The Fourth Edition of a Classic Resource

"Instructional designers are often the standard-bearers of the calculated efforts to improve human performance. They continue to work under the guise of many job titles. They are sometimes called performance technologists, performance consultants, trainers, training and development specialists, workplace learning and performance professionals, learning and performance professionals, instructional developers, staff development specialists, performance consultants, or instructional designers. Whatever their titles, they share a common goal of improving human performance. Perhaps training remains as the best-known performance improvement strategy, although many people are experimenting with approaches that integrate employee development with work processes so that people learn as they work (and work as they learn) in real time. Management solutions that do not include training range from the preparation and use of job aids, the redesign of organizational structures and reporting relationships, the redesign of work, the refocusing of employee selection methods, the reengineering of work-related feedback methods, and the design and implementation of employee reward systems. There are literally thousands of ways to solve human performance problems, and the sheer choice of solutions is as daunting as discovering root causes."
—From the Preface