The challenges of instructional design for online learning

One of the key issues of instructional design for learning is making sure the selected materials and activities suit the learners and the intended goals of the learning experience. It’s important to think about their learning requirements, educational needs, aims, the complexity of the subject matter, and available technology.

It can also be hard to keep instructional materials current with the latest updates to teaching curriculums and developments in pedagogy – all of which require regular review and improvement of our instructional designs.

All of these challenges carry over into instructional design for online learning, but the online context can bring some challenges of its own. It is important for us to think carefully about those challenges and to reflect on ways in which they can become opportunities.

Opportunities to try new forms of teaching and learning, opportunities for our own growth as educators, and opportunities to review, revise, and rethink some of our existing ways of teaching.

Reflection Questions

What might be five key challenges when thinking about instructional design for online teaching and learning?

For each of the challenges, can you think of one way in which it could be an opportunity for something new, exciting, or different?

All of these challenges are important points for consideration, but can also be opportunities for developing new, exciting, and impactful ways of teaching and learning.

Later on, this module will look at a simple model for online instructional design that can be used to address a lot of these challenges and give confidence and clarity to teachers and educators looking to develop powerful online learning experiences.

What is important to remember, though, is that we can often reframe challenges as opportunities and we should try and take this mindset whenever we’re looking to embark on something new and unknown such as teaching online.