Secrets of Video Training: We Betray the Instructional Designer's Guild

Instead of dividing time eras into BC and AD, instructional designers could use BP and AP instead, meaning Before PowerPoint or After PowerPoint. Once, we were a tiny guild of specialists who jealously guarded the secrets of blueprinting effective teaching media and practiced our arcane arts for pathetically puny fees. Then came presentation software (now dominated by Microsoft PowerPoint) and every college professor, every middle-management suit, every city council meeting petitioner was suddenly P.T. Barnum. But did you notice? AP era media shows may be zippier and more colorful, but they're often as muddled, verbose and boring as ever.

What's this got to do with video? Instructional videos frequently use PowerPoint presentation methods, but a more important idea is that even sophisticated software cannot produce effective training media by itself. The dark secrets of the Instructional Designers Guild are still essential to creating useful educational programs. I am about to betray my guild and divulge those secrets.

Videomaker frequently covers various aspects of educational videos in depth. Here we'll focus on the typical decision process an instructional designer uses in planning a training program. We'll discuss job specifications, program content, presentation method, presentation media, strategic and tactical organiz…