My View on Instructional Design

It is very interesting to read participants postings on their definitions of Instructional Design (ID). Actually, opinions vary a lot depending on experience and type of work people have been involved in. For me the first time I heard about the concept of Instructional Design is when I was attending in-house WebCT training session at my college. At that stage I was designing a WebCT comp 100 course for the purpose of the training and to be used in my classes. I ended uploading the contents and using the tools and that was about it. I achieved the objective of the training session but I could not use the course with my students. They found it to be extremely boring and they bluntly told me that they hate it. If I am to design the same course again, I will wait till the end of this course and then do it. I know for sure the reason students hated the WebCT comp 100 course was because I did not take into consideration any Instructional design issues.
My current understanding of Instructional Design is one that takes into account the whole teaching and learning environment: Participants and their past experience; learning styles and language levels; the amount of visuals and audio; flexibility and accessibility; summative and formative assessment; and participation and instructor presence. Therefore, the challenge with the instructional design is that you need to have expertise and experience in more than one area if the course to be designed by one person which is the case at many colleges. The best instructional design course will take place when you have a group of people with specific expertise to work on it.

what do others think? what is your definition of instructional design?