The genre of instructional design is applicable to many
areas of technical and professional writing. It can be used to create recipes,
manuals, assignments, and many other tools in aiding an audience to complete a
task. During my internship, I was assigned the task of creating five modules to
aid the Document Design students in the use of Adobe InDesign and to develop a
set of skills that can be utilized in other areas of the course. The primary
elements I used in the creation of the modules were a scenario, applicable and
practical designs, incorporation of visual and textual guides in the steps, and
repetition of skills.
According to Carolyn Miller, “…if genre represents action,
it must involve situation and motive, because human action, whether symbolic or
otherwise, is interpretable only against a context of situation and through the
attributing of motives.” By incorporating a scenario into the modules, it gives
the students context and motive to apply to the modules, otherwise the modules are
only a series of steps with no purpose. This will help in their retention of
the skills applied during the modules. In addition, the applicable and practical
designs are documents—such as fliers, forms, and brochures—that apply to the
scenario. The use of visual guides in the modules helps to break up the text
and aids in the learning process. Incorporating visual guides aids the visual
learner to complete the steps. The modules also build upon each other, with
each new module introducing new skills while incorporating skills from the
previous module. This repetition will also aid in the retention process.
In their article Rhetorical
Genre Studies, Anis Bawarshi and Mary Jo Reiff state “…genres are dynamic
because as their conditions of use change—for example because of changes in
material conditions, changes in community membership, changes in technology,
changes in disciplinary purposes, and values…—genres must change along with
them or risk becoming obsolete.” Since genres are dynamic, they can adapt to
any situation. Other professional context, outside of an academic setting,
which would use instructional design, would be instruction manuals. Like the
modules I have created, instruction manuals are systematic guides to guide the
user in completing the task. The context would be the scenario in which the
manual would apply—for instance, putting together a set of bookshelves. In
addition to context, the manuals contain visual/textual guides and a
repetition of skills. This combination of elements is what creates an effective document that the user can learn from.
Sources:
Bawarshi, Anis and Reiff, Mary Jo Rhetorical Genre Studies
Miller, Carolyn Genre as a Social Action
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