14d • General discussion
IF EVERYTHING IS IMPORTANT
“But this is important too.” 😅
As an Instructional Designer, you’ve heard some version of that sentence from an SME.
To be fair, they’re usually right.
The information is important.
The problem is that importance to the subject is not the same as importance to the learner.
An SME sees years of knowledge, exceptions, context, history, edge cases and nuance.
An instructional designer has to ask a different question:
👉 What does the learner actually need in order to perform?
That distinction matters.
A 2026 meta-analysis of 50 studies and 177 effect sizes found that adding interesting but instructionally unnecessary information produced a small but significant negative effect on learning affecting comprehension, recall and transfer. Increased extraneous cognitive load was identified as the primary mechanism.
Sometimes, good instructional design requires something surprisingly difficult:
Leaving good information out.
Not deleting it because it lacks value.
But deciding where that value belongs.
Before adding another topic, slide or explanation, I like three questions:
🎯 Does this directly support the learning objective?
⚙️ Will the learner need this to perform, decide or solve something?
📚 Does this need to be learned or does it simply need to be available when required?
Because a course does not have to carry the entire knowledge base.
And perhaps one of the most valuable contributions an instructional designer makes is turning:
“They need to know all of this.”
into:
“Here’s what they need to be able to do.”
If everything is important, nothing is important.
💭 Fellow IDs: how do you handle the classic SME response “But they need to know this too”?
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IF EVERYTHING IS IMPORTANT
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