I often find myself glancing at the TV while Sesame Street is on for my daughter, and admittedly I watch it more than she does, so on many occasions I’ve seen the following clip.

It’s an entertaining video and Melissa McCarthy is always very funny, so that helps make my analogy a little more entertaining.

How does this relate to Instructional Design?

I’m often being asked what Instructional Design is, either from family members, or people from my company.

That’s a hard question to answer for others who are not familiar with the complexity of Instructional Design. I’d like to answer it in as few words as possible, so how do you do that?

I thought one day when watching the video, Choreography is similar in many ways to Instructional Design.

A Choreographer has many tools at their disposal to make their best effort to create a great dance, but people are at the center. They use props, people, etc., to make it all come together.

An Instructional Designer also has many tools at their disposal to make an effort to create a great learning experience, with people at the center, of course.

They both use creativity to put it all together and make it work, while there’s also a bit of science involved.

I know it may sound like an odd analogy, but when people ask what Instructional Design is in the future, I’m just going to say it’s like Choreography for learning.

In what ways do you think Instructional Design is like Choreography?

If you don’t think it is, what can it be analogized to?

If I ever get into the story of how I made that connection, well, I’ll just refer them to flap-a-waddle-boom-boom 🙂

That was my goofy but true post of the month, or my first one ever.