 Designers are people who know how to generate,

evaluate, and communicate information. They have

good questioning, listening, speaking, and writing
skills. They are curious about the content of each
instructional situation, and personally care whether
or not the learner successfully acquires the
necessary knowledge or skill.
 Knowledge
 Instructional designers are required to generate
and organize large amounts of information. This
information comes from many different sources and
exist in many different shapes. Most of it comes in
the form of memos, reports, inventories, manuals,
and other training materials.
 Additional information usually is required, and
must be generated through phoned and live
interviews, library research, or other fugitive-
information sources. Perhaps most important,
information concerning clients’ and SMEs’ feelings
and concerns about project deliverables must be
ferreted out.
 Instructional designers must also have knowledge of
available design alternatives. For example,
designers should be able to develop at least three
different types of task analysis, so they can match
the type of analysis with both the client and the
instructional context. These types might include a
learning prerequisite analysis, a part-to-whole
analysis, and a flow-charted information-processing
analysis.
 It is important for designers to evaluate all the
information they receive. This is done in many
ways, from formal research projects to off-the-cuff
cross-checking. Perhaps the greater part of the
information to be evaluated is the content
information that designers receive from SMEs.
Most of this evaluation concerns separating from
the “nice to know” from the “need to know”.
 It is important that none of the SMEs assumption
go unchallenged. In addition, designers should not
discount an information source because it is
deemed not credible by others: It is often the
learners who know best which training goals are
appropriate. Unfortunately, most clients and SMEs
refuse to ask them or don’t believe them.
 After information is generated and evaluated, it
needs to be communicated to three different
groups of people:

1. clients/SMEs, in the form of formal deliverables-

such as a design specification or informal memos
or presentations;
2. learners in the form of instruction; and
3. project team members, in the form of directions,
formal deliverables, and hallway conversations.