Using Scrivener for Instructional Design Scripting

There are parts of instructional design that includes some significant writing at times. This is especially true for instructional design in education. I’ve been working on writing a new Masters in Instructional Design and Technology which involves as you might expect a lot of writing. From writing assessments to writing welcome texts to writing individual lessons.

I’ve tried different tools but recently I’ve found that I prefer Scrivener from the folks at https://www.literatureandlatte.com most for writing my instructional content. This is for several reasons.

First is that it keeps all of my work for the university in one place. This allows me to only need to worry about one file and it’s expanding sections to have everything, well mostly everything, that I need.

Second is that it will back up as many previous versions you choose, just in case the file becomes corrupt you can have 5 or 10 previous versions to fall back on.

The third is when you use Dropbox as your folder of choice for saving the documents you can sync to an iOS device allowing you to access your work on the go, which is helpful in those moments of inspiration or more often when you find yourself face to face with someone who has a specific question.

But most of all. The way the tool is set up to break up the work into sections really helps me stay focused. I can focus on just the one section for as long as I can and then when I need a break from that section I can focus on another. I can jump from one section to another as many times as I want and can copy and paste from different sections and move sections around much easier.

It’s a lovely tool and if you’re working on a larger piece of writing or are doing an instructional design project that involves more writing you may want to take a closer look at Scrivener.