Instructional Development—Step by Step

This book is a follow-on companion to my first book, Instructional Design – Step by Step: Nine Easy Steps for Designing Lean, Effective, and Motivational Instruction. Instructional development is the activity that follows instructional design and is where the actual training deliverables are “fleshed out” by writers, instructional developers, and others, in accordance with the instructional design. This book was written for three main audiences: 

 Those who are relatively new to the role of instructional development 

 Those who have been tasked with developing training or education that has been designed by an instructional designer who do not have a background or formal education in instructional design or development 

 Those who have some background or experience in instructional design and development who want to expand their skills in certain areas, such as performing content analysis to identify all required information for an instructional objective, writing instructional text using strategies that match the type of information being taught, and writing outstanding slides/pages/screens and corresponding titles or headings. It is also for those who just want an organized, concise, proven, and simple approach to instructional development 

In this book, I have distilled my over 30 years experience in education and training, my university degree in instructional design, and my sitting at the feet of some of the founding fathers in human performance improvement into a simple, straightforward, step-by-step process for developing instruction and training (see my other book referenced above to learn how to design instruction and training). 

This book is not intended as a comprehensive treatment of the field of instructional development or technical writing. Rather, it is designed to teach a newcomer, in simple, understandable terms, how to craft effective, efficient, and successful instruction. 

This book is not an academic tome; rather, it is a practitioner’s guide. As such, I will be your personal mentor and tutor. I will teach you in simplest terms the minimum information and skills you will need to develop sound instructional deliverables, given an instructional design document or course outline and objectives. 

The process I teach is not an unproven, abstract, or theoretical musing. I believe it is the quickest, most concise, and most direct way to develop effective instruction that is currently available. I have practiced and refined this approach in numerous real-life projects across many clients, on tasks and subject material ranging from the simple to the complex, from soft-skills to the highly technical, and covering a wide range of disciplines. In this book, I have tried to condense all of my wisdom, knowledge, and skill to its most essential elements and package it into the simple approach to instructional development.