Easy Authoring Tools = Instructional Designers Out of Work?

Yes it’s true…

At least it’s true that some instructional designers worry about being pushed out of an already crowded market by “user-friendly” authoring tools. After all, doesn’t it seem intuitive that with the advent of new, increasingly easy-to-use technology that fewer and fewer designers will be required to support training needs? Add to this concern the influx of Gen-Y’rs practically born with laptops and the simultaneous increase in demand (and respect) for cheaper and easier production modalities and even I admittedly become a little worried myself. Will instructional designers, like the computer programmers of the late nineties, eventually be viewed as well qualified, but overpaid and outmoded answers to the training production question?

I doubt it.

No matter how easy a tool becomes to use, the craftsman utilizing the tool still creates the masterpiece. Sound instructional design is so much more than a set of tools on a belt. It is the sum of theory, clients’ needs, and an understanding of the audience. Whether using PPTs or high-end flash to convey a message, sound instructional design will remain as it was intended, an art form. And this masterpiece can only be purchased in the economy of ideas and pedagogy–not the tools wielded to create it. Long live the Instructional Designers!

Learn about what our talented instructional designers can do here.