The Learning Circuits Blog big question for February is Instructional Design - If, When and How Much? The question, in a more detailed form, is "For a given project, how do you determine if, when and how much an instructional designer and instructional design is needed?" As many suggested, the big question has a small but illusive answer - "It depends". There are many factors that interact to determine if, when, and how much.I like what Cammy Bean said about Instructional Design being a Spectrum. I also like what Ben Hamilton wrote about analysis in his comments. He wrote"...a quality instructional designer will be able to identify if this is, in fact, a project that requires a training intervention." If a "training" intervention is not needed, then perhaps neither is an instructional designer. On the other hand, a non-training intervention might require the services of a "quality" instructional designer even more so than would a training intervention. An SME might be perfectively able to develop a good training intervention. However, she might not have the knowledge or skills necessary to develop a non-training intervention.
