It’s not just about adding another line to your resume; it’s about gaining skills that can make a real difference in how you teach or train. Here we’ll dig into what this certification is all about, why it’s beneficial, and how it can take your career to new heights.

What is an Instructional Design Certification?

Think of an instructional design certification as a specialized course that proves you’re skilled in building effective educational programs. Through it, you’ll learn the “why” and “how” behind learning theories, curriculum design, assessment strategies, and the technology that makes all of this come alive. Programs are typically structured with both theory and hands-on practice, which is critical for translating the knowledge into your day-to-day work.

You’ll find these certifications offered in different formats. Some are short online courses; others might involve in-person workshops or more in-depth virtual sessions. You can choose between general programs or those that specialize in areas like e-learning or corporate training. Whether you’re just starting or you’re experienced and looking to sharpen your skill set, there’s a certification to fit your goals.

What Are the Benefits of Pursuing an Instructional Design Certification?

Wondering what makes earning an instructional design certification worth your time and effort? Here are some of the perks of getting certified in instructional design.

You’ll Sharpen Your Skills

An instructional design certification will equip you with the latest instructional design methods and tools. You’ll learn theories—think of frameworks like constructivism or behaviorism, see how they can be applied to real-world instructional strategies, and learn techniques for designing material that’s engaging and easy for different types of learners to digest.

Can Start a New Career Path

Certified instructional designers are in demand. This certification can help you explore new roles like curriculum developer, e-learning specialist, consultant, corporate training, healthcare, and beyond. So, if you’re feeling like a career pivot, this credential can open some exciting doors.

Boosts your Credibility

Employers tend to appreciate candidates who have gone the extra mile to get certified. It shows you’re committed to the field and that you have formal training to back up your skills. This added credibility can give you an edge in a competitive job market or even help you climb the ladder in your current position.

Better Salary

Instructional design certification often means higher pay. According to industry data, professionals with this certification usually earn more than those without. Employers recognize the value of hiring someone who’s trained, and they’re willing to pay for it.

Network with Like-minded Professionals

A bonus of going through a certification program is the chance to connect with instructors, peers, and industry experts. Many programs have active communities or alumni groups, giving you a network to turn to for advice, support, or even job leads.

Why You Should Pursue an Instructional Design Certification

If you’re still on the fence, here’s a look at why this certification can be a game-changer for your career.

You’re Staying Up to Date

Learning and development are evolving fields. By getting certified, you’re keeping up with these changes, which means you’ll be equipped to create relevant, engaging learning experiences. Staying current is a huge plus, especially in today’s tech-driven landscape.

You’re Dedicated to Advancing your Skills

Pursuing a certification is a clear sign that you are serious about your growth and commitment to this career. It tells employers, colleagues, and clients that you’re committed to delivering high-quality, informed instructional solutions. If you’re already in a teaching or training role, this can bolster your credibility. And if you’re switching fields, a certification makes your career pivot look intentional and well-prepared.

You Can Explore Different Career Options

Instructional design is a flexible field. With a certification, you can step into various roles like e-learning developer, instructional technologist, or even freelance instructional designer. You’ll have the credentials to work in diverse sectors like education, corporate training, tech, and beyond. If you’re interested in variety or you’re ready to leave your current role, this credential can make that leap much easier.

You Get Hands-on Experience

Certification programs give you hands-on experience and you can apply right away. You’ll get practice with case studies, projects, and tools that help you analyze learners’ needs, organize content, and create assessments. These skills are directly transferable to your day-to-day work, making you more effective and efficient.

Ready to Elevate Your Career?

An instructional design certification can be a powerful tool for building a rewarding career in education or training. This credential shows employers that you’re serious about your craft, and it equips you with the skills to create engaging, effective learning experiences.

Whether you’re looking to advance in your current role or make a move to a new industry, certification could be just the edge you need. If you are ready to dive in, get researching, and take the first step toward a more dynamic career in instructional design. The future’s yours for the making—why not get started today?

Educators never stop learning; check out our available graduate degree programs  to hone your skills and promote lifelong learning and academic excellence.

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Summing up what ensures a high percentage of student mastery on academic content is one of the most debated issues in education. So, what makes a test and instructional design effective?

• Increasing student engagement
• Ensuring the presence of learning objectives
• Common formative assessments
• Periodic checks

The list goes on to what has been argued as the magic bullet for guaranteeing academic mastery. While I agree that all of the aforementioned items are essential, they all lie under the umbrella of instructional design. This leads me to believe that presenting those things in an intentional systematic format produces far greater results than them functioning in silo.

Tests should be developed to measure the students’ content acquisition and teachers’ material delivery. Effective student testing should highlight their strengths and weaknesses. They provide information on areas where the student needs additional support and where enrichment will be beneficial. For students, tests should be similar to a doctor’s prescription; following the steps and symptoms should improve what is lacking or not quite right.

For teachers, tests can be multifaceted. They can reveal areas in which remediation and enrichment are needed for their students, and strengths and deficiencies in their presentation of the curriculum. The effective utilization of tests will prompt teachers to ask themselves how they can change the way they previously taught the material to provide opportunities for a greater number of students to grasp the concept.

In stagnation, where teachers fail to make the appropriate adjustments according to testing data, assessments lose their power to be effective.

What is Instructional Design?

Instructional design is the development of curriculum presentation in a manner that leads to understanding and application of the content. It encompasses the “what” and the “how” of teaching and learning. The design process takes the “what”, which is the subject matter, and develops the “how”, which is the roadmap, that leads to a deeper understanding.

I would say that an effective instructional design and learning technology provides the greatest return in student learning. This is especially true when the design of instruction is constructed with the needs of all learning styles and abilities considered. The growth that I have referenced can be measured by student performance on tests apart from the instructional design. I believe that tests are the most crucial component of the instructional design in that they validate the strength of the process.

Using Instructional Design to Create Effective Tests

Research on instructional design models is varied in terms of components. However, certain elements are present in most models that could cause one to reason that those pieces are pertinent to the overall effectiveness. Therefore, I assert that careful consideration should be given to how they can be used when making assessments for students.

Objective Is Key

Knowing where you are going is the first step to getting to your destination. The objective in the design process provides that. It informs the teacher and the students of the lesson’s desired outcome; the objective clarifies what they should be learning and what they should accomplish.

For the teacher, it outlines where the instructional focus should be and what the students should be able to do after successful presentation. Well-written objectives are usually measurable and concise. The measurable portion of the objective should be used as a guide when developing tests.

An effective test must be constructed to mirror what the objective is stating. It directly measures how well the objective has been mastered and taught. When creating a test, the developer should first dissect the objective into small manageable parts and create questions that align to each part of the objective. The questions may vary in style and complexity but should not focus on content not directly related to the objective.

Identify Resources

After determining what students should know, identifying how to teach the material is a natural next step. Having materials and strategies that engagingly present the information is essential to content mastery. There should be an extreme commonality between instructional practice resources and the assessment that is used to assess mastery.

Therein, the resources that are used in teaching the content are essential to the development of tests. The importance lies in the style of questioning from the resources. When developing tests, it is important to be mindful that the goal isn’t to trip the students by surprising them with material and questioning styles that they have no exposure to. The goal should always be to develop tests that are identical to the resources and strategies you have used to teach the lesson.

I encourage pulling questions from your resources and formatting them into test questions. This adds validity to the assessment as it directly correlates to your learning objective, which directly aligns with your teaching resources. When your test questions mirror the information and style that the students have been exposed to, it provides a translucent glimpse into what they have indeed learned during the teaching and learning cycle. Furthermore, it allows the teacher to gauge how best to tackle remediation and enrichment.

Remediation and Enrichment

Remediation and enrichment are often overlooked as essential in the initial presentation of the information. Although remediation and enrichment can occur before final tests, they are vital parts of the instructional design process. I assert that as teachers explore what moves the needle for student learning, remediation and enrichment should be considered essential.

When designing instruction, it is important to plan for those students who will not master the content and those that will exceed your expectations. You must make sure that your test is married to the remediation and enrichment process; “married” in the sense that there is a direct correlation between the information you are remediating, enriching, and the final test. The goal is always to have the students demonstrate mastery of the assessment content.

When developing your tests, explore your plans for remediation and enrichment. Ensure that the goals are aligned and the information covered with the students is used on the assessment. Remediation and enrichment should be the practice shots you take before stepping up to the line with one second left in the game. There must be clear links between the remediation and enrichment process when building an effective test.

Test questions should be reflective of those practice shots. As remediation and enrichment directly result from student performance on formative and summative assessments, tests should be constructed to allow the students exposure to “test-like items.”

We do our students a disservice when we construct assessments filled with “gotcha!” test questions instead of thoroughly taught concepts. There should be minimal to no surprises when students take the game-winning shot!

Are you interested in instructional leadership and instructional technology as an educator? Check out our available instructional leadership and instructional tech graduate programs and advance your career today!

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Instructional design is the process of planning the approaches and methods through which standards-aligned curriculum content is delivered to students. The process of instructional design should be focused around the goal of developing learning activities and assessments that lead students to mastery of the identified concepts and skills.

Key components of instructional design include establishing desired outcomes first, often referred to as backward planning; identifying the overarching concepts of the unit or lesson (the big ideas); determining the transferrable skills or concepts that students should be able to master (enduring understandings); and finally, using formative and summative assessments to monitor students’ levels of understanding (assessment evidence) (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005).

Given the greater necessity for online learning options – especially as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic – intentional planning on the part of teachers is all the more critical as both educators and students must transition to learning formats and platforms that may be unfamiliar.

Online learning naturally has certain limitations that are not inherent in traditional, face-to-face instruction, including but not limited to: regular access to the instructor, home environment that may be distracting for students, and technology accessibility concerns. Therefore, clear, concise, and effective instruction is necessary to ensure that all students have equal access to a high-quality educational experience.

What are the Benefits of Using Instructional Design?

One of the benefits of using instructional design within an online learning environment is the process provides a clear “road map” for the content to be taught within a unit or lesson. By beginning with the desired outcomes in mind, educators are able to identify what they need to be able to do and understand by the conclusion of each learning experience. These desired outcomes are determined by state and local academic standards and should serve as the foundation of the instructional design process.

Another benefit that results from identifying the big ideas within a particular unit is that it gives both the teacher and students overarching concepts that serve as landmarks or themes throughout the unit. This allows the teacher to easily explain the ways in which new concepts relate to the overall goals of the unit in a recurring manner that continuously draws students to the relationship between lesson content and the big ideas.

Another benefit of instructional design is that it eliminates any “guesswork” for both students and instructors. By overtly expressing the enduring understandings of the unit, the students are able to know what they will be expected to know and explain from day one. Again, this feature provides a frame of reference for students as they progress through their learning journeys by continuously tying new concepts to the overall understandings that will then be transferred to new material in the future.

A final benefit of using instructional design within an online setting is using assessment to drive the instructional process and better individualize the learning experience for each student. For example, the use of planned formative assessments throughout a unit provides the instructor with a snapshot of each student’s progress toward mastery. With this information, the teacher then has the ability to identify which concepts should be re-taught as well as those that have been mastered. Summative assessments should then be incorporated at the conclusion of the unit in order to determine whether all students have developed mastery or additional instruction is necessary with regard to specific concepts.

Critically, instructional design allows teachers to maintain a “pulse” on all aspects of their students’ progress, which is important within the traditional classroom setting but is significantly more critical within online formats in which students naturally are more isolated from their teachers and peers.

Ways to Use Instructional Design to Inform Online Instruction

Instructional design can be used to inform online instruction in a variety of ways. One aspect in which instructional design is extremely beneficial relates to the aspect of reduced time to deliver instruction and provide remediation as necessary. By following a backward planning model (identifying desired outcomes before developing anything further), teachers are able to pare down the scope of the topics covered within a unit to only those concepts that are critical in building mastery of their identified big ideas and enduring understandings.

This improves the efficiency of online instruction by eliminating unnecessary information and reducing the volume of consecutive screen time hours for students. In this manner, teachers can deliver instruction using a video conferencing platform in a more concise manner and then direct the students to other resources or learning activities as opposed to simply delivering online lectures day after day.

Another way in which instructional design proves beneficial in informing online instruction is through the ongoing use of assessment evidence. Nearly every online learning platform features an application that can be used to design survey-style questionnaires. By utilizing this tool frequently throughout the unit, teachers can develop a series of brief and basic quizzes that allow them to monitor students’ progress. This is especially valuable within an online setting because teachers can then create video conference breakout sessions while the class is working on other activities in order to provide remedial instruction to students who may be struggling with specific concepts.

Instructional design also provides a sense of cohesiveness to the learning process within an online setting by providing both teacher and students with a clear sense of direction. Essentially, they are able to identify their starting point and ending point and understand the steps required for a successful learning experience.

Ultimately, incorporating instructional design is considered best practice regardless of the instructional setting; however, online instruction without intentional planning and design is a formula for student and teacher frustration and inefficiency. As a result, teachers should invest the time necessary to complete the instructional design process before instruction begins in order to save time while online learning is in session so it can be utilized to provide students with meaningful, personalized instruction.

Reference:
Wiggins, G. P., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Pearson.

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