In school I am sure all of us have go through reading comprehension exercises. I am not sure how many of us enjoyed it though 
All of us understand what Reading Comprehension means. The web definition of Reading Comprehension is the level of understanding of a writing.
Most of us have grown up reading a lot. We are used to reading novels, stories and magazines. We have honed our reading skills over a period of time. Yet there are times when we do not understand something or we might not be able to focus. If you are reading a novel or a story and it does not make sense, you can afford to keep the novel aside.
What if you are an Instructional Designer dealing with content/information?
If you are an Instructional Designer, I am sure you read content/information all the time. Content is King in any training material and Instructional Designer have to read/understand/evaluate the content before proceeding any further.
Instructional Designers cannot afford to skip any subject matter. Instructional Designers cannot be choosy about what they want to read or work on. Instructional Designers have to deal with any subject. It could be algebra, biology, personality development, leadership, software, technology and any thing and everything.
Imagine how much Instructional Designers have to read and grasp!
Here are some questions with relevance to what an Instructional Designer do with content/information and what are the challenges he/she might face:
- Read volumes of content/information and glean what is most important to learners.
- Read every bit of information and identify which bit of information will make sense to learners.
- Read information from different sources and present it in a logical and engaging fashion.
What’s the challenge?
Instructional Designers might have to read volumes of content within a short span of time. For example, if you have to convert a book to an online training material, you might have to read about 150 pages of content/information in 6 hours or so and come up with the content outline.The challenge is not just reading the content but internalizing the information and looking at the content in terms of creating value for learners.
What does this indicate?
Instructional Designers must have Enhanced Reading Comprehension Skills. By enhanced, I mean not just superficial reading and understanding but getting to the essence of the subject matter.
As an Instructional Designer, you must be able to go through volumes of content and glean the essence of the content in a short span of time. This is because project deadlines are always tight and you will not have the time you actually require to read up all the content.
Well, gaining this enhanced reading comprehension skill is not so impossible as it appears. You can master any skill through a systematic approach and through a lot of practice.
Here are some tips for budding Instructional Designers to gain enhanced reading comprehension skills:
Before you start reading the content/information:
- Keep the objective of the training material/e-learning course in mind.
- Keep the target audience in mind.
When you read the content/information from different sources:
- Scan through the content the first time. This way you will get comfortable with the content.
- Do not attempt to read line by line or word by word. You will waste a lot of time by doing this.
- Make sure you read all the content atleast twice. This will help you get a good grip of the content.
- When you read the content/information the second time, read closely.
- If you do not understand something and you have no external help, quickly google for the keyword. Again do not spend too much time researching if not required. If there is something you have no clue about, raise the alarm and get your superiors to attend to the problem.
- When you go through every page, make notes of interesting/important information. Make sure you note down the page numbers.
- Go back to the notes, examine the notes carefully and try to arrange the information in a logical order. By the end of this exercise, you will be able to visualize what the course outline must contain.
As you work on the training material, keep going back to the source content every now and then. With this I end my post here and leave it open for discussion.
What do you think?
- Do you think Instructional Designers must have excellent reading comprehension skills?
- As an Instructional Designer do you find any challenges reading content/information?
- What tips would you give for budding instructional designers to read/understand content/information well
This is, I wouldn’t say very, but the most important skill required to be a good ID that we often forget. You have highlighted the key aspects really well and the post brought home to me how often we take this skill for granted. And how often we do nothing to keep enhancing it.
Just one more point I would like to add: When reading any content that will converted to a course, keep the learner at the forefront of your mind…
Basically, we have to do two things:
1. Read to deconstruct and construct the content differently for online presentation
2. Read to understand what would be the key “learning points” in the content–what constitutes must knows and what is the fluff surrounding that.
Kia ora e Rupa!
Though I admire the diligent approach here, I can’t say I altogether agree with it. I feel that there is the tendency for instructional designers to start believing that they can rapidly become be subject experts. There is a fallacy in this assumption.
I teach Level 3 Chemistry, and I’ve also taught Level 3 Physics and a similar level of Mathematics (Level 3 is equivalent to just below first year university). I have a degree with stage 2 Physics and Mathematics and a PhD in Chemistry. I am adequately educated to teach all these subjects at Level 3.
From what I read from your post, I would assume that if I hired an instructional designer to create some Level 3 Science resources, the designer would have to go away and study the relevant theory from texts or off the Net. Presumably I might be able to help with this by selecting suitable resources for this study?
Frankly, I might as well find myself a few recommended books on instructional designing and with direction from an instructional designer, I could then go about the task of doing the instructional designing for myself.
So I challenge the idea that the instructional designer has to learn all this subject stuff, no more than you would expect me to start learning all about instructional design.
There is far too much involved in understanding the theory and background of most technical subjects – in business management, language, or specialised Science etc – for it to be effective and efficient for the instructional designer to assimilate all this.
Instructional designers and subject matter specialists have simply to learn to work with one another. Sure, they both need skills to do this. Good people skills, good communication skills and a willingness to learn are certainly among the needs of both. But that’s where it should remain.
Do you see my point?
Catchya later
Hi Allen, Can’t agree with you more. However, if you look at how some of the e-learning projects are executed in India, for example a project to convert some books into e-learning materials, you will see why this is required.
An SME is just not available for the ID many times. So, even though the ID is obviously not an expert, demands are placed on them to deliver storyboards for learning modules or simulations. In such scenarios, summarizing skills and quick comprehensions of the outline if not the subject becomes key.
This obviously will not work always, but for certain types of courses like say soft-skills courses, it is not unusual to see this being followed. For something really heavy like say an ERP, this certainly will not work
.
My 2 Cents.
Kia ora Anonymous!
Thanks for this!
You have pointed to a fundamental flaw – the first elearning myth – that it’s easy to convert printable resource material into elearning resources.
However skilled the cook is, the idea of making a good soup out of a given sauce with little or no extra ingredients is what dooms the project. It’s not the technologists or knowledge workers that are flawed. It’s the given materials.
Catchya later
This is an interesting discussion. I think the key here is to distinguish between an instructional designer and a content developer.
I am a technical content development professional myself, and when I have created courses, I ‘ve been heavily involved with the subject.
However, there is a distinct difference between the ID and a content developer. The ID needs to focus on the course structure, and the content development on the course content.
Sometimes, the 2 roles may merge into one, depending on resource availability, budgets etc.
That’s my 2 cents !