The Multi-disciplinary Instructional Designer:
Integrating Specialized Skills into Design Toolkits
An edited volume by Chris Gamrat and Megan Kohler.
The Multi-disciplinary Instructional Designer aims to capture a critical conversation among practitioners, which has yet to be addressed from a literary perspective. Instructional Design itself is a well-established and documented field and is often linked with other specializations such as cognitive learning theory, education, project management, graphic design, and programming. Yet many professionals who choose to become instructional designers have backgrounds which reflect far greater intellectual diversity. Ask any instructional designer you meet what their background is, and you will receive answers such as music, clergy, mathematics, social work, and architecture, and many more. Each of these professions are well established and have their own manifesto of accompanying skills and knowledge which have been cultivated over years and in some cases centuries.
Even though instructional design is deeply rooted in research, it is still a relatively ‘young’ profession. In fact, we can draw similarities between the instructional design profession and a developing artist. The first portion of an artist’s journey is dedicated to learning the technical skill required to create a work of art. In the age of artisans, a young apprentice would learn these skills by copying the work of the most accomplished experts. Once an apprentice was able to create a flawless duplicate of the original work, they were then given the creative freedom to craft their own works based on things that inspired them. This is what much of the literature on instructional design has done. By drawing on the influences of learning theories, the profession of instructional design has been established. Unfortunately, the instructional design field has yet to venture away from the work of the traditional visionaries to create a literary piece that captures the inspiration that resides in the world around us. That is the purpose of this book. To seek inspiration from professions other than our own and blend them with the work that designers passionately pursue on a daily basis.
Multidisciplinary Instructional Designer
Available for purchase through Routledge Publishing
About the Editors
Chris Gamrat, Ph.D., is an instructional designer in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology. Chris is the lead designer for the College’s Master’s of professional studies programs. Chris has co-authored peer-reviewed papers, conference proceedings, book chapters, and industry blog posts and delivered numerous national conference presentations. He has also just completed serving a two-year term on the EDUCAUSE Young Professionals Advisory Committee. Prior work includes his role as education technology specialist with the NASA Aerospace Education Services Project where he developed systems for an online learning community, resource repository, webinar series, and digital badging platform to deliver professional development for STEM educators across the United States.
Megan Kohler, M.S.I.T, is an Assistant Teaching Professor and Learning Designer with the John A. Dutton e-Education Institute at The Pennsylvania State University. She is a speaker, researcher, and advocate for neurodiversity in Higher Education. Through her design work, she has co-created a model for enhancing the collaborative dynamic between faculty and designers. As a designer, she has led several high-profile projects for the University including the Epidemics MOOC, the Penn State Digital Badging Initiative, and Art 10 (an iTunes U course developed for Apple). An avid volunteer with the Online Learning Consortium, she has served in several leadership roles for the Accelerate Conference, including Overall Conference Co-chair (2020, 2021), Program Chair (2019), and Chair Presenter Services (2018). In April of 2023, she published her first book “The Multidisciplinary Instructional Designer” to help designers uncover the value of prior professional experiences and how those skills transfer to the field of instructional technology.