Resisting the Deprofessionalization of Instructional Design

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors present the argument that instructional design as a professional field in higher education spaces is at risk of deprofessionalization, resulting from their common utilization as technical or production personnel, coupled with the fact that development of and within online and technology-enabled learning environments is increasingly accessible to faculty members and non-experts. As learning management systems and multimedia production platforms continue to become increasingly easy to use and normalized, the technical expertise of technically oriented, development-focused instructional designers risks becoming obsolete, irrelevant, or redundant. This chapter charts the trajectory of this deprofessionalization and presents strategies for how instructional designers—and the field as a whole—should assert its value through a scholar-practitioner approach that privileges the specialized faculties of instructional design (e.g., learning theory, design process models, pedagogy, design thinking) over production or development skills.