We wrap up what instructional design is, its benefits plus some best practices to get you started.

What does good learning look like?

Most likely, instructional design is the secret ingredient that is helping learning go to the next level.

And for good reason.

It can have huge impact on learning experience, as well as training outcomes.

We share exactly what instructional design in education for the workplace looks like and cover:

• What instructional design is
• The benefits of instructional design
• Core elements of instructional design
• Instruction design best practices

Let’s get started.

What is instructional design?

Put simply, instructional design is the process of designing, developing and delivering educational or training experiences. 

The goal? To help people to learn effectively. 

Instructional design is the science (and art) of creating great learning. 

It goes beyond just the physical look and feel of a learning programme and asks questions like: 

• What should learners know or be able to do?
• What’s the best way to teach it?
• How do we measure success?

What are the benefits of instructional design? 

Instructional design is key as it brings focus and structure to your training. The aim is to support the goals of your learner, and of your organisation at the same time, which is no mean feat. 

Good instructional design:

• Improves learning outcomes
• Promotes consistency
• Keeps learners engaged
• Makes learning scalable and adaptable to different audiences

In short, instructional design helps turn information into transformation.

Let’s look at these benefits in a little more detail: 

Improves learning outcomes 

Instructional design at its core is about improving learner outcomes, allowing learners to succeed. 

Teaching is much more effective with a structured approach and quality course materials. And instructional design aims to influence all of that. 

You’re left with more engaged learners, increased knowledge retention and a better learning culture. 

Related: What is learning retention + how to improve it

Promotes consistency

Instructional design allows you to create a clear course layout with key objectives, a suite of resources, and complementary assignments. 

These templated courses allow you to follow successful principles when it comes to creating new courses and means your learners will recognise your content. 

Keeps learners engaged 

Learner engagement is a key L&D challenge, but instructional design can help. 

You can create fun, exciting activities that use multimedia, interactivity and gamification to bring lessons to life. 

This allows learners to become more invested in their progression, leading to better learning results and so the cycle continues. 

Makes learning scalable and adaptable to different audiences

All of the work that goes into training, when minding instructional design, always means that the output is going to be better. 

Having set learning and training means that you can easily scale the content too. 

All the groundwork means you can ramp it up quickly and easily. 

And, you can easily segment content, or tweak individual pieces of content to help personalise learning.

Instructional design helps discard one-size-fits-all learning modules so you can focus on designing learning experiences that will resonate with your learners. 

Related: What is personalised learning

Core elements of instructional design

To create effective learning, instructional designers focus on a few key ingredients:

1. Clear learning objectives

These are the specific, measurable goals of your course.
Example: “By the end of this module, learners will be able to describe the 5 steps of CPR.”

2. Organised, relevant content

Content is selected and structured around the learning goals. 

This could include text, visuals, videos, simulations, and real-life scenarios.

The learning path is really clear, and your content is engaging, timely and useful. 

3. Effective teaching strategies

This is how the content is delivered whether through interactive modules, problem-solving activities, storytelling, or real-world application.

You need to find an LMS that allows you more control when it comes to course creation, in order to share the right content at the right time. 

This could also include having more capabilities in terms of dashboard creation and automations. 

4. Assessment and feedback

Good instructional design includes ways to check learning, like quizzes or practice activities, and gives meaningful feedback to help learners improve.

This keeps learners on track, and you can access clear reporting to see what’s working well, and what isn’t, and where your learners need to improve most. 

5. Continuous evaluation

Instructional designers gather feedback and data to improve the course over time. 

What worked? What didn’t? This loop is essential for refinement.

Survey your LMS users to get a good sense of what they like and dislike, what worked well, and what didn’t. 

Instructional design best practices

Creating effective learning isn’t just about putting content online.

To be truly successful, it’s about shaping experiences that drive real skill development and behaviour change.

Here’s a deeper dive into instructional design best practices, plus the plugins, features, and tools learning and development professionals can use to bring them to life.

1. Start with clear, actionable objectives

Learning objectives are your course’s foundation.

They guide your content, activities, and assessments and they help learners understand what’s expected.

• Use Bloom’s Taxonomy to write objectives that target different levels of cognitive learning (e.g., remembering vs. analysing).
  
• Align each activity and assessment with specific objectives.

In Totara, you can connect professional development goals directly to learning content.

This means learning becomes a clearer part of progression, and gives learner’s a better sense of why they’re doing the training they’re assigned.

2. Design with the learner in mind

Adults learn best when content is relevant, practical, and focused on solving real problems.

Before you start doing anything, perform a learning needs analysis. From there, use real-world training e.g. scenarios, to tailor training to their roles.

Remember, in Totara, you can target content by role, department or skill level using Dynamic Audiences. And beyond that, you can also create personalised dashboards so learners can only see what’s relevant to them.

💡 Pro Tip

Check out more of Totara’s key features that can support learner-focussed design. From customised dashboards to automated audience content, see it all here.

How Totara Learn works

3. Chunk content with bitesized learning

Information overload leads to drop-off and poor retention. Microlearning promotes better engagement and recall.

Learners can easily become overfaced by long courses with hundreds of modules and hours of content.

Organise your courses into short topics or themes and create bitesize learning content to support wider courses. Focus each lesson on one single key concept to keep learners focussed and engaged.

In Totara, you can use course formats like Collapsed Topics or Grid Format to visually separate modules and break down content. You can also use H5P to embed mini interactions or micro-activities throughout wider content campaigns.

4. Reinforce and assess learning

Practice and feedback cement learning. Assessments let learners self-check and let you measure outcomes.

So:

• Use low-stakes quizzes throughout, not just at the end.
  
• Provide instant, constructive feedback.
  
• Include opportunities to reflect or apply knowledge.

5. Measure, improve, repeat

Continuous improvement helps ensure your learning stays effective and aligned with organisational needs.

Regular assess completion rates, quiz scores and leaner feedback to iterate.

Most importantly, track performance before and after learning interventions. This will give you concrete qualitative and quantitative data.

Using Totara, you can use the Report Builder to create dashboards on learner progress and assessment outcomes.

Then, simply share these reports with managers and stakeholders so you can prove your impact.

Choose the right LMS to power your instructional design

Instructional design is all about creating impactful, learner-focused experiences that drive results.

But even the best-designed course won’t reach its full potential without the right learning management system behind it.

An LMS acts as the backbone of your eLearning strategy.

It helps you analyse learner needs, personalise content, engage your audience, and track progress toward your goals.

The most effective systems offer flexibility, seamless integration with your existing tools, and powerful analytics to continuously improve learning outcomes.

That’s why we recommend working with us.

Who are we? We’re BuildEmpire, a Platinum Totara Partner, and expert in delivering custom learning platforms built around instructional design best practices.

Whether you’re rolling out compliance training, leadership development, or large-scale onboarding, we bring deep technical know-how and instructional strategy together to deliver LMS solutions that are both powerful and learner-friendly.

If you’re ready to unlock the full potential of your training strategy with a Totara LMS tailored to your goals, we are the partner to trust.

Book a demo to see how you can build a smart learning experience today.