Here is a profession that is struggling to make itself understood… the profession of Instructional Designer (sometimes referred to as ‘pedagogical engineer’)
So, what exactly is an Instructional Designer?
An instructional designer in higher education functions as a companion, or guide, in the exploration and development of the skills of the various pedagogical teams. They generally offer support in three main areas: pedagogical methods, digital tools and teaching styles.
As Beauvais points out in the extract above, the role of accompanying is not as simple as it seems.
An instructional designer has knowledge of pedagogy, but is not a professional expert in all areas of teaching (and fortunately so!). Their mission is therefore to guide the teacher towards a state of self-analysis, reflection and self-questioning of their teaching practices. Because learning methods are so varied, education and pedagogy are constantly evolving. The role of the teaching teams is therefore to keep themselves up to date and to constantly adapt in order to educate the actors of tomorrow’s business world as effectively as possible. To do this, they can call on the services of an instructional designer.
A kind of educational Swiss Army knife
The profession of instructional designer has existed since the end of the 1990s and rose to the fore following the COVID crisis in 2020. Indeed, the transition from 100% face-to-face to 100% distance learning plunged many actors in higher education into total disarray, and it was necessary to adapt quickly and efficiently in order to continue to run higher education establishments.
This enabled instructional designers to make use of their skills in education sciences and digital education. The transition to distance learning has, however, left some doubt as to the tasks that instructional designers can perform, confining them to the uses of digital education. However, the tasks of instructional designers vary according to the establishment in which they work and can tend towards a technical aspect based on digital tools, pedagogical engineering focussed on models, research into pedagogy, coordination and support for educational events, a more legal aspect with the drafting of specifications, or even project engineering. As a result, there are different profiles of instructional designers and different job descriptions.
Here are some non-exhaustive examples of what an instructional designer can do:
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Facilitate the use of digital tools (e.g. by creating tutorials or documentation to help with the use of certain tools)
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Ensure pedagogical and technical-pedagogical monitoring (collect data, write articles or newsletters, suggest research articles to the teaching teams, etc.)
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Participate in developing the training offer (e.g. by carrying out needs analyses)
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Design and deliver workshops in line with the training programme (organising workshops on the skills-based approach or on assessment, encouraging pedagogical questioning)
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Provide technical-pedagogical assistance (responding to the demand for help in the use of digital tools or equipment, such as HyFlex rooms)
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Encourage and support discussion of teaching practices and involve the teams (organising training sessions or feedback on different teaching methods: Problem-based approach, Ludo pedagogy, etc.)
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Design learning pathways in collaboration with teachers (creating a storyboard, establishing specifications and using the appropriate software)
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Coordinate and establish certifications or micro-credentials within a programme (providing a needs analysis or a market study, submitting a retro planning, etc.)
- … and a whole host of other tasks!
To sum up…
As you can see, instructional designers have several strings to their bow! In order to achieve their objectives, they must work together with the educational teams within their establishment. At Excelia, the team currently comprises three instructional designers, attached to the Dean’s Office and who are members of the IDEE Lab team, boasting a wide variety of skills.
