Truth and truth in Instructional Design, Propaganda, and Marketing – OR How I learned to keep worrying and embrace the disposable

 Truth and truth in Instructional Design, Propaganda, and Marketing – OR How I learned to keep worrying and embrace the disposable…

Truth exists outside of perception bias and is immutable – thereby being the opposite of disposable. 2+2 =4 and always will. 

Small “t” truth is something that is as true as can be at that moment in time. Jimmy has 2 apples and Jane has 2 more so they can together have 4 apples. But apples rot, so it is not a Truth that these two will always have 2 apples each so if you wait too long they will have 4 rotten apples. This makes small “t” truths the perfect candidates for disposable design. 

Propaganda, when it is not outright lies, is pushing the small “t” truths out as big “T” truths and most educational institutions are guilty of it to some extent. If your school has a plaque on the wall touting its success as nationally awarded  but it was 20 years ago and none of those people are even at the school anymore, that is propaganda – albeit mostly harmless propaganda. 

Marketing is telling the best version of the story possible, often while deliberately leaving out any of the negative aspects/information.

Instructional Designers are best suited to tell small “t” truths. Big T truth can and will show up in our lessons but they don’t normally require the talents of an instructional designer. Showing someone that 2+2 = 4 shouldnt really require a lot of extra exposition. But small t truth absolutely does require exposition which (at least in the online world) should be designed by an Instructional Designer. 

Spotting the difference between marketing, propaganda, truth and Truth and learning how and when to employ each is a struggle that is often placed solely at the feet of the senior levels of educational leadership. While this is understandable, it is less than ideal because the people at the upper levels of leadership have too many different motivations that will inevitably lead them to make concessions between Truth and truth: Consider the difference between these two statements and how likely do you think the small t truth will be selected by executive leaders

We are the BEST school for this, and we always will be!

Versus

We are currently the BEST school in 2 out 5 of these categories and we will continue to strive for excellence.

An instructional designer should only be concerned with how to best present the information to the learner so that it will be as correct as possible for as long as possible. But this automatically suggests a moment in time where the information will no longer be true and MUST be thrown away and redone.

If we embrace the disposability of information at the design phase it can give us the opportunity to SET A TIME to return to the design phase so that WE are in control of when it gets thrown away instead of lying to ourselves and our students.

Nobody will respect the lesson that tries to convince them that Jimmy and Jane’s 4 rotten apples are perfect for consumption. THROW THE APPLES AWAY WHEN THEY ARE ROTTEN AND GO AND HARVEST SOME MORE.