Impact of Instructional Design Challenges on Self-efficacy

Cara North & Ana-Paula Correia

This research focuses on the impact of instructional design challenges on Learning & Training professionals’ beliefs in their ability to succeed in these challenges and transfer them to their contexts of practice. It uses an interpretive methodology that couples semi-structured interviews with a survey on confidence levels, motivation, anxiety, and success throughout the six-week challenge period.

The expected outcome of the research is to understand the value of instructional design challenges for new and seasoned instructional designers. It is expected that the study would inform about creating future professional development opportunities for instructional designers.

6 Week Instructional Design Challenge

The 6 Week Instructional Design Challenge started April 30, 2018, and ran until June 10, 2018. Information about the challenge was shared on webpages and social media.

The challenge rules encouraged participants to share something during each of the six weeks of the instructional design challenge. To encourage all levels of participants, no information such as a prompt or tool were provided. Participation took place at the level that the participants felt comfortable, utilizing whatever type of technology the participant wanted. To share the work, participants were asked to tag them using the hashtag #id6wc on LinkedIn or Twitter. If a participant did not want to share their artifact, they were encouraged the share it directly with the researcher.

Every week, the artifacts were shared in an open Google document that included the participants’ names and a link to the artifact. All participants were expected to provide feedback to each artifact to the level they felt comfortable. One of the most important rules of the challenge was a “no troll” rule which served as the netiquette for the challenge.

As instructional designers continue to use more technology in their jobs, design challenges provide them an opportunity to experiment and receive feedback from their peers. Participants in challenges reported positive experiences in regard to feedback from peers, taking risks with new technologies, and exploring different ways to enhance their design processes.

This research project has been turned into a publishable manuscript.