Defining Salient Features of “Boutique” Instructional Designs and Implications for Design, Development, and Deployment

Abstract

“Boutique” instructional design (ID) projects are fairly common across verticals, especially in higher education, open shared learning, government, and some commercial enterprises. In general, boutique-designed learning is small-scale, with narrowly targeted learners, limited development funding/access to information/development and deployment technology/human resources, and other aspects. The strategies and tactics for successful boutique projects differ in some ways than those used for mid-scale and full-scale/general ID projects. This work explores some of the dimensions of boutique ID projects and the implications of those dimensions on design, development, and deployment strategies and tactics. This work is informed by decades in the profession, a review of the literature, and analyses of related open-source and closed-source online learning objects.