The spring semester is underway, and it finally feels like we’ve settled into the new year. It’s time to dust off the blogging routine after a year of reconnecting with our purpose. It’s a familiar routine: creating a content schedule with deadlines and potential topics; brainstorming new ideas; outlining drafts of posts; and iterating through the words which will eventually be published on Model eLearning.
Continue reading “Refining Our Focus: A Design Team’s Journey”Tag: Design
Surprised by Inspiration from IKEA
Inspiration can strike in the most unexpected places—even a Swedish furniture store. As my coworker and fellow blogger Gwen would tell you, IKEA is one of the best places for instructional designers (ID) to find inspiration. I’ll admit that I didn’t believe her at first. However, when we visited IKEA last year as a team-building exercise, I was surprised by the inspiration that sparked my creativity and motivated me to be a better ID. Many of the ideas I found that day have stayed with me and helped me improve the ways I work with programs, subject matter experts (SME), and stakeholders to design online, blended, and face-to-face courses.
Continue reading “Surprised by Inspiration from IKEA”Delivering the Right Learning Experience
Have you ever gone to training and thought that it wasn’t as helpful as it could have been or that you would have grasped and retained the information if it was delivered differently?
Continue reading “Delivering the Right Learning Experience”Reading Wide: Learning from Beyond Instructional Design
We’ve talked before about how eLearning is a broad field that involves many disciplines. So, if you want to learn something specific to further your design skill, or just for your own personal development, it’s pretty easy to find a book that will help you on your way. In fact, Jessica wrote a pretty good list of books related to eLearning just last week.
But I want to approach that list from a slightly different angle: what not-at-all eLearning related books can we draw eLearning lessons from?
Continue reading “Reading Wide: Learning from Beyond Instructional Design”Summer Reads for Instructional Designers and Learning Professionals 2019
Summer’s a special time to read. Maybe it’s at the park, in a hammock, or under a tree. Or maybe you’re on the beach with the sound of the waves filling the gaps between the turn of the page. For me, it’s often listening to an audiobook while on a walk—something about it helps my mind drift into creative possibilities.
As instructional designers, summer’s a great time to explore related fields to stretch your skills and the way you think about design (and perhaps beat the dreaded design slump). So, here’s a few books to inspire you.
Continue reading “Summer Reads for Instructional Designers and Learning Professionals 2019”Imaginative Gridlock
In A Failure of Nerve; Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, Edwin H. Friedman tells a fascinating story.
In 1493, the publishers of the Nuremberg Chronicle stood on the brink of a transformation that would profoundly change the way they lived, worked, and related to one other. But they couldn’t see it coming. They were so paralyzed by the emotional bombardments of their time they even left several pages at the end of the book blank so their readers could record “the rest of the events until the end of the world.” Continue reading “Imaginative Gridlock”
Review: UX + LX App (And a Look at the Future of Learning Design)
Disclaimer: I’ve downloaded the UX + LX mobile app to my devices for personal use. I didn’t receive compensation for this review.
According to Pew Research Center, more people own smartphones than computers. When people don’t have anything to do, we pull out our ubiquitous devices. Imagine if we had as many learning apps as games and other apps—every moment would be an opportunity to learn (personalized learning, here we come!).
As Tara share in her post about universal design for learning, mobile learning, or mLearning, looms before us. Yet we still design learning within the confines of a learning management system (LMS) accessed by a computer.
UX + LX takes us outside of the traditional LMS and into a true mobile learning experience.
Continue reading “Review: UX + LX App (And a Look at the Future of Learning Design)”Remove Barriers to Learning with Design and Plain Writing
Over the summer, we updated our online general education syllabus template using learning theory, universal design for learning (UDL), plain writing, and accessibility principles. Recently, Dave, Tara, and I presented this process at Continue reading “Remove Barriers to Learning with Design and Plain Writing”
5 Things I do when I need Inspiration
Last week, Dave talked about a few strategies for beating design slumps. I thought I’d build on that and chime in with a few specifics—namely some of my favorite places to go for inspiration when I’m stuck. Continue reading “5 Things I do when I need Inspiration”
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