Can you create e-learning courses without professional instructional design?

You need to use learning design best practices if you want your course to help your course participants achieve real transformation (as opposed to just exposing them to information, which is what too many online courses do).

As others have very helpfully suggested, there are many ways to get professional instructional design, from reading books to taking courses to getting a degree in the field yourself.

For example, I’ve developed a research-based method of “minimal viable learning design” that works to create effective and engaging online courses, whether you’re an experienced classroom-based educator or have never taught before in any context.

To develop that, it took me a lifetime of training and experience in education. It took me ten years, a second Masters degree in education with a focus on instructional technology, and trying all the things that DON’T work (including many things that do work in classrooms but don’t work online).

I discovered that you can’t just take something that works in live in person teaching, digitize it, and get effective online instruction. It’s essential to understand the context and the medium you’re working in to make your online instruction come alive and deliver results for your course participants.

So to answer your question, you CAN create something that superficially looks like an e-learning course without professional instructional design, but why would you want to? You’d be creating the empty shell of a product that doesn’t actually do what it promises to do.

If you want to actually DELIVER TRANSFORMATION that changes peoples’ lives for the better, it’s essential to understand the research-based science and learning design best practices that make that specific type of transformation happen.