There are known instructional strategies. If an instructional experience or environment does not include the instructional strategies required for the acquisition of the desired knowledge or skill, then effective, efficient, and appealing learning of the desired outcome will not occur. Appropriate instructional strategies can be discovered, they are not arrived at by collaborative agreement among instructional designers or learners. They are based on natural principles which do exist, and which nature will reveal as a result of careful scientific inquiry. Many persons associated with educational technology today are engaged in a flight from science.
Instructional design is a scientific and technological field.
The discipline of Instructional Design is a combination of discovery and invention. Instructional science, a subset of the field of instructional design, is the discovery of instructional strategies. The development of instructional design procedures and instructional design tools, the technology portion of instructional design, is invention. The technology of instructional design is not a natural phenomenon. It is man made, designed to serve our needs.