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An Agentic View of Instructional Design - A Practitioner's Proposal

Abstract

Instructional Design (ID), as practised in corporate eLearning, has not attained the same maturity or depth of

understanding of other design disciplines or K12 education. Practice in the field tends to be fragmented,

disconnected and not robustly grounded in theory or research. Practitioners also do not benefit from many

'core' ID models significantly, as many are insufficiently studied, validated or removed from practical conditions.

This essay is a practitioner's proposal for an approach to make the practice of ID more meaningful and critical.

Background: Problems in the Field

There are some specific problems in the practice of corporate ID which hold back the field's development, and I

suspect, are fairly widely encountered:

1. ID is reduced to a very mechanistic conception in discussion and theory. There are tidy parts and clear

steps to follow. But in reality, practitioners find that the parts do not add up to the whole:

understanding the input content or walking through all the prescribed steps does not necessarily add

up to a good design. There is clearly something more we should be doing, but we're not always clear

what that is. Or, we behold a really good designer and don't know what it is that they're bringing in

additionally that makes their design excellent.

2. Experienced IDs lay claim to a 'gut feel' that they develop over time, but they are often hard-pressed to

explain the rationale for design judgments: gut feel and implicit knowledge are substituted for explicit,

articulated and verified reasoning. The training of the ID team of companies is also the

responsibility/domain of such veterans as they tend to be senior in the organisation by virtue of their

experience. In the absence of explicated and therefore shareable, debatable and provable knowledge,

the team learns to work by abiding by the veteran's instinct and biases/ preferences.

3. Most ID theories are learnt from secondary sources; i.e. read off a blog or encountered in training. IDs

seldom bother with academic publications. Companies seldom have a paid subscription to journal

repositories for their ID teams. There is also often a morass of contradictions and outright false

information to navigate: Dale's cone has successfully haunted us, as have learning styles and the

chunking rule's applicability.

4. We're taught this one perspective in designing our courses, which has almost become a cliché - to ask,

"What's in it for me?" Yet, most ID training programs rarely come up with a convincing (let alone

meaningful or inspiring) explanation for their learners, the IDs. And very few IDs ask in training what the

field has to offer them.

5. IDs must negotiate between subject experts (SMEs), internal stakeholders, training departments and

project stakeholders, often simultaneously with no contact with learners. The negotiations can be driven

by power, preference or common sense: there is seldom any authoritative proof that IDs can provide

for design assertions as research is scanty. There have been insufficient studies and validations of

theories.

6. IDs frequently feel helpless as they appear to be at the mercy of client whims, budgetary restrictions,

technological constraints, organisational privacy rules, internal management concerns, tight timelines,

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etc. Their ability to influence these variables usually varies from limited to nil, and rather than being a

person-dependent ability, tends to be about luck.

7. Instructional strategies are sold on the basis of (assumed) future benefits that address the business

need, and on the basis of what is "best" for the targeted learning outcome. The assumed benefit is

often unsubstantiated, so its validity is questionable. The aspect of what is "best" is more interesting.

Budgets, SME availability, contractual scope and process are just a few of the basic factors that may

have nothing to do with the targeted learning outcome and yet everything to do with whether an

approach will even be proposed to a client or not. Yet our documentation, theory and discussions don't

do justice to just how much of a role the "external" considerations play.

8. Given the emphasis of the industry on asynchronous learning, limited opportunities for designers to get

to see learner feedback, emphasis on standards, style guides and corporate tone of voice, there seems

hardly any scope or space for personal expression that could help IDs link our identity or values to the

work we do. Looking at the degree to which other design fields like product design, architecture, visual

design, etc. have expressed value systems and developed corresponding philosophies and styles, our

profession's silence is both, deafening and disturbing.

Add to all this a lack of control over "business constraints" and the challenges of working in a "non-ideal" world,

the mysterious nature of design ideation and lack of intellectual rigour and standards (evidence and proofs for

our claims), it's hard to feel a sense of satisfaction, expertise or pride in being part of the profession. At any rate,

it's hard to come up with convincing reason for why. The ID models that are out there largely don't seem to

help1 those of us who are in the trenches in dealing with any of the problems mentioned above. They also don't

give us much of a sense of possibilities of the profession.

However, there are other areas of knowledge that could help us. So the following is a view of ID that attempts

to integrate some of these ideas to try and reframe the practice to address at least some of the problems

mentioned. I make the proposal with the intention of inviting dialogue that could help address these problems,

to share at least one practitioner's notion of how to make the profession more meaningful.

Proposed Approach: Integrating Helpful Perspectives

William McDonough stated an incisive definition of design:

Design is the first signal of human intention. 2

It is so far the only definition I have encountered that acknowledges the element of choice, with the

responsibility, power and politics that choice implies. As an aspiring practitioner of critical pedagogy, it seems to

me that we need such a focus in the ID profession. Making ourselves invisible to shift the focus from the choices

we make is disingenuous. We cannot pretend that our work is objective or neutral, although it is packaged and

masked conveniently by technology.

So, such a conception of design that places the ID clearly at the centre of the process is a good start. If we want

empowerment for our learners and ourselves, if we want to make meaningful designs that help our learners, we

must be willing to disclose and examine our choices openly and critically.

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And so, I advocate an agentic model of instructional design. Bandura defines what it means to be an "agent" in

these words:

To be an agent is to intentionally make things happen by one’s actions.3

So then Instructional Design may be considered a collection of the choices we have made to manifest our

intentions for our learners, for a specific context.

How does this view help us address the problems listed earlier? I believe Bandura's insights into the nature of

agency are key. He describes 4 core features of human agency3. I summarise them below:

The invisibling of the ID and permissiveness towards lack of intellectual rigour are two aspects that underlie

many of the problems faced in the profession. An agentic view of the practice would help us address both. As

an aspiring critical pedagogy practitioner, I would like to suggest what these features of agency could do for us

in ID:

Intentionality

• Easily the most

fundamental aspect of

agency, intent represents

commitment to a future

course of action.

Self Reactiveness

• It is not only about

making choices, but

includes the ability to

influence and adopt what

is deemed most

appropriate.

Self Reflectiveness

• This pertains our

examination of ourselves

and ways of functioning,

using metacognitive

awareness and

introspection.

Forethought

• This element guides

choices in the present

moment based on the

anticipation of the future

course of events.

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As ID approaches are actually negotiated based on various considerations and mediated by several individuals,

making the Designer a part of the picture again could also create space to develop a more coherent, complete

and representative narrative of how a particular method of training has been selected, and if it makes better

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strategic sense, why. (Because, after all, every approach is one particular ID's approach to the problem. It is in

the interests of honesty and accountability to acknowledge such ownership and agency.)

An engagement with the practice to this depth and clarity, with the opportunity for self-expression, personal

relevance and deep concentration (unless I misunderstand) are also the conditions of flow described by

Csikszentmihalyi4. In that sense, it could also be very helpful to us to address the problem of motivation when

faced with the problems described earlier.

For sure, this still wouldn't remedy everything. One of the conditions for flow is also control over the event.

While we may still need to explore different ways to engage with clients to arrive at better problem framing, the

awareness of choice can help empower IDs to see more of the situations that we could influence and re-

examine the de facto choices that we make in the name of not having a choice.

A Suggested Method

If agency reflects (in addition to the features discussed before) also the 'distributed structure and functions

through which personal influence is exercised'3, it follows that it is important to acknowledge these structures in

the process of examining the choices available.

Why?

"Structures must not be conceptualized as simply placing constraints on human agency, but as enabling"

(Giddens 1976, p. 161). This conception of human agents as "knowledgeable" and "enabled" implies that those

agents are capable of putting their structurally formed capacities to work in creative or innovative ways. And, if

enough people or even a few people who are powerful enough act in innovative ways, their action may have

the consequence of transforming the very structures that gave them the capacity to act." 5

When we think of the task of designing solutions, this insight is of great use. IDs work within the structure of the

organisations they are trying to help. They work with a few people who have institutional authority to shape the

decisions made about training. The schema of what we are allowed to do or not as per the organisation

structure is not a static one, but rather, a negotiated understanding. This could vary from project to project,

function to function and even stakeholder to stakeholder. And these variations could highlight opportunities for

the training interventions once they are explicitly captured and articulated in a meaningful context. Also,

obviously, explicit and owned intentions are more conducive to liberation and fairness than clandestinely

imposed ones.

Strategy maps are very helpful to capture such understanding and to focus conversations on the intentions and

expectations of various stakeholders.

The maps provide a visual representation of a company's critical objectives and the crucial relationships among

them that drive organizational performance.6

In terms of the relevance to training, the knowledge that we deal with is embedded in culture and structure, or

their combination - context. Seeing a larger picture would help to clarify not just what the audience must know

or be able to do, but also questions like:

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How much of the learner's day is spent on the task?

How significant are the actions considered to the organisation?

What are the interactions with other actions the learner must perform or that others perform for the

task to be complete?

In terms of also a less discussed but utterly practical consideration - how do the ID's objectives for the task of

design tie back to the training organisation's or eLearning company's goals? Often, the success and

pervasiveness of our solutions in the learner's environment are dependent on our ability to mediate between

stakeholders. If we captured everyone's intentions and objectives and used it to facilitate an agreement, we'd

have a better framing of the training problem. Rather than attempting to represent one 'objective truth', we

could look at strategy maps as representing an alignment of various perspectives.

Thereafter, tying back the key steps of design (from creating an instructional approach to framing a curriculum

to storyboarding) to the strategy map can help to ensure alignment of the design to the objectives agreed upon

earlier. Also, should the objectives change, the change required to the training design (and why) is clear.

An Example of a Strategy Map Capturing the Intentions of Each Party

In this example, if the ID sees a way to make customised assessments for learner roles without involving heavy

programming, the eLearning company could possibly cut its production cost with a rapid authoring

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tool/standard in-house framework and yet deliver a more effective (and therefore 'value for money') eLearning

solution.

Or, let's consider that the ID working on this solution is good at resource management and wants scope for self

expression. If they could create a story of an intern on job rotation who gets to see at least the basic ethical

dilemmas of each function, the voice and reactions of the intern could be the mask for the ID to express their

world view. If this story could be shared over a structured document, the SME could easily validate the story

without taking up the training coordinator's time, the assessment wouldn't be customised (so it's cost-

economical), the learning is still touching on each department so everyone gets to see the functions in the

company and the problems they face. This is a wider learning experience and another possible direction for the

design while meeting the intentions captured in the same map.

The solutions that can be generated once the constraints and expectations are articulated are numerous. And if

we capture the constraints and expectations in explicit form, another ID who works on the same project would

also have a clearer structure to work with to manifest their intention. They could continue and add to the

conversation with the stakeholders to create a better, more enabling structure to serve learners more effectively.

Tomorrow, a version of the map (possibly excluding the eLearning company's intention) could also be used to

discuss a change in the project environment - for example, if a business stakeholder or SME were to join the

training conversation. Then the map could be used to mediate the intentions of the training department and

SME, to influence the agenda of the ID as well - for example, to include a learner or consider a teaching

problem.

Conclusion

Richer interactions with people that are driven by a mix of experience, knowledge of self, articulated knowledge

of profession, objective evaluations of perspectives and appreciation of multiple realities could help us develop

the calibre of our problem solving and designing ability. The idea is to ensure that in such conversations, we do

not sit mutely or helplessly as purely non-learning oriented concerns or training biases take over. Our design

process could start with creative problem framing of what exists for us to work with, how we will bring our

values, knowledge and convictions to bear on the design and how this could best serve the learner.

We could also use such conversations and tools as opportunities to put ourselves back in the picture: making

the work impersonalised and pretending there's a neutrality to what we do does neither us nor our learners any

great service.

References

1. Wedman, J. and Tessmer, M., 1993. Instructional designers' decisions and priorities: A survey of design

practice. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 6, pp.43-43.

2. McDonough, William. (2007, April). Cradle to cradle design. Retrieved from https://www.TED.com

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3. Bandura, A. Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 52,

2001, pp.1-26

4. Csikszentmihalyi, M.. Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper & Row (1990).

5. Sewell Jr, W.H., 1992. A theory of structure: Duality, agency, and transformation. American journal of

sociology, pp.1-29.

6. Kaplan, R. S. Having trouble with your strategy? Then map it. Harvard Business Review, (1999;78(5)) pp.

167-176