Let’s Start Where This Actually Began

Instructional design didn’t originate in higher education, and it wasn’t invented to create more meetings.

It started during World War II. 

The U.S. military needed to train millions of people quickly, consistently, and effectively. There wasn’t room for guesswork. So, researchers began asking a deceptively simple question:

What is the most efficient way to teach someone to actually do something?

This wasn’t about theory. It was about survival.

That question led to early work in task analysis, measurable outcomes, and structured learning sequences. After the war, psychologists and researchers built on it. Benjamin Bloom gave us a way to think about levels of learning. Robert Gagné mapped out the conditions needed for instruction to work.

For the first time, learning wasn’t treated as a mystery—it became something we could study, test, and design intentionally.

Then online learning arrived, and everything shifted again.

The spontaneous clarification. The “read the room” adjustment. The quick aside that fixes confusion. In an online course, those moments don’t exist unless they’re designed in.

And suddenly, courses that worked beautifully in person didn’t always work on a screen at 11:00 p.m.

That’s the environment we work in: not as gatekeepers, but as guides through a learning landscape that genuinely changed. 

The Myths (and What’s Actually True)

What We Actually Obsess Over (So You Don’t Have To)

Without the jargon here is the practical version:

Do the core parts of your course (what students should learn, how they practice it, and how they prove it) actually connect?

When they do, courses feel clear and purposeful. When they don’t, students feel confused and instructors end up answering the same questions over and over again.

1. Making Objectives Do Real Work

You already know what you want students to learn. We help make that visible and measurable so students know what they’re working toward.

There’s a big difference between:

“Understand policy” and “Analyze how federal policy shapes program design”

One leaves students guessing. The other gives them a target. 

2. Closing the Gap Between Objectives and Assessments

One of the most common (and invisible) issues in course design:

An objective asks students to analyze, but the assignment asks them to define.

That mismatch isn’t a teaching problem it’s a design problem. And it’s easy to miss when you’re inside the course. 

We help catch it and fix it.

3. Building the Steps Between “Here’s the Content” and “Now Prove You Know It”

This is where most students struggle.

Low-stakes practice, guided discussions, structured application: these aren’t filler. They’re the path that gets students ready for your major assignments.

Without them, students often feel like the assignment came out of nowhere.

4. Reducing “Where Do I Even Start?” Friction

Online students navigate your course alone, and they certainly can't read your mind.

While your course structure certainly makes sense in your head, it might not make as much sense on their screen. And when that happens, learning takes a backseat to figuring out where things are.

We help make that path visible without simplifying your content.

5. Making Quality Check Standards Actually Useful

Yes, we use Quality Matters and OLC Scorecard standards. No, we’re not here to walk you through a checklist and call it a day.

The checklist is just the starting point it: helps us spot where students might be getting lost. What matters is what we do next.

If something doesn’t meet a standard, the real conversation is:

• What are you trying to get students to do here?
• Where are they getting stuck?
• What’s the smallest change that would make this clearer

Sometimes that’s rewriting an objective. Sometimes it’s adjusting an assignment. Sometimes it’s just reorganizing a page so students can actually find what they need.

The standards don’t tell us what your course should be. They help us see where your course isn’t landing the way you intended. And that’s what we work on together.

6. Making Your Course Easier to Navigate (and Harder to Misinterpret)

Students don’t experience your course the way you designed it: they experience it one click at a time.

That means things like:

• page layout
• instructions placement
• visual organization
• accessibility (captions, readable formats, screen navigation)

aren’t just “design details”: They directly affect whether students can focus on learning or spend their time figuring out what to do.

We help make your course easier to follow, easier to access, and easier to succeed in without changing your content.

A Quick Example (Because This Is Where It Clicks)

Let’s say your objective is: Analyze the impact of policy on educational outcomes. But your assignment asks students to: Define key policy terms.

Students will do exactly what you asked: memorize definitions.

Then when they’re expected to analyze, they struggle: not because they’re unprepared, but because the course didn’t build toward that skill.

That’s the kind of gap we help close. 

A Thing We Want to Acknowledge

If you’ve worked with an instructional designer before and felt talked down to, buried in jargon, or like your expertise was being questioned, that was a bad experience.

It shouldn’t have happened.

Our job is to be useful to you, not impressive to ourselves. And if that’s not what you’ve experienced, we want to do better. 

What This Partnership Actually Looks Like

You bring:

• Deep expertise in your discipline
• Experience with what students struggle with
• The passion that made you want to teach

We bring:

• Learning science
• Course structure
• A fresh set of eyes that can see what’s invisible from the inside

Neither works well alone. Together? That’s where strong courses get built.

You bring the expertise. We help it reach the student. 

Why This Matters More Than It Used To

Higher education has changed.

Students are balancing jobs, families, and coursework. They’re navigating online environments that weren’t always designed with them in mind. They expect clarity and they should.

Good teaching has always mattered. Now, good design matters just as much.

If students are:

• misunderstanding the same assignment
• missing the same key idea
• asking the same questions you thought you already answered

That’s not a failure of your teaching: it’s a design problem.

And design problems have solutions. 

The Short Version

We’re not here to fix your course. We’re not here to check boxes.

We’re here to ask what you’re trying to accomplish, and help you build a course that actually does it.

That’s it.

That’s the whole job.

Want to be prepared for your meeting with an ID? Use this checklist!

1. 1

   Reiser (2001). A History of Instructional Design and Technology: Part II: A History of Instructional Design.  Educational Technology Research and Development, vol. 49, no. 1, pg. 53-64

1. 2

   Reiser (2001). A History of Instructional Design and Technology: Part II: A History of Instructional Design.  Educational Technology Research and Development, vol. 49, no. 1, pg. 57-67

1. 3

   Pollard (2001). Instructional Designers in Higher Education: Roles, Challenges, and Supports. The Journal of Applied Instructional Design, vol. 11, no. 1, Feb. 2022, pp. 7-24.

1. 4

   Course Design Rubric Standards.  Quality Matters, n.d.

1. 5

   OLC Quality Scorecard Suite: Course Design Review. Online Learning Consortium, n.d.

1. 6

   OSCQR Course Design Review: OLC Quality Scorecard Suite: OSCQR 4.0. Online Learning Consortium, n.d.