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How to Become an Instructional Designer: The Ultimate Resource List - Scissortail Creative Services, LLC
How to Become an Instructional Designer: The Ultimate Resource List - Scissortail Creative Services, LLC
An extensive list of curated resources for becoming an instructional designer, including blog posts, videos, books, and people to follow on Twitter. There's a section specifically for teachers looking to transition to an ID career too. (Yes, my ID careers posts are on the list, but there's a ton of other good stuff from other people too).
·scissortailcs.com·
How to Become an Instructional Designer: The Ultimate Resource List - Scissortail Creative Services, LLC
How to manage “Can I pick your brain?” requests - Ness Labs
How to manage “Can I pick your brain?” requests - Ness Labs

These suggestions on how to handle requests for free advice are the ways I handle them. I'll answer questions via email for free, and I often send links and resources. But if you want a paid 1:1 call, especially if you're vague about what you want, you're going to have to pay for my time like every other consulting client.

This article also includes ideas on how to make better requests, and that's what's probably most helpful here. i'm much more likely to respond to specific, brief requests where people know what they want and have clearly made some attempt to research on their own.

<strong>Do your research.</strong> Show that you have tried to get the information you need in other ways, and resolved to send them an email because you could not figure out an answer to your query based on what’s freely available through other means. “I have read your blog post about X and wanted to ask…” or “I see that you joined the editorial team of this magazine a year ago and I was wondering…” show that you have done your research and need further information.
·nesslabs.com·
How to manage “Can I pick your brain?” requests - Ness Labs
6 Things Video Games Can Teach You About Writing Engaging Scenarios - E-Learning Heroes
6 Things Video Games Can Teach You About Writing Engaging Scenarios - E-Learning Heroes
Tips for writing engaging scenarios, plus examples from specific games
Now, this isn’t to say your scenario’s aesthetics are meaningless. It’s more that if you have a limited amount of time and resources, it’s best to focus on crafting the story and keep the look and feel simple.
<p>When it doesn’t take much thinking to identify the correct choice, it quickly becomes boring.</p> <p>Instead, it’s better to give your audience challenging yet realistic decisions to ponder. Things that make them think hard about what the best option could be. </p>
So what’s the best way to avoid clunky 90’s video game dialogue in your scenarios? Read your script out loud as you’re drafting it. If it sounds weird as you say it, that’s a good sign that it could use reworking.
Fun is a crucial part of what makes game-like experiences like scenarios so engaging. Just make sure that the majority of the fun serves to reinforce the project’s learning goals.
·community.articulate.com·
6 Things Video Games Can Teach You About Writing Engaging Scenarios - E-Learning Heroes
Free Lottie Animation Files, Tools & Plugins - LottieFiles
Free Lottie Animation Files, Tools & Plugins - LottieFiles
Lottie animations are lightweight. This site has both free and paid animations. You can also do quick edits in their browser-based editor (like changing colors or text), as well as integrating with other tools. The animations users see after completing a Duolingo lesson are Lottie animations.
·lottiefiles.com·
Free Lottie Animation Files, Tools & Plugins - LottieFiles
Jakob’s Law | Laws of UX
Jakob’s Law | Laws of UX
This came up in a discussion on LinkedIn about whether visual appeal leads to better learning outcomes. (h/t Sarah Mercier) While this isn't about learning, it's about usability--and that is important in how people perceive and interact with elearning. It doesn't answer the question about learning outcomes, but visual design can have strong effects on perception.
Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable.
An aesthetically pleasing design creates a positive response in people’s brains and leads them to believe the design actually works better.
People are more tolerant of minor usability issues when the design of a product or service is aesthetically pleasing.
·lawsofux.com·
Jakob’s Law | Laws of UX
User Experience Design
User Experience Design
This "User Experience Honeycomb" identifies different facets of user experience. Visual aesthetics can make a user experience "desirable," but that's not the same as it being "useful." h/t Judy Katz
·semanticstudios.com·
User Experience Design
Ask the Cognitive Scientist | American Federation of Teachers
Ask the Cognitive Scientist | American Federation of Teachers
Daniel Willingham summarizes some of the research on how stories can improve learning. In addition to the research examples, he explains elements of story as found in movies and explains how these can be applied in learning. While the learning examples are all focused on classroom teaching, some of this could be applied to workplace training too.
·aft.org·
Ask the Cognitive Scientist | American Federation of Teachers
AI Voice Generator: Versatile Text to Speech Software | MURF
AI Voice Generator: Versatile Text to Speech Software | MURF
This is an AI voice service with monthly and annual plans. While I still think that real voices are going to be more effective for most of the scenario-based learning I create, I can see the value in using AI voices for straightforward narration. You can currently do either a free test of 10 minutes with no downloads or buy a single pack of 30 minutes with a reduced list of available voices for $9, plus larger plans for more time.
·murf.ai·
AI Voice Generator: Versatile Text to Speech Software | MURF
Best from the Brightest: Key Ideas and Insights for L&P Professionals - TiER1 Performance
Best from the Brightest: Key Ideas and Insights for L&P Professionals - TiER1 Performance
48 learning and performance leaders share their favorite content shared in 2021. Use this list to find both new sources to read and new people to follow. Many of the participants also shared trends to watch in 2022, other recommended content, and additional people to follow. This list is heavy on evidence-informed design.
·tier1performance.com·
Best from the Brightest: Key Ideas and Insights for L&P Professionals - TiER1 Performance
Two Questions That Should Be Influencing Every L&D Team's Strategy
Two Questions That Should Be Influencing Every L&D Team's Strategy
"Does learning science play a role in our work, and, just how much of an impact does it have on our profession?"
Does learning science play a role in our work, and, just how <em>much</em> of an impact does it have on our profession?
We must be able to see the gaps in our instructional design, which learning science helps to <a href="https://blog.learnlets.com/2020/08/the-case-for-learning-science/">support</a>. It also gives us a basis to infer how to use new technologies. If we want to avoid doing slide presentations, we have to know what cognitive (and emotional) advantages these technologies have so we can leverage them for success.
However, I’ve argued strongly that what’s most critical is the ability to make better decisions. The decisions we make determine our success. We make better decisions <em>about</em> learning when we know how learning works. It may not be all the time, but they will be the most impactful decisions when leveraging evidence-based approaches to our work. If we don’t have the foundation for learning-grounded decisions, the important ones not be made on a solid basis.
Regardless of its latest terminology, we need to be able to see past the hype and be able to evaluate the claims.
·linkedin.com·
Two Questions That Should Be Influencing Every L&D Team's Strategy
David Kelly’s Curated L&D Content for the Week of 2/28/22 – The Learning Guild’s TWIST
David Kelly’s Curated L&D Content for the Week of 2/28/22 – The Learning Guild’s TWIST
David Kelly included my post on how research informs my work as part of his list of curated content
<strong><a href="https://www.christytuckerlearning.com/how-research-informs-my-work/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">How Research Informs My Work</a><br></strong><em>Research plays an important role in the work of learning professionals. While our work often serves organizational performance goals, educational research forms the foundations upon which we can build programs that can effectively target those goals. It’s not about one being more important than the other; as Christy Tucker explains in this inciteful post, research informs the work we do in L&amp;D.</em>
·twist.learningguild.net·
David Kelly’s Curated L&D Content for the Week of 2/28/22 – The Learning Guild’s TWIST
Recording: The Least You Need to Know About Articulate Storyline 360 - E-Learning Uncovered
Recording: The Least You Need to Know About Articulate Storyline 360 - E-Learning Uncovered
This is a recording of a webinar by William Everhart and Diane Elkins from early in the pandemic.While there are many other resources on Storyline out there that will teach more, the premise of this was that it would give you just enough to create something quickly. If you're looking for a quick start in Storyline, this would be a good way to jump in and practice before moving on to other resources.
·elearninguncovered.com·
Recording: The Least You Need to Know About Articulate Storyline 360 - E-Learning Uncovered
Does writing style change how learners perceive choices in a branched scenario? – Learningworld Design
Does writing style change how learners perceive choices in a branched scenario? – Learningworld Design
Description of PhD research on how the writing style of choices in a branching scenario affected which options learners chose and how they thought about those options. This is a small sample size, but still interesting results in favor of using dialog for branching scenario choices.
Finally, version with dialogue-based choices (see screenshot above) was perceived as more personal and engaging, “lively” and helpful for making a selection (“made me feel like I was talking out loud in my head”).
The findings from this pilot questionnaire seem to indicate that providing framing in the options themselves has more effect on the learner than providing it in an introductory text.
Additionally, options written as dialogue were experienced as more personal and elicited higher emotional reactions of the learner towards the characters. This may be of use in courses about soft skills.
·learningworlddesign.co.nz·
Does writing style change how learners perceive choices in a branched scenario? – Learningworld Design
RSS Generator - FetchRSS
RSS Generator - FetchRSS
Generate an RSS feed for any website, even if it doesn't have its own. This is really useful for keeping everything in your RSS reader rather than checking a much of separate sites. h/t Mike Taylor
·fetchrss.com·
RSS Generator - FetchRSS
Write better elearning scenarios: active or descriptive choices – Learningworld Design
Write better elearning scenarios: active or descriptive choices – Learningworld Design
In branching scenarios, descriptive choices "You tell him he is right" feel very different than active choices ""You're right!" I agree with the author that there are no hard and fast rules in branching scenarios; there are times that both can be used effectively.
The most important aspect of branching scenarios and interactive stories are the choices presented to the player/learner. Choices are what make interactive stories different from other creative writing outputs such as novels, plays and movies.
Choices can feel totally different to a player depending on how they are written, even if they seem to have the same outcome.
·learningworlddesign.co.nz·
Write better elearning scenarios: active or descriptive choices – Learningworld Design