1. Can instructional designers self-build an HPT solution?

Instructional designers, whether working as human performance technologists or as educational technologists, need professional growth throughout their whole career. In other words, they can benefit from a flexible human performance technology (HPT) solution for supporting gains in their own expertise. When designing HPT for others, instructional designers' goal needs to be explicit and their efforts should be systematic; however, for one's own learning, there is a tendency to carry on in an ad-hoc manner without actually systematically utilizing instructional design (ID) principles.

I am going to compare two approaches of gaining expertise.

Approach 1 is defined as: Instructional designers gain expertise while designing instructions for other learners in their daily jobs. During the practice, they might read instructional design literature, collaborate with other designers/experts, and reflect their practice and learning.

Approach 2 is defined as: there are three sub-phases in each period of gaining instructional design expertise: (a) Instructional designers self-design an instructional design performance support system(IDPSS); (b) In their daily jobs, they collaborate with the IDPSS to design instructions for others, and they enrich the IDPSS by recording their ID activities in a structured way; and (c), and they might refine the IDPSS based on their evaluations and reflections.

In Approach 1, the goal of developing instructional design expertise is Less explicit and self-orientated, and the efforts tend to be unsystematic and discrete; therefore, the speed of growing might be slower.

By contrast, in Approach 2 the goal of developing instructional design expertise is more explicit and self-orientated, and the efforts tend to be systematic and continuous; therefore, the speed of growing might be faster.