Instructional Development Skills for Designers Developing Online Courses - Essay Example

Faculty designers try to employ the principles of instructional design that uses those tenets to design course materials. However, they are often made responsible for the creation, development, and management of online classes without any formal preparation for performing these tasks (Carliner and Driscoll, 2009). This can result in a practice where faculty-designers tend to create certain courses without possessing the basic instructional development skills and competencies in these areas. This problem is compounded since the professional and scholarly community has not yet identified the basic instructional design skills and competencies that the faculty-designers should possess before they are assigned the task of designing various courses.

Such competencies and skills for faculty-designers developing online courses are embedded in instructional design theories related to the content expertise as well as their understanding of the concepts of education and instructional design (Reigeluth, 2012). These ideas are also associated with the conceptualization of how learning theories support adult learning. The rapid growth of online students poses an additional challenge to the instructors in terms of the dearth of expertise to handle the ever-increasing demand.

In order to keep pace with the escalation in the number of students opting for online courses, some institutions designate current instructors to design and teach online courses, despite their lack of training in the competencies of instructional design. Merrill (2007) finds that 95 per cent of online courses are designed by individuals with no formal instructional design (ID) background. This evidence puts into question the validity of the quality and appropriateness of online programs (Merrill, 2007).

Online education has experienced exponential growth, especially in the last decade, along with the addition of sophisticated information and communication technologies. The use of information technology tools in online platforms has enhanced the speed and quality of delivery of learning materials.