Extracting heuristics from experienced instructional designers

Experienced instructional design practitioners often use personal rules of thumb (heuristics) when engaged in the instructional design problem-solving process. It could be beneficial for novices to know which heuristics experienced instructional designers use as one way to make their problem-solving processes more efficient. Thus, this two-phase study investigated instructional design heuristics used by experienced instructional designers. Phase A included interviews with experienced instructional designers, during which each participant told a story about a complex instructional design project on which he/she had worked. From these stories we extracted a set of heuristics that guided their practice. In Phase B, Delphi surveys were conducted with a panel of experienced instructional designers, which allowed for corroboration and consensus of the heuristics found in Phase A. Interviews resulted in 8 categories of heuristics. Categories included communication, management, learner/audience, solutions/deliverables/outcomes, design process, design team, design problem, and client. Within each category multiple heuristics were identified. The Delphi process resulted in 61 instructional design heuristics classified into the same eight categories. Within each category, multiple heuristics were again identified and also rank-ordered based on the calculated mean of each heuristic’s ratings. Discussion centers on the incorporation of heuristics in novice instructional design education. Because instructional design is a problem-solving process, novices need to understand what practicing instructional designers do, rather than just memorizing procedures in instructional design models. Based on the results of this study, instructional design educators should consider teaching business, project management, and communication skills (in addition to the basic ID skills), which most instructional design models fail to include.