3 Things Every New Instructional Designer Needs to Know

All great advice. As your intro states you will need to learn “…new ways to to design your courses.” I think that is very, very important. So many times I see classroom trainers acquire dev tools and then approach elearn design like it is a face to face class. My advice is focus on learning ‘elearning’ design before diving too far into development. Here is my take from a not too recent post.

Thanks again for the great post, which will be added to my resource list for people when they ask, “How to get started in elearning?”

Great tips, Tom. My tip is to be patient with yourself as you’re getting started, as you’re saying, but to also set a goal and take regular, focused, specific action.

This is one reason why the challenges are so great. If you only make one decision – to contribute to those each week – you’ll automatically be building your skills, your portfolio of work, your confidence, and your network.

And if you start a simple blog and write a few lines about what you’ve created, you’re suddenly on your way to being a professional in the field who gets noticed. We’re all at different levels and we all learn from each other, so your contribution – even as a newbie! – is valuable.

Keep it simple at first — don’t try to implement every ‘bright shiny object’ you see in the vendor’s training videos or the product of advanced designers.

Remember that you can always go back and enhance later if you feel that comprehension would really be improved by complexity, (but that is not usually the case).

Hello Tom, Thanks for the timely post. I’m very new to designing online courses and I think my greatest challenge now is getting content for design practice. I did something a few weeks ago but not really a course but just practicing tabs with PowerPoint.
Anyway, thanks for the post, I hope to be better as I practice.

Great post, Tom! I like the soccer analogy; it really does hold true when you compare soccer and the weekly challenges. Often times, it may be difficult to come up with ideas to push yourself out of your limits, and these challenges do just that…while allowing folks to practice and hone their abilities!

I think it’s also important for instructional designers to understand that not everything comes right away; learning any subject matter takes time, and it’s no different with instructional design. I agree with Jackie – be patient with yourself, and just take time to practice.

It’s also important to fall flat every now and again; I learned some of my best lessons from failing 🙂

Interesting three points – though my top three would have to include ‘start at the end’ – develop your evaluation plan first, and agree it with the boss. Then you will know two things: you’ll know what your course needs to do, and, sometimes, you will also reveal what else needs to happen if the required performance is to be achieved. Training can only fix learning gaps, and performance is often related to other gaps. Starting with course development is really putting the cart before the horse – especially bad if in fact the problem was something to do with ploughing. Then it really doesn’t matter whether the horse or the cart comes first, it won’t fix a ploughing problem. (A second piece of advice would be to keep your metaphors simple).

We’re a gaggle of volunteers and opening a brand new scheme in our community.

Your web site offered us with useful information to work on. You have done a formidable process and our entire group
will likely be grateful to you.

Great article. I agree with your points. I too cringe at some of my first course designs! Getting feedback from someone more seasoned is key.

One tip I like to give newer IDs is to pay attention to commercials. A message is delivered very succinctly within 30 seconds. Every word and visual is carefully selected and timed. The audio script attempts to elicit some sort of emotional response from the audience while reinforcing key phrases display onscreen.

An exercise for new IDs is to analyze a 30 second commercial and create a storyboard for it. Write out the script and align the audio with the visual and text changes onscreen. After you dissect the various parts, you see the level of thought and detail that went into creating it. This is the same level of detail and choreography that needs to go into your page designs within an elearning course.

My advice for someone getting started at ID is to regularly read industry books. Regardless if you have earned a master’s degree in ID, there are a number of excellent books to study and implement in your practice.

Great advice for us first timers. I think these key points offer me the beginning stages of being an instructional designer for my company. My confidence I am sure will improve with practice and having these 3 key elements are valuable to me.

Great ideas thankyou

I wish I had read this when I first started. While I have improved vastly over the past year, I still stress over my designs. I highly recommed that new ID’s start simple and work from there. As you become more comfortable, then you can expand your skills.

Thanks for your inspirational advice about practice! I agree!

Lately I motivate myself to practice by structuring the work into small volunteer projects to solve a popular problem (like budgeting) or support a worthy cause (like helping women in technology keep their careers moving). When I’m done, I publish the final work and seek feedback, then plan the next project. Sometimes one idea can be reused in different formats to create a series that meets different learner needs. Helping others through my practices is very satisfying.

My practice work also serves as portfolio pieces, since most of my paid work is hidden behind corporate walls.

Thank you so much for the post! I’m inspired to start my next project!

Great article and advice Tom. The key advice I would give is that if you are going to practice, complete the entire project and give yourself a due date or finish by date…this way you will understand the entire process from beginning to end. This is also why the weekly challenges are great (for me) because my goal each week is to meet the deadline so that I show up in David’s recap within the weekly challenges blog.