Terms, words and understanding

I am currently spending a few days with my parents who live close to my Brother in Sheffield. This side of the family are theologians and intellectuals so we always end up having interesting conversations/discussions.

Anyway both my dad and brother are sticklers for the correct use of words and their meanings. Which has particularly struck me as I have been thinking about this of late after reading a recent blog posting by Donald Clark. Donald was passionately criticising the term pedagogy and suggests that "The language of learning is a mishmash of backward-looking classical, industrial and behaviourist terms, but this is the one that masks an uncomfortable truth." He goes on to explain that this truth is that the science of teaching is based on little evidence and is clearly not learner centred. I have never liked this term and although I completely agree it doesn't refer to learning my main beef is that its use implies some mystic art and alienates those without academic background (who think that people who use the term have the key to some secret answer to teaching and learning).

This got me thinking about another term that has long bothered me...Instructional Design or Instructional Designer. Wikipedia defines it as 'the practice of creating instructional tools and content to help facilitate learning most effectively' and goes on to highlight the big issue with the term....that we have confused who's role it is to do this instructional design....is it the media specialist of the learning specialist?

Now bear with me as this may start getting a bit rambling (remember this is a blog of personal reflections)...although I got very good marks when I did the Instructional Design module in my Masters I walked away having no clue about the subject what so ever!

The term instructional implies (at least to me) that you are instructing the user through a process or learning object. Which when you are talking about digital media is normally the role of the media designer based on their knowledge and experience in user interface design (ie they implement the agreed treatment and/or storyboard through the effective presentation of information, the placement of interactions, buttons, colours etc). However instructional designers are normally the learning designers who work with the client to design the learning process, treatment and storyboard.

Now when I started this posting I thought I was going to be just say at the end that we should start using the term media designer and learning designer (the latter being my planned description if I ever go contracting). But I now think this isn't the answer. I now believe we need a title for someone who does learning and interface design (who then hands over to a media creator).

Thinking back on my experiences working with commercial elearning suppliers the best experience and resulting objects came when the Instructional Designer carried out these two functions. They created the complete, graphical storyboard and simply handed over the creation to a media specialist. No interpretation or design was required....the media creator just focused on the graphics and creation of the object. This also allowed me, the customer, to sign off on the object design prior to creation (but that is a whole different rant).

So what should this person be called as Instruction Designer really isn't working and now I think about it neither does Learning Designer? Comments welcome as I have no idea but I sure want a name.