Instructional Designers In Offices Drinking Coffee

With so many courses being created on a regular basis, and so few of them showing much level of improvement, how do we make a better learning mouse trap? Communities! People learn best when they are connecting with other people. And in the standard models of instructional design we typically leave participants on their own after the training event has occurred. But when we know that learning is a long-term process, why don't we do more to support that? Well... now we can. This week on IDIODC we'll be talking with Shannon Tipton who regularly engages the students who take her courses with a slack group for collaborative engagement before, during, and after the main training events. This idea isn't new, but executing it successfully certainly is. Join us and hear how Shannon has successfully integrated communities into her learning designs. Grab your thinking cap, a cup of coffee or tea (or whatever your drink of choice may be), and get ready for an insightful session with Shannon, Brent and Chris! Shannon Tipt

Welcome to another edition of IDIODC Drink'n'Draw-ing with Kevin Thorn, we'll be talking about the usage and importance of icons as graphic elements in your instructional designs. (Not sure what Drink'n'Draw is? Catch up on our last Drink'n'Draw episode with Kevin Thorn here on Youtube: https://youtu.be/2AO-ov8QESY ) With a favourite returning guest Kevin Thorn in the house, he'll be showing us how to start with a sketch and build your own icon sets. We'll be looking to your, the chat room audience, for inspiration. You will all vote on an idea. Kevin will show us how to sketch it, snap a photo of it, import it into Illustrator and convert it to an icon.But even if you're not a graphic designer, you can still benefit from understanding this design process. You may not become the world's greatest icon creator, but in a pinch you could be the person that saves a project from doom because you had this little skill. And there is a psychology to icons as well that we will discuss along with the importance of under

Happy new year and welcome to the new decade! Wait, new decade... hard to believe it's already been 10 years since our last decade, and ten more since the last before - which marked another millennium. Oh how time flies. But, sometimes putting everything in perspective is helpful to understand our experiences and what we've accomplished in the past, not to mention to better understand what future days might bring! Yes, you guessed it. This is an episode on new year's resolutions, but it's also an episode to start off 2020 with a head start specifically for the Instructional Designer/ Learning Professional. Upcoming trends, changes in learning and training thinking, the future of our industry, formulating (or at least learning about) new strategies and starting off the year with some positive reinforcement on how far we've come already. Did we mention we'll have on special guest Will Thalhiemer, PhD to chat with Brent and Chris? Welcome to our first session of 2020! Looking forward to getting IDIODC with you. 

Hey, Merry end of year reporting Season! ...What? That's not a thing? Sure it is! This is the perfect time of year to be reflecting on your accomplishments and the value you add to your organization. But the big question is What do you count? What data do you have that tells the best story? Well, it's not too late to figure that out. Wrapping up 2019 with a solid EOY report is the best way to put the last 365 days into perspective. Evaluate what you've accomplished and note all things you may have not had enough time for as well. This sort of report will not only show you how far you've come, but also help you better forecast 2020! In this session we're going to help you discover the most important things for your department to count in order to show your work at the end of the year. Sam Rogers, of Snap Synapse has helped clients solve this annual reporting problem every year since 2001. And if it's too late for this year... then this is the perfect time to learn what you should do in 2020. It's a win no matt

The eLearning industry has had mobile learning, or mLearning, for well over 15 years now. Wow! Has it really been that long? Yep. So, are you creating mLearning? Have you moved to a mobile first methodology? What about your SCORM packages in your LMS are they mobile ready? And don't forget about xAPI... Aaahhh.... It can all feel a little overwhelming. But thankfully we have Robert Gadd with us on this episode of IDIODC. He's going to help us clear the air, and make sense out of the confusion. As one of the earliest proponents of mLearning, Robert has seen it all. He's developed many, many mLearning solutions and understands the frustration instructional designers have. When we're done, you'll have a much better idea of how to proceed with mLearning in your organization. And we'll sort out the big question: SCORM? xAPI? or both? Robert is an experienced technologist with demonstrable experience designing, developing and leveraging next generation technologies while building successful companies. Currently lea

If you work in any of the highly regulated and controlled industries as a trainer or instructional designer, you may have found it to be lacking in creativity and innovation. You likely spend the majority of your time developing and supporting compliance training that must first be approved by a committee of members from all departments. And we all know how that turns out. Learners receive boring slides filled with jargon approved by the legal team.The good news is that it doesn’t need to be that way. As an instructional designer working in the finance industry for many years, James Gilchrist has taken on the task of navigating difficult environments, pushing up against corporate boundaries, and succeeding at being innovative.It’s not often that we find a creative soul like James working in this type of environment and willing to share his tips and tricks with the IDIODC community.James is an Associate Director at the DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation) in its DTCC Learning department. Hired as

You want to get into designing better instructor-led training events, yes? You have the drive and the need, but you're just missing one key ingredient to making it happen - the time... So, you sigh at the clock and go back to your old friend PowerPoint to get in some basic bullet points and clip art into your presentation. Oh c'mon, we've all been there.This week on IDIODC, show hosts Brent and Chris are talking with expert ILT designer, Brian Washburn. He's had many many years of experience designing and delivering ILT sessions in many different environments. Over those years, he has collected a substantial library of outlines, frameworks, activities, slide designs, workbook/handout templates, and more. Brian is here to share the secrets of cutting your design time in half... or more while also keeping the content engaging for learners!Brian Washburn is the co-founder and CEO of Endurance Learning, a boutique instructional design firm that creates instructor-led and elearning courses with the vision that eve

Whether you're a learning professional or a marketer, you're competing for the same thing: attention. Without it, you can't get people to think and act in new ways. Though, there is one big difference between these two professionals. Marketers have been much more successful. Savvy marketers understand that tapping into the psychology of emotions sparks engagement in today's hyper-distracted world. That's a mindset learning professionals need now more than ever before. Mike Taylor joins us for an engaging conversation about the many things corporate training professionals can learn from marketing professionals. We'll discuss the psychology of our audience and how marketers are better at leveraging their emotional needs with engaging imagery, video, and copywriting skills. You'll leave with a better understanding of how you can still be an instructional designer but improve your effectiveness by thinking like a marketer. With over two decades of real-life, in-the-trenches experience, designing and delivering le

Some of the greatest ideas, inventions, and innovations started as sketches. And the biggest mistake we often make is jumping into our software to start developing. But for more successful outcomes, we should all be starting with paper and pen. And if you’re one of those people that thinks “…but I can’t draw”, then this IDIODC is perfect for you. The amazing instructional illustrator Kevin Thorn joins Chris and Brent to talk about sketching in the design process. He’ll be doing some live sketching on his iPad and walking us through the basics and how it applies to designing all kinds of learning experiences. Kevin’s latest project is helping professionals increase their creativity and innovation by combining the creative process of illustration and game thinking. You don’t need to be a professional artist to practice and successfully sketch your ideas. And game thinking isn’t just about creating fun card games and board games. It’s about designing purposeful learning experiences that may or may not have game

Are you looking to venture into the xAPI, but don’t know where to start? Are you all thumbs when it comes to code? It may seem simple but for Andrew McGuire a journey with xAPI started by building the most basic of elements. Andrew is excited to share with you the details about how he found a simple (not easy) way to learn how to use xAPI. Andrew began working at his current position thinking xAPI as a nothing more than a replacement to SCORM. He had also done little more than edit code. Then he found an article on how to send statements to an LRS from a basic webpage. Through many failures, he focused on getting the core elements working and then adding on to that. In this way, he was able to implement a webpage utilization tracker with xAPI that fit his company’s business needs. Since then, he has been able to lead an effort that got xAPI implemented into an enterprise-wide performance support utilization tracking solution. This was done by developing iterative prototypes that added value, researching exist

When creating powerful learning content, an organization and its practitioners need to do more than follow a simple series of steps. There are a collection of different cultural values and practices that must be addressed in order to deliver learning that reaches its full potential, and be a rich and enjoyable experience for the audience. Three team members from the Canada School of Public Service (CSPS), will share stories about applying Learning Experience Design (LXD), the application of Design Thinking for the development of learning experiences and products. Their multi-disciplinary team won an Award of Excellence in Innovation earlier this month and they are eager to share what they have learned. This chats special guests:David E. ElliottCharlaine LapointeChristian Sabourin Become virtual friends with the IDIODC gang on twitter. Remember you can always stay in the loop by searching through the #IDIODC tag: Charlaine: @CharlaineLapo https://twitter.com/charlainelapo?lang=enDavid: @DavidEElliott https://t

DevLearn is here and so is the IDIODC gang! For this episode of IDIODC, show hosts Brent and Chris bring together the next IDIODC Meetup & Hangout live and in-person at DevLearn 2019. We wanted to be able to have you guys join us virtually! The gang hangouts, networks, and chats over a cup of coffee on Wednesday, October 23 (the first day of the DevLearn Conference and Expo). Will you be in Vegas for DevLearn for this time? Check out the session live and sign up to save your spot. What's DevLearn? - DevLearn is commonly known as one of North America's favourite cutting edge conferences for technologies. Every year without fail, The eLearning Guild brings outstanding keynotes, sessions and activities allowing for some serious learning and networking opportunities. So what are we talking about in this cast? - Microlearning, check out this cast for a micro session on the topic. The gang goes over the variety of things that seem to be called microlearning these days. Is Microlearning just small lessons? Or is

Do you remember your first instructional design project? Not the one you did in school, but the first REAL course you created for a client or first full time job? No doubt it included a decent amount of stress and anxiety. Those are feelings you’d likely rather forget, but the lessons you learned probably shaped the way you work even to this day.On this weekly episode of IDIOODC, Chris Van Wingerden and Brent Schlenker talk with friend Mike Simmons, founder of Catalyst Sale, and host of the Catalyst Sale Podcast. He recently produced and launched his first training course and he’s agreed to share a few of his many lessons learned during the process. Most of us suffer from the “curse of knowledge” and have forgotten what it’s like to be a beginner. Check out the fun conversation with Mike as we all take a step back and re-learn the importance of what we do as instructional designers.Mike works in revenue operations, predictable growth through data and design. He is an advisor, consultant and practitioner as th

The workflow of the L&D professional has changed significantly over the years. Our design processes may not have changed much, but the tools we use have. One of the most obvious improvements has come from the internet economy giving us Software-as-a-Service or SaaS product. Today we’re chatting with Mark Sheppard about how he manages his L&D workflow strategy. We will be discussing how you can take advantage of “sharing” features and collaborative team features. And of course, we’ll be sharing our lists of favourite SaaS based L&D productivity apps. So bring your list, so that you can be a part of the sharing. Mark is a Canadian L&D professional. He has been an instructional development officer, training coordinator, member of the eLearning Guild Advisory Board and a learning and leadership consultant. Become virtual friends with the IDIODC gang on twitter. Remember you can always stay in the loop by searching through the #IDIODC tag: https://twitter.com/search?q=%23IDIODC&src=typed_query&

Are you ready for the rise of the hybrid Instructional Design roles? According to Burning Glass Technologies, a labor market analytics company,“ More and more jobs are “hybrids,” combining skill sets that never used to be found in the same job, such as marketing and statistical analysis, or design and programming.” In this episode of IDIODC Brent Schlenker and Chris Van Wingerden talking with Myra Roldan who has been researching the changes in the job market to identify the new knowledge, skills, and abilities that are and will be required for various roles across a number of industries (including a number of training roles) in order to develop competency-based education programs. Myra shares some of her findings and strategies / tools that you can use to skill, cross skill, upskill, or reskill yourself in order to prepare yourself for the job market evolution. Myra Roldan is a TEDx speaker, author, Award-winning Instructional Designer. Myra has an MBA, MSEd and a Bachelors of Information Technology/Computer

For this session of IDIODC, Kristen Hayden Safide from Motivf joins Brent Schlenker and Chris Van Wingerden for a conversation on applying design thinking into learning and training. The three go over "empathy mapping" in the live cast allowing for attendees of the cast to participate in a basic map, outlining their thoughts and feelings in regards to specific question asked. You can check out the IDIODC cast's live empathy map here: https://app.mural.co/t/motivf2327/m/motivf2327/1569416650505/f25f56dc17414ff50c4f25d7c3e8b30378936f1b But how to these empathy maps help training departments and businesses? Check it out in the session here! Looking to join our next conversation live so you can get in on the fun? Looking to ask questions and participate in answering others questions? Get involved in the community! Stay tuned on our Crowdcast channel where we air the live session (nearly) every Wednesday morning at 10 AM ET. Stay for the conversation but leave with the knowledge of how you can improve your trainin

Need better results from training? In this episode of IDIODC we’re talking with Patti Shank who’s written the books on applying targeted, scientifically-proven tactics that deliver needed results. As she states on her web site... "Too much training lacks the elements needed to learn, remember, and apply. Too much instruction actually makes it harder to learn! Not okay!" With her intense focus on research Patti points us to tactics that are proven and improve outcomes. You won’t need a Ph.D for today’s session because will help us all understand how to put the research into practice in practical ways as we design and develop our training content. She digs deep into research-driven tactics from training, cognition, educational psychology, information design, usability, and other fields. Stay for the conversation but leave with the knowledge of how you can improve your training design & development. Join the learning chat, ask questions, participate in answering others questions and get involved in the commu

This week's IDIODC is about green screen and sharing the experiences and experiments of an instructional designer trying to put it into practice. It's more than just a conversation with an expert. Today is about sharing a story of learning. In this session, you'll learn a lot about green screen, what it is, how much it costs, what tools to use, and how it can be misused. As video technologies drop in price, and the demand for video content increases, all IDs should know the basics as well as the intermediate and advanced tips and tricks of video production. Join us this week with an great IDIODC Community member and returning guest Jac Hutchinson as she shares her experiments in green screen and learn just how easy it is to be green. Jacqueline is the CEO of e-Learning Pros Instructional Design Inc., a Caledon, Ontario based instructional design and development firm offering outsourced eLearning instructional design, development and LMS administration. e-Learning Pros Instructional Design Inc.'s focus is inst

Welcome back friends to the first episode of IDIODC back from summer vacation! We gotta say, we missed you guys. We can't wait to start off September with a conversation over a much needed cup of coffee with just us learning folk. Reminder for season 3, if you want to catch us live on Crowdcast.com, we will now be airing at 10am ET. Don't miss us! https://www.crowdcast.io/dominknow For this first episode of IDIODC Season 3, we will be talking with the ever so intelligent, Anna Leach! There are very few data analysts who understand instructional design, or care about it for that matter. As we all hear about the coming tsunami of data via xAPI and other technologies, we need to figure out how to use it. More importantly, we need to understand why it's important to gather data and plan how we will use it to improve the learning solutions we provide. We'll have a great conversation with Anna about her journey and what she's learned while blending the fields of Learning Technologies and Data Analytics. Anna is a P

So you finally finished your EdTech degree and landed your first job. Congratulations! Now what? Transitioning from academia to corporate life is a big transition in itself, but it’s not your last. At some point will need to decide if moving into management is right for your career. Making the leap is not an easy decision.There are pros & cons to be weighed. Are you okay giving up your technical skills? Will you enjoy strategic problem solving? Are you doing it just for more money? This week we are lucky to have Mel Milloway as our guest. She recently moved into the ranks of management and will talk with us about making that transition. From individual contributor to managing a team is part of our agenda, but we’ll also talk about L&D career planning in general. The paths people take in this industry are as varied as the paths people take getting started. Join us and share your stories in the chat room while we enjoy a cup of career coffee together. Mel has a seriously jam-packed resume. With over 8 y