Instructional Design Hiring Manager Report 2021
Devlin Peck summarizes and analyzes responses from 101 hiring managers surveyed about what factors influence their decisions when evaluating instructional design and elearning candidates.
How to Use Plain Language to Improve Learning Outcomes | Scissortail Creative Services, LLC
We all probably know we should use easier to understand language in instructional writing, but this article provides more specifics on how to actually do that. The before and after writing example shows what a significant difference it can make.
What is instructional design? Examples and online courses - Business Insider
Basic overview of ID for those interested in the field. This article highlights a few online programs for learning about instructional design, plus 3 bloggers to read: Connie Malamed, Cathy Moore, and me.
You're Hearing Voices: Episode 28 - Anu Gopu (e-Learning and Instructional Design)
Podcast interview by voice over artist Dan Hankiewicz with guest ID Anu Gopu. Anu talks about her journey into instructional design and how to condense info from wordy SMEs who want to include everything. Anu also talks about who she learns from in the field (including me).
CALC / Contract-Awarded Labor Category
See how much the GSA has paid in past awarded contracts for the US federal government. You can use the filters to see hourly rate comparisons by education, experience, role, keywords, etc. You can also export the data in CSV for further analysis.
Designing Scenario-Based Learning for Skill Development | Learning Solutions Magazine
This article from Bill Brandon gives an overview of the development sequence for scenario-based learning, plus a preview of my session on Streamlining Branching Scenario Planning and Design.
<a href="https://learningsolutionsmag.com/articles/1108/how-to-engage-learners-with-scenario-based-learning-/?utm_campaign=lspub&utm_medium=link&utm_source=link">Scenario-based learning</a> (SBL) and the inclusion of practice with feedback are much more effective approaches to the development of skill and competence.
Learnexus
Learnexus is a platform for freelancers to find projects and clients to find freelancers. It's focused on instructional designers and elearning developers, rather than being a general freelancer site like UpWork. They also screen freelancers, so they are hopefully filtering out some of the folks at the low end of the market. The site is new though, so the pool of people and projects is small currently.
ID—LXD: Moving from Instructional Design to Learning Experience Design
How to give delayed FEEDBACK in a Google Form -
Branching scenarios can be built in Google Forms. It may not be my first choice as a tool, but plenty of teachers in schools are restricted to Google tools. This post goes step by step to show how to provide either immediate or delayed feedback and how to create branching with the "Go to Section" option.
LinkedIn
"The Learners in the Learning" is Peter Nelson's summary and reflection after one of my recent webinars. He connects my points about focusing on what learners need to do to his own experiences with a great example about the value of observing actual learners.
Directly observing the behaviors of these folks gave me the insights I needed to tailor the solution. The same applies in a learning setting. Go watch that customer service agent <strong>IN PERSON </strong>and see for yourself what they are doing well, what they are not doing well, and what they might be totally missing.
The LPI Capability Map - Learning and Performance Institute
Free self assessment on skills and competencies in learning and development
Teachers in Need of a New Career Path: Think Instructional Design
Article from a graduate of the IDOL academy on how and why to transition from teaching to instructional design
The Ultimate L&D Podcast Guide - Training Industry
Extensive list of podcasts related to learning, training, instructional design, and technology
Donald Clark Plan B: Video for learning –15 things the research says – some may shock you…
Summary of research on using videos for learning. Video length, using "talking heads," cuts, screen size, and more.
How to quickly find the cause of a performance problem
A great idea for digging into the reason for a performance problem. Instead of just asking "why," ask "what for." What drives behavior may not be a problem that can be fixed with training.
Ger’s Learning Notes #32 - From Classroom Learning to Blended Learning - aNewSpring
Ger Driesen's curated collection of resources on elearning, blended learning, and moving training from classroom to online. Two of my blog posts on converting content are included.
Resources for Creating Branching Scenarios - E-Learning Uncovered
Diane Elkin's curated resources on creating branching scenarios, including examples, books, blog posts, and templates.
Three Answer Options Are All You Need on Multiple-Choice Tests!
While we are used to providing 4 options in multiple choice questions, using 3 is just effective. Writing good distractors is the hardest part of writing multiple choice questions. If you only have to write 2 distractors instead of 3, you can create questions faster. While it's not mentioned in this post, reducing the number of options also immensely reduces the complexity of branching scenarios.
So here’s the main finding: <u>no significant differences were found in terms of item difficulty</u>. There were also <u>no differences found in terms of test reliability</u>. Thus, Baghaei and Amrahi (2011) concluded that three answer options are all you need. If the test characteristics are essentially the same, there doesn’t seem to be any reason to spend our time developing additional answer options.
Rodriguez (2005) argues that shifting to three answer options also increases the amount of content that can be tested. Because students don’t have to spend as much time reading four or five answer options, there will be more time during the test for students to read additional questions on different course content. Instead of spending your time on identifying more answer options, spend your time developing additional test questions.
Finding Your Place In an Instructional Design Career
"Instructional design" is a big umbrella that can mean different things in different organizations. This post describes a number of options for the focus of instructional design and related roles.
Part 1 Bloom's Taxonomy Lorin Anderson Part 1 Off-the-Cuff Episode #022 - YouTube
Alexander Salas interviewed Dr. Lorin Anderson, author of the 2001 revision of Bloom's Taxonomy. They discussed how the taxonomy was intended for writing test items in higher education, not helping performance in workplace learning. It wasn't designed for writing learning objectives.
How to Become an Instructional Designer: The Definitive Guide - Devlin Peck - Performance Consultant for Corporate Training Teams
This 10,000-word guide starts at the very beginning, explaining what instructional designers are and what they do for different types of organizations. There's a quick summary of theories and different tools, tips for creating a portfolio, and info on ways to learn more.
Scenario examples for training – Learn instructional design for the workplace from Cathy Moore
A collection of example scenarios from multiple sources, built in multiple tools. Cathy describes each scenario and asks questions to help you reflect about the design.
Great Storytelling and Compliance Training an Obvious Match | Learning Solutions Magazine
Weaving stories into compliance training helps keeps learners engaged. Includes quotes and descriptions of examples used by several companies on how they implemented it. These aren't straightforward traditional elearning; one is a podcast, another uses episodic training with characters who return over time to build their story.
Learning experience design is NOT a new name for instructional design. | LinkedIn
Niels Flor compares what he sees as the differences between instructional design and learning experience design. I don't agree with 100% of this; I think his definition of ID is too narrow. The review of the history and differences in evolution is helpful in understanding the alternative perspective though.
<p><strong>“Instructional design</strong> is creating instructional experiences which make the acquisition of knowledge and skill more efficient, effective, and appealing.” (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instructional_design" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Wikipedia</a>)</p>
<p><strong>“Learning experience design</strong> is the process of creating learning experience that enable the learner to achieve the desired learning outcome in a human centered and goal-oriented way.” </p>
Instructional designers are taught to work within this system using a <strong>systematic and rule-based approach</strong>. Their expertise is choosing the right technology for content delivery and method of transfer.
It is rooted in a variety of design disciplines like interaction design, user experience design, game design and graphic design. A learning experience designer combines these design skills, tools and methods with theoretical and practical expertise about learning. LX designers use their <strong>creative freedom to explore and design</strong> different kinds of learning experiences.
Inclusive and Universal Design Resources for Accessibility in eLearning
An extensive collection of resources and archived presentations by Brian Dusablon regarding accessibility for elearning
How to Conduct a Lightning-Fast Needs Assessment Clients Will Love
7 questions for needs assessment to help you figure out if you're addressing the actual problem and if that problem can be addressed with training or some other solution.
Clive on Learning: Gender equality and the design dilemma
Do you think about gender representation when selecting images for elearning? This post doesn't mention other forms of representation, but I think the discussion of organizational culture applies to other dimensions of inclusion too.
Hack ID
Free resources for new instructional designers, including free courses and ebooks
5 Steps to Using Design Thinking in Learning Experience Design
A quick introduction to design thinking and steps that can be incorporated into design for learning. Some of this may overlap with what you're already doing, such as interviewing learners and creating prototypes.
Cracking the Case Design: How Duke TIP Does PBL
Using mysteries as the basis for Problem-Based learning with cases to solve. While this is for K12 classrooms, I think you could apply some of the same story elements to creating scenarios for workplace training.