Instructional Design an uncommon career path.

Instructional design, or instructional systems design (ISD), is the practice of creating "instructional experiences which make the acquisition of knowledge and skill more efficient, effective, and appealing, this definition from Wikipedia.

While jotting down my thoughts on the correct flow of this article. I cannot help but smile at the tons of questions stemming from the interests of what Instructional Designing is. As outlined in the opening paragraph, it is the practice of creating effective training material.

It is art of taking information and breaking down into small pieces. While creating a training module or programme, you are aware of the different learning styles of your audience. Aligning the outcomes to the content and creating summative assessments.

An Instructional Designer analyses what the training need is, that has being specified by business. We feed and live on research. Once all information has being gathered and clustered. A formal plan is then put in place on how the training need will be satisfied.

An ideal designer should be creative, logic and great at building relationships. Most of your time is spent liaising between content specialist and designing. A good working knowledge of online authoring tools is pivotal. There are tons of tools out there is the market. However the following examples are popular:

1) Articulate Storyline

2) Adope Captivate

3) TechSmith Camtasia

4) Adope Css5 Flash

The burning question is whether you need a post graduate qualification or is practical experience enough.