I've been meaning to do something on the very different interpretations of the term "instructional design" in North America and the UK. Basically, a lot of what's quite rightly being written about the decline of instructional design in the US - in the face of games design, rapid tools and collaborative/social learning models - applies only loosely in the UK. 

But on a slight tangent, did you know that this term means the opposite in UK and US English:

"Let's table this now"

• US meaning = we will leave this aside; not discuss it
• UK meaning = let's discuss this right now

I think the same applies in relation to a whole bunch of e-learning related terms. On a light note, how about these two:

"Instructional designer":

• (US) = highly analytical person who works from detailed objectives to produce largely textual accounts of information leading to detailed assessment; has a masters degree that contains the word "science" in the title.
• (UK) = left university with an arts degree and realised they could earn a decent living in the e-learning industry (whatever that is); is a frustrated artist, novelist or comic writer in their free time; can't tell the difference between ISD and LSD, although recognises the latter term.

Serious (as in "serious game"):

• (US) "serious is good"; let's do a "boot camp" (grrr - tough, difficult stuff; involves mud - real mud i.e. damp earth)
• (UK) "serious is bad"; let's not take this too seriously; let's muddle through and joke ironically as we're doing it; it's really not cool to be too serious

I spent much of yesterday afternoon at the Institute of Directors in London with some executive development consultants. The IOD is a very august, earnest, business-like institution. Through the afternoon, we joked and quipped, nagged and teased, and at the end of it came out with quite a significant business deal. Tea was served. It was a quintessentially British way of doing serious business. Indeed, you might call it a serious game.

There's a serious side to this badly structured ramble. As the e-learning world continues to lurch forwards unpredictably we face many problems. But we need to be clear which of these problems are ours. For example, I was reading this excellent paper on game-based learning. Here's a quote from it:

"Traditional instructional designers are stuck in old paradigms, which are all about objectives, content, and pen and paper assessments. We need people who can think holistically, imagine user scenarios, and understand the culture of organizations."

Well, as the UK has no tradition of training instructional designers, we don't have any traditional instructional designers. This isn't our problem. In fact, when the report goes on to say that instructional designers should have expertise in narrative, usability, software production and basic art, I recognise these as skills that I value highly in myself and my colleagues.

We have other dreadful problems - poor understanding of what design is, lamentable grasp of current learning theories, dire approaches to user-centred design - but not those apparently suffered by "traditional" instructional designers.