Learning Design and Instructional Design: Similarities and Differences

3. Student Workload and Constructive Alignment

One of the key differences lies in the approach to student workload. Instructional design often plans teaching from the teacher’s perspective, asking what needs to be taught and how it will be assessed. As a result, it frequently does not explicitly take into account the time and effort a student must invest in understanding concepts, applying what they have learned, and reflecting on their own learning.

By contrast, learning design enables and encourages planning the duration of each activity and estimating the total weekly/module workload in terms of student effort.

Instructional design traditionally focuses on structuring teaching content and teaching activities in accordance with instructional goals, theoretically including outcome-based planning. However, in practice, the emphasis often remains on the content and the teacher’s goals, and less on the activities and the learning experience from the student’s perspective.

In contrast, learning design starts from the student and the learning process, explicitly incorporating constructive alignment between outcomes, activities, and assessment. It emphasises visual, reflective, and collaborative planning that enables teachers to see the learning experience as a whole.

Nevertheless, contemporary trends in instructional design show a convergence of these approaches - broadening the focus from content planning toward designing the entire learning experience (cf. Reiser, Carr-Chellman & Dempsey, 2025). In this way, learning design and instructional design are increasingly viewed as complementary approaches aimed at enhancing the quality and effectiveness of teaching.

The use of digital tools, such as Balanced Design Planning  (BDP), enables alignment of learning outcomes, teaching activities, estimation of the time needed for each activity, and forms of assessment.