Course Papers

Instructional Designers Rule!

Teammates and customers have a crazy idea that Instructional Design is automated, only requiring a human to press some buttons.  They complain about taking five days to produce three minutes of narrated voice over, expecting it in hours.  They expect storyboards, script writing and months of planning to come together in mere days. Like magic a creative training solution is produced with screens and audio exactly to the customers specification.  If project managers, subject matter experts and leadership were asked if intelligent assistants or chatbots could do Instructional Design they would agree it is possible and probably happening right now. The thought of having an intelligent assistant to lighten the workload is appealing, but this is not possible at this time. Designing and producing training is completely manual and will be for many years to come.

To confirm this thought Instructional Designer was researched on Replaced by Robot and the results confirmed with a .42% possibility, meaning not even a full percent, is highly unlikely. Two tasks that Instructional Designers encounter on the job is relevant writing and formulating creative strategies, which are weaknesses of AI (Dormehl, 2018).  AI is not yet able to compose a story narrative that incorporates learning tasks.  Natural language must be received, processed and expressed in a manner that resonates with humans. Dormehl (2018) discusses that AI does not have the ability to approach a task creatively.  Meaning the solution accounts for information beyond tangible details, but the feeling it conveys.  Finally, Instructional Designers must be able to understand and even empathize with the audience.  Current skill level and potential challenges need to be weighed with possible cognitive and behavioral influences to develop effective training.  An intelligent assistant does not have the ability to connect with the audience in this manner. 

AI does add value to the workforce and can improve how we do our jobs. The point of AI in the workforce is to perform mundane tasks, and assist humans in performing with accuracy and efficiency.  AI can free the time of individuals to focus on problem solving, and growing.  Mohanty (2018) discussed jobs that require less skill is more likely to be automated.  White collar jobs are less at risk, however Mohanty (2018) noted the exception is within the financial industry.  AI has the potential to create jobs.  Mohanty (2018) estimated over two million jobs would be created to accommodate and support AI by 2025.

References

Dormehl, L. (2018, October 24) A.I. can do almost anything now, but here are 6 things machines still suck at. Digital Trends. Retrieved from https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/things-machines-computers-still-cant-do-yet/

Priya Mohanty, P. (2018, Jul 6) Do you fear artificial intelligence will take your job? Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2018/07/06/do-you-fear-artificial-intelligence-will-take-your-job/?sh=2db342b11aa3 Replaced by a Robot (2019, January) Retrieved from https://www.replacedbyrobot.info/15381/instructional-designer