as a commercial ID practitioner throughout the dot.com era. In the last number of years I have worked on software designed specifically with professional IDs in mind. I've also been in a position to hire IDs for various projects in recent years.)

Long way of saying that I can be an ID's worst nightmare - I know what I want, I know what the theoretical constructs of the field should be able to provide, and I know the results I should be able to expect. I know what the research says. I don't really want to be converted to the "Church of ID". I don't "love" ID. I usually just want a concept specification that can tell me if there is business value in pursuing a particular course of action before I make a commitment to spending my money. I really don't want to discuss all kinds of theoretical alternatives when I have a project that needs to be completed. And I want results NOW. Or at least I want to know when I am likey to get results.

I realize that as an ID stakeholder, I get a little cranky when industry pundits poke fun at us. And yet I acknowledge that there is fun to be poked. Some have even suggested that instructional designers suck all the fun out of learning (and yes, I will name names, Mark Prensky !!)...but my point is not to demonize he who who famously took this potshot at ID professionals at an ELI meeting in the not-too-distant past. And to be fair, if all an ID does is to rote memorize the ADDIE model and then expect to be successful then they run the risk of being major fun-suckers.

Because it's not so much that we are fun-suckers so much as we we simply being accountable, looking for the point where cost gets offset by benefits, where time on learning task must be balanced with the impact of learning outcomes. How creative can you really be when keeping an eye on the bottom line? How far outside the lines can you color in your organization before the line of business folks start reeling you in?

Let's consider the challenge of the instructional designer, being so many things to so many people and not really getting the respect deserved.

Think about it - these days a good ID needs to be able to write instructional objective. Conduct a content analysis. And an audience analysis. Measure job/performance outcomes. Write a criterion referenced test  Create a shared collaborative experience and measure its impact. Script a simulation. Create Camtasia movies. Know a .swf from a .flv. Produce a virtual webinar on any number of web platforms. Develop a website. Administer a blog. Program in Actionscript 3. Administer an LMS or two or three. Metatag your content so that everyone in your organization can find it. Create a video and post it to YouTube. Write a report. Evaluate the impact of a performance support initiative in your workplace. Manage a project. Handle a budget. Fix the copier. Trouble-shoot the network....

With all due respect to the university faculty who have taught each and every one of us how to be instructional designers....very few faculty types have ever had to actually produce learning content for a living.  With all due respect to the greater minds among us, sometimes the trick of ID is not coming up with the most unique, creative, forward-thinking, innovative response to a learning problem or opportunity. Sometimes a repeatable, scalable approach to solving a performance problem for the greatest number of people at the least amount of cost really IS the best answer.

So...what to YOU think and ID should be able to do? Are we technologists? pyschologists? evaluators? programmers? DO we need business skills? theoretical cognitive skills? IT skills? Are we artists or engineers or a little of everything in-between?