The employment market is fragmented and diverse. Every sector of business requires instructional designers and developers. Many employers prefer Instructional Designers (IDs) with experience in their business sector. This means that subject/content experts with a talent for teaching often move into instructional design using their field-specific knowledge as the key to open the door to course design and development, but with little or no formal preparation for quality instructional design and development.

This paper discusses the practice analysis process, including survey results that generated nine primary skill set domains for IDs.