Rumie Initiative | Volunteer
Volunteer opportunity for new learning designers and instructional designers. Commit to at least 3 hours per week and build a short module that you can use in your portfolio.
Blog posts
Success Case Method | Better Evaluation
Overview of Brinkerhoff's Success Case Method for evaluating training programs. In this method, you gather stories from some of the most and least successful participants.
The Success Case Method deliberately looks at the most, and least, successful participants of a program. The purpose is not to examine the average performance - rather, by identifying and examining the extreme cases, it asks: 'When the program works, how well does it work? What is working, and what is not?'.
Freelancers: Five Steps to Write a Cold Email That Converts New Clients | Observer
Options and sample emails for freelancers. These templates assume the writer has a blog and other social media channels to promote content for potential clients.
The Freelance Designer's Guide to Cold Emailing (with Templates) | Dribbble
Parts of this guide are maybe too general and not specific enough if you're just getting started, but the templates and example emails are helpful.
Strategies for Humanizing Training
Rance Green summarizes the structure for instructional story design.
<div class="lw-widget-in learnworlds-main-text learnworlds-element learnworlds-main-text-normal" data-element-id="textNormal" data-node-type="text" id="el_1658785768982_396" style="">To sum up this structure, it looks like this: <br></div><h4 class="lw-widget-in learnworlds-heading4 learnworlds-heading4-large learnworlds-element" data-element-id="textNormal" data-node-type="text" id="el_1658786051875_436" style=""><div style="text-align: center;">STORY <span style="color: rgb(255, 132, 0);">> </span>REFELECT <span style="color: rgb(255, 132, 0);">> </span>SOLVE <span style="color: rgb(255, 132, 0);">> </span>FEEDBACK</div></h4><ul class="lw-widget-in lw-cols oneItem-per-row multiple-rows learnworlds-element js-same-content-wrapper" data-node-type="listWrapper" data-element-id="listType1" id="el_1658951004446_1498">
<li class="col no-padding flex-item with-flexible-parts non-flexible js-lw-flexible-wrapper js-same-content-child" data-node-type="listItem" id="el_1658951004451_1508">
<span class="learnworlds-main-text-normal flexible-part learnworlds-icon lw-brand-text fas fa-angle-right" data-node-type="icon" id="el_1658951004453_1509"></span>
<div class="flexible-part learnworlds-main-text learnworlds-element learnworlds-main-text-normal" data-node-type="text" id="el_1658951004454_1510">Tell the story first.</div>
</li>
<li class="col no-padding flex-item with-flexible-parts non-flexible js-lw-flexible-wrapper js-same-content-child" data-node-type="listItem" id="el_1658951004455_1511">
<span class="learnworlds-main-text-normal flexible-part learnworlds-icon lw-brand-text fas fa-angle-right" data-node-type="icon" id="el_1658951004456_1512"></span>
<div class="flexible-part learnworlds-main-text learnworlds-element learnworlds-main-text-normal" data-node-type="text" id="el_1658951004457_1513">Ask the learner to reflect on the story. </div>
</li>
<li class="col no-padding flex-item with-flexible-parts non-flexible js-lw-flexible-wrapper js-same-content-child" data-node-type="listItem" id="el_1658951004458_1514">
<span class="learnworlds-main-text-normal flexible-part learnworlds-icon lw-brand-text fas fa-angle-right" data-node-type="icon" id="el_1658951004458_1515"></span>
<div class="flexible-part learnworlds-main-text learnworlds-element learnworlds-main-text-normal" data-node-type="text" id="el_1658951004459_1516">Ask the learner to solve something based on the story.</div>
</li>
<li class="col no-padding flex-item with-flexible-parts non-flexible js-lw-flexible-wrapper js-same-content-child" data-node-type="listItem" id="el_1658951103925_1569">
<span class="learnworlds-main-text-normal flexible-part learnworlds-icon lw-brand-text fas fa-angle-right" data-node-type="icon" id="el_1658951103924_1567"></span>
<div class="flexible-part learnworlds-main-text learnworlds-element learnworlds-main-text-normal" data-node-type="text" id="el_1658951103924_1568">Give the learner feedback on their answers.</div></li></ul>
40+ Best Affinity Publisher Templates & Assets 2022 (Free & Premium) | Design Shack
Templates for Affinity Publisher, including brochures, project proposals, and ebooks.
Viral Post Generator
An AI took for writing a viral LinkedIn post--the kind with one sentence per paragraph and some vaguely inspirational advice that the LinkedIn algorithm loves. Use the slider to control the "cringe level" of the text. While this is good just for a funny break in your day, I could see using this as an Easter Egg in a scenario or a mockup in an elearning course.
Top 100 Tools for Learning 2022 – Results of the 16th Annual Survey
Jane Hart's report on the top 100 tools for learning in her annual survey. Tools are categorized based on whether they are mostly used for personal learning, workplace learning, and education (although there's plenty of overlap and exceptions in those categories).
Visual Design Basics for eLearning Development | How-To Workshop - YouTube
Tim Slade explains basics of visual design for new elearning developers, focusing on picking fonts, colors, and images, plus creating slide layouts.
Why You Should Never Center Align Paragraph Text
Longer text should be left aligned, not centered, to improve readability
Left aligned text is easier to read than centered text for paragraphs. This is because when you center your text, the starting place of each line changes. This forces your users to work harder to find where each line begins to continue reading. Without a straight left edge, there is no consistent place where users can move their eyes to when they complete each line.
Does Text Alignment Matter for Accessibility and Usability?
Centering text makes it harder to read, especially for longer paragraphs. This hurts accessibility and usability.
The reason why center text alignment is horrible for user experience is that with each new line the user reads, there is a brief moment where the user has to find where the next line begins – decreasing the users reading speed.
In my opinion centered paragraphs are only acceptable up to a point, 3 lines of text to be specific. Anymore, it becomes too displeasing to read each line after.
Primary page titles should be okay centered as they tend to not have as many words and therefore lines of text. Most page titles aren’t long enough that text alignment becomes an issue with usability. However, with secondary titles (h2’s) and anything under should always be left-aligned to match its paragraph text.
Left text alignment should be used in 95% of cases to help your readers read at an optimal, undiminished reading speed.
You can use center alignment in small doses like main page headings without detracting from the user’s experience.
Only use justified text for mediums where its commonplace like material books or e-books.
The only commonplace acceptable use of right alignment is navigations on websites.
Great Twine Games - Collection by Chapel - itch.io
Examples of games built in Twine
Top games made with Twine - itch.io
All of the top games made with Twine on the hosting platform itch.io. This is a great place to look for some inspiration with interactive fiction.
Urban Library Trauma Study – Urban Librarians Unite
Standard Operating Procedures: The Foundation of a Freelancing or Consulting Business • Kai Davis
Free Google Doc template for creating SOPs for freelancers. For a one-person business, this documentation doesn't have to be very fancy--but it does help to document processes to improve your efficiency. You don't have to keep making the same decisions over and over about what comes next if you write down some processes, even for yourself.
The Enduring Allure of Choose Your Own Adventure Books | The New Yorker
The history of the Choose Your Own Adventure series and how it evolved over time. Branching scenario training even gets a brief mention (as "Branching Path Simulations" for training nurses). If you're looking for practical tips for creating branching narratives, this isn't that article. However, if you loved the original books and are curious about the history, it is interesting.
You didn’t necessarily identify with the unnamed “you” who starred in each book. It was more that each protagonist offered you an alternative to yourself, or forty alternatives to yourself. The second person was less like a mirror and more like a costume.
The fact of multiple endings offers a sense of freedom and safety at once, reconciling two conflicting desires of childhood: autonomy and protection.
Randomness was never part of his compositional strategy. “My philosophy was that it should be like life,” he tells you. Smart decisions were more likely to result in a better outcome but wouldn’t always guarantee it. Virtuous choices didn’t always pay off.
Anson always writes one “Golden Ticket” ending where you get exactly what you want, and a few “Golden Ticket minus one” paths where you get almost everything, but not quite.
The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information - Forte Labs
This is outside my usual learning-related resource, but I think it's relevant to IDs and elearning developers because we tend to generate loads of digital files. We also frequently have multiple projects happening simultaneously (and if you do freelance or consulting work, those projects are on different systems). This article is about a method for both clearly identifying your projects and tasks as well as organizing the resources to support them.
Bubbly — CSS speech bubbles made easy
A free tool for generating speech bubbles in CSS. Something like this might be usable in Twine with some tweaking to assign this formatting based on tags.
StorytellingResources - Duets Learning
Hadiya Nurridin's templates and documents for crafting stories for learning. These are mostly for IDs to use, not that would be given to a stakeholder to review.
Random Plot Generator
A writing prompt tool to generate two characters, a setting, situation, theme, and character action. This could be a fun way to start scenarios if you're feeling stuck. h/t Jean Marrapodi
Submit Button CSS Selectors - Gravity Forms Documentation
How to adjust the submit button style with CSS
Transitioning from education to instructional design
Melanie Knight has been doing some great posts sharing her notes and reflections as she learns about instructional design and transitions her career. This article is a reflection on her journey so far and the ways she has been learning and sharing. She also includes a list of resources that she has learned from.
Here is the 5 steps DnD story framework I use to design stories for my e-learning modules :
A 5-part story structure based on DnD campaigns
FreeFuse | Interactive Streaming
FreeFuse is a tool for interactive video. They advertise that they use AI to convert video into interactive content. I haven't tried it, but it might be interesting to test for creating branching video scenarios.
Content Theories Of Motivation
An overview of different motivation theories, including Maslow's hierarchy of needs, ERG theory, self-determination theory, and Herzberg's two-factor theory. This is part of a larger resource on gamification.
Stock Photo and Image Portfolio by DREAM Initiative Gallery | Shutterstock
Collection of free images with inclusive representation of disability, race, hair, body type, and more. These are all posed images, mostly with models looking directly at the camera and smiling while wearing coordinated outfits. These probably wouldn't be the most useful for elearning courses, but it's still a source to bookmark for those times when you specifically need to show diversity.
Translating Research to the Classroom: the Case of Discovery Learning |Education & Teacher Conferences
<p> They see discovery learning and direct instruction not as <em>two different things</em>, but as <em>ends of a continuum</em>:</p>
<blockquote><p>“No learning experience is pure: students given <em>direct instruction</em> often find themselves struggling to <em>discover</em> what the teacher means, and all <em>discovery</em> situations involve some minimal amount of <em>guidance</em>.”</p></blockquote>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">We should use high-structure pedagogy with <em>novices</em>, who are <em>early in schema formation</em>.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 30px;">And, we should use low-structure pedagogy with <em>experts</em>, who are <em>later in the process of schema formation</em>.</p>
The minimal relationship between simulation fidelity and transfer of learning - PubMed
Does a high-fidelity simulation produce better results than a low-fidelity simulation? This meta analysis didn't find a significant advantage, at least in training for clinical and patient care skills. That doesn't mean some other skills wouldn't benefit from high-fidelity simulations, but it does support the idea that the lower cost simulations can still provide positive results.
Online Course Side Hustle tips
LinkedIn post by Dr. Philippa Hardman with tips for creating an online course as a side hustle. While I don't think most people are going to be making the kinds of profit she is, the pricing tiers made sense to me. More time spent by the instructor and lower ratios = higher prices.
Course creators consistently under value their courses. Completion rates are 61% higher when online courses cost $200 or higher. Per-seat prices are higher when courses offer a "beyond YouTube" experience - i.e. participation, creation & connection.<br><br>These tiers work well for me: <br><br>Premium: ~4 hrs of my time per week: £500-£1k per seat, cohort-instructor ratio of 1:20 <br><br>Mid: ~1-3 hrs of my time per per week: £250-£500 per seat, cohort-instructor ratio of 1:50 <br><br>Scale: ~1-3 hrs of my time per per month: £100-£250 per seat, cohort-instructor ratio of 1:infinite
Projects and Projections Worksheet - Google Sheets
Free spreadsheet for projecting your annual income based on multiple freelance projects or income streams. This format is different from how I do my own projections, but it's a good starting point. You can make a copy of the template and use it yourself.