Instructional Design Trends: 2024 Survey Insights

We surveyed more than 400 learning design professionals in September 2024 in order to understand the trends currently shaping instructional design.

We worked with Dr. Philippa Hardman, who is the creator of the DOMS™ framework and a leading learning scientist. She played a pivotal role in designing the survey as well as analyzing the survey results.

With Dr. Hardman's help, we were able to uncover some great insights into how L&D is changing.

Our survey respondents came from a wide variety of roles, with the majority of them being instructional designers (33%). The second biggest group we surveyed were subject matter experts (SMEs), who often have to design courses themselves (26%).

The rest of our survey responses came from a mix of L&D managers, freelance eLearning developers, HR managers, and founders.

1. Nearly 80% of instructional designers use AI weekly

AI use in instructional design is now an integral part of the typical instructional design workflow. Nearly half of our respondents are using AI tools daily, and 30% are using them weekly.

What value are instructional designers finding in AI? Our respondents highlighted how AI can speed up content production, generate creative ideas, and personalize learning experiences for a diverse audience of learners.

Overall, it seems clear that AI is increasingly used by instructional designers to not only expedite learning content creation, but also to elevate the overall quality of instructional design.

Automating administrative tasks was a further AI use case that was frequently called out by our respondents. Another popular use case for AI amongst instructional designers is to help reduce reliance on SMEs (who are often unavailable), as AI helps instructional designers fill subject knowledge gaps.

2. Articulate dominates: Rise & Storyline are the most popular content authoring tools

In this question we asked our respondents to pick their single most commonly used course authoring tool. Our survey results show that Articulate Rise and Storyline continue to be the most popular choices.

Rise was the top choice for 43% of respondents. Rise is often chosen because of its easy-to-use interface, and because it creates responsive courses that work across devices.

Storyline was the top choice for 37% of respondents. Storyline is an advanced, slide-based authoring tool that provides deep interactivity logic with triggers, variables, and layers that give you a very granular level of control.

Aside from the Articulate suite there were some other interesting top choices. iSpring Suite, a PowerPoint-based authoring tool, was the most-used tool for 6% of our respondents.

Synthesia, the AI-powered video creation platform, was the top choice for 5% of our respondents, Synthesia is a popular choice for instructional designers as it allows them to create engaging training videos without the downsides of traditional video production.

Canva was the top choice for 5% of our respondents, which is a bit surprising as it's not really an authoring tool (although it does offer some basic interactivity). However, it's a popular tool amongst SMEs who want to create visuals without any authoring tool experience.

PowerPoint (4% of respondents) also remains popular for similar reasons.

3. ChatGPT is the most commonly used AI tool in instructional design

Our survey shows that ChatGPT is the go-to AI tool for instructional designers. 84% of our respondents said that they have tried OpenAI's chatbot, and 57% identified it as their most-used AI tool.

Respondents said that they use ChatGPT for tasks such as idea generation, content drafting, and refining existing instructional materials. Interestingly the tool was also highlighted as valuable for overcoming creative blocks.

After ChatGPT, Synthesia was the next most widely used AI-native tool by our survey respondents. We have to caveat this with the fact that we conducted the survey, so there's an inherent bias in our survey responders in that they are more likely to be AI-forward and users of Synthesia than the general instructional designer population.

Caveat aside, 59% of respondents said they had tried Synthesia, and 29% named it as their favorite AI tool. Synthesia makes it quick and easy to produce engaging interactive training videos that can be easily localized and updated.

4. Instructional design evaluation is increasingly shifting from course completion to outcome-based metrics

‎Historically instructional design has been evaluated using course completion rates and test scores. Our survey suggests a clear shift towards outcome-based metrics has occurred.

Close to 40% of respondents cited improvements in job performance as their primary learning success measure. Close to 25% more respondents cited time to delivery of a project as their primary metric.

In the 'Other' bucket you see in the chart, the dominant metric cited was learner feedback. It's clear that direct input from learners on their perceived value of instructional content is still seen as valuable by a significant number of instructional designers.

Completion rates and test scores were still highlighted as the primary metric for a small group of respondents, but it's a much smaller number that I had expected.

5. Most instructional designers manage 3 projects simultaneously and complete 16 each year

In my experience instructional designers are often juggling multiple projects. Our survey shows that the median instructional designer is working on 3 projects simultaneously. 15% of our respondents typically handle more than 6 projects at once! According to our data, an instructional designer working on a single project at a time is actually the least frequent scenario.

It's interesting to see this data split by role. Freelancer instructional designers tend to manage slightly fewer projects on average (2.8) compared to full-time staff instructional designers (3.30). SMEs typically work on an average of 3.19 projects simultaneously - so that's quite similar to the full-time instructional designers.

In terms of annual project completion, our median respondent completes 12 instructional design projects a year. A smaller but significant group of respondents work in a higher-volume environment where they complete more than 21 projects a year.

6. Most instructional design projects take at least 20 days to complete

What does a typical instructional designer's day look like?

For the first question in this section of our survey we used the ADDIE framework. ADDIE stands for:

• Analysis
• Design
• Development
• Implementation
• Evaluation

Our respondents spend most of their time (38.5%) in the development and implementation stage. Typical tasks in these stages could include course authoring, script writing, creation of visuals, and video production.

The design stage was the next biggest, using up 22.4% of our respondents time. The analysis stage was also significant at 17.6%.

This shows that most of our survey respondents workload revolves around the creation of learning content, with the instructional design and analysis stages playing supporting roles. Evaluation was the stage that required the least time investment.

We also asked our survey respondents how long their instructional design projects typically last. 29% of our respondents' projects are completed in 21-50 days, so you can see that these projects are serious time investments. 23% of our respondents said that their typical project can even extend beyond 50 days, which suggests that a large number of instructional design projects are complex and time-intensive.

Short turnaround times for projects are uncommon, with only 14% of our respondents' projects getting completed in under 10 days.

One further interesting datapoint we got from this section of the survey was the split between creating new courses and updating existing courses. 66% of our respondents' time was spent on creating new courses vs. 34% on updating courses.

The bias towards new course creation likely reflects the rapidly evolving demands placed on instructional designers. These demands are themselves driven, at least in part, by the growing integration of AI and new technology.

7. Instructional designers only collaborate with SMEs 38% of the time

Instructional designers often work with SMEs to ensure that training courses are grounded with accurate and expert insights.

Our survey shows that the level of this important collaboration varies widely. 32% of our respondents reported a close working relationship with an SME for 75-100% of their project.

However, the median response showed instructional designers only working with SMEs 38% of the time, and nearly half of our survey respondents collaborate with an SME for less than 50% of their learning projects.

The most common reason cited for this lack of collaboration was lack of SME availability. One of our respondents highlighted the consequences of this limited SME collaboration, stating that insufficient SME involvement compromised the design phase of their project. SMEs clearly play a critical role in ensuring successful instructional design outcomes.

This data suggests L&D and SMEs need to better align on expectations around the timeliness of input and feedback during the design phase. Otherwise, instructional designers risk having to proceed without it in order to meet deadlines.

8. Time and resource constraints are the biggest challenges for instructional designers

‎In this section we asked our respondents to identify the key barriers to speed and quality in instructional design.

For speed, 31% of respondents identified content creation as the biggest barrier. 30% of respondents flagged delays in SME input as the biggest barrier (i.e. a lack of timely feedback from an SME). Interestingly, 27% of respondents cited unclear stakeholder requirements as the biggest barrier to speed in instructional design.

For quality, the most commonly cited barrier was budget limitations (cited by 18% of respondents). Insufficient time (17%) and lack of access to SMEs (13%) were also frequently highlighted as the biggest barrier to quality.

It's interesting to see lack of access to SMEs cited as a major issue for both speed and quality, and it really highlights how crucial it is for IDs to get that access and collaboration they need.‎

Another trend that's visible more broadly is that the high project loads that we see instructional designers are often facing is leaving limited time for design and development work, and is often creating barriers to creating high quality courses.

It's clear that time and resource constraints remain central challenges for most instructional designers.

9. Instructional designers mostly turn down projects because of time constraints

In the last section of our survey we asked our respondents how often they turn down instructional design projects and why.

38% of our respondents said that they turn down between 1 and 6 projects per year, while 35% said they don't turn down any.

The most commonly cited reasons for turning down a project were lack of time (33%), unrealistic deadlines (18%), and budget constraints (14%).

10. Final thoughts

I think that there are two quite surprising instructional design trends visible in this data.

Firstly, it appears that SMEs are playing a growing role in instructional course design, which is a pretty notable shift. I think this is largely driven by the fact that SME availability is often the bottleneck for instructional design, along with the fact that new AI tools are empowering SMEs to create courses without technical course authoring tool experience.

Secondly, that there's an increasing interest in AI, in particular for needs analysis. I think this reflects the advancements in AI and its adoption within the industry.

My overall conclusion from these survey results would be that as instructional designers we should be focusing on the three core competencies of time management, appropriate integration of AI tools (to reduce the burden of course creation), and evaluation via performance-based outcomes. This, in my opinion, will ensure instructional design continues to evolve and deliver meaningful results.