Welcome on in to your instructional design channel! My name is Dr. Luke Hobson and I am a learning nerd. 🤓 I'm the Senior Instructional Designer for MIT xPRO and the author of the book, "What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming an Instructional Designer." My purpose is to help you along your instructional design journey. Whether you're a newbie or you're a seasoned veteran, all are welcomed here. Let's work together to make your online learning experiences awesome!
I always wondered how I could be productive and perform my best at work, yet get nothing done at home. Body Doubling is brilliant. It’s accountability. Friends come over and I hurriedly do a quick clean, and then clean when they’re visiting, until they say, or I can tell that they want me to sit down. 😊 Either that, or I may pull all my new designer and luxury finds, like a tornado, and leave a big fashion show pile that will take me a few days to put back up. 🤦🏻♀️😮😅
Dr. Hobson, I really resonated with what you said about instructional design being all “about people, not tools.” As a developing instructional designer, I was obsessed with finding my niche and my “go-to” model, theory, tools, etc. I was so focused on working with the latest authoring tools such as Articulate and Adobe that I failed to remember that ID was about people first. It is easy to get caught up in the glamour of technology and tools. I interviewed for a couple of internships and was turned away because I lacked experience with Articulate specifically. I know this because they made it a point to mention it. However, I am registered for a workshop about prototyping eLearning with PowerPoint with Devlin Peck. Why is it that those who are only minutely aware of what instructional designers do feel the need to judge our approach as if we are responsible for reinventing the wheel for every eLearning design we create? I think that this workshop about PowerPoint as a tool for developing eLearning is a statement that we don’t always have to start from scratch and that it’s ok to work with what you have, especially if it saves money. How do we educate others who are unaware that instructional designers are not about the “bling” of eLearning tools, but the “bang”, the impact we make for the people we intend to engage?
Outstanding conversation! Dr. L'etoile, I appreciated your humbleness admitting that no one can call themselves an expert in accessibility... I think the word we are looking for is accessibility advocates. We'll always keep trying to improve our learning materials and experiences to make them more inclusive. Can't wait to hear again from you!
very helpful, thanks Luke! What would you say about preparing for an interview post-pandemic? like in 2024? I think you missed talking about resumes? or may be resumes/cover letters aren't that important?
This definitely deserves a new video! Now I would say how crucial portfolios are. They went from nice to haves to essential. That’s what I’ve been sharing about lately is how to make great portfolios.
Dr. Hobson, I find your book to be amazing, and it feels like you are speaking directly to me within its pages. Thank you so much for providing such an excellent resource for academic and career growth! BTW- we have connected on LinkedIn :) ~ Waleed Alani
English is not my native language. Let's see if I understood: You deal with the structure and how that knowledge is delivered but you don't do graphic design. Is that so? Thanks for your videos.
Appreciate all your content Dr. Hobson. I've been listening to your content for over a year now and have upskilled to the point where I've just landed my first instructional technologist level 1 position at a small college. My future goal is to become an ed-tech entrepreneur. Looking for some suggestions for ed-tech entrepreneurs you would recommend? Thanks in advance.
Congratulations! That's amazing! In the ed-tech space, I would follow Barbi Honeycutt (Lecture Breakers). She has done many incredible feats (podcast, books, conferences, etc.).
After applying job, many time in their answer they say you are very skilled and background is impressive but i did not get any interview. I recently graduated from 2 year post graduate course related to e learning designer. I have knowledge of many softwires still not getting responses. Can you please tell me what can i do. I even got very good grades from course. I am very disappointed. I have nice portfolio which shows up 2 years projects and other projects while studying
Nice to hear about global accessibility! There is a lot of potential to create a framework for how to address accessibility along various continuums. In addition, it would be interesting to hear an ethical inquiry on accessibility in terms of online design. Great work and discussion!
Thank you so much, Luke! It was a pleasure to be a part of this conversation and share my thoughts on making online learning more accessible. Looking forward to hearing more success stories from your audience!😃
I am a transitioning teacher actively applying for instructional design roles. There are some days where I feel that I have SO many transferable skills from being in the classroom and other days where I feel like I don't quite know enough. The openness of this conversation has been incredibly helpful and reaffirming!
Thoughts on creating an embedded storyline presentation on my website. The overview would be a brief video + navigation instruction so that t the user can explore at the level of depth they are interested in. Alternatively they could directly skip to the full interactive project.
That is an interesting thought experiment. A lot of it has to do with social awareness as we do work harder when we know other people are watching us due to the fact that we do not want to be judged in a negative light.
That’s certainly one concept! I also think about walking into a coffee shop or a book store. Everyone is so focused that it drives me into productivity.
@@DrLukeHobson Same here. I am very productive in a public setting like a cafe just because the ambience of the public space helps motivate me to accomplish what I set out to accomplish during the short period of time that I'm there.
Thank you for this information, Dr. Hobson! I am currently working on my doctorate in instructional design (I'm just over halfway through the program!). I have 10 years of experience in teaching math in the 7-12 setting and am currently in my 15th year of teaching math at the college level. I have always been drawn to instructional design and find myself getting involved in different projects centered around instructional design. There are so many different areas of instructional design that can make it confusing. Your video helps to put things into perspective!
Thank you for your inspirational video which gives inspiring instructional designers perspective about the job market, tips about the hiring process, portfolio advice, and networking strategies. I truly appreciate all of your resources that you share and how you are developing a community of people who want to help each other meet their goals and learn from each other! A true and gifted teacher!
Thank you for making these videos, especially this one in particular. I appreciate how realistic you are and how you give real world tips. That’s very helpful.
I have over 20 years in designing and developing training for adults and then an additional 4 years specifically under the title "instructional designer', at a university. However... 50% of the job entails working for corporate clients of the university for staff and professional development -which is great, I love it, but corporate clients see University employer and read no further. In fact, I see many ads saying "don't apply if you work at a University." With 2 masters in education, a graduate certificate in instructional design, and over 20 years developing and delivering instruction/training, I still find it impossible to land a full time instructional designer job. I have jumped through multiple interview hoops, know many of the required technologies-Articulate Storyline, Captivate, Photoshop, etc. When I decided to make the change from director/ceo/trainer for over 30 staff, plus external staff training for various organizations, it wasn't that difficult. But over the last year and a half it has been utterly discouraging. And the endless number of technologies they now want you to learn is beyond absurd. We are intelligent people and can learn the ever-evolving technologies on the job. If we can learn a few, we can learn anything new. The only job I was actually hired for-weirdly-turned out to be a 'how to' technology writer. The job descriptions, demands, expectations coming from HR and recruiters is utterly absurd. and I have seen jobs requiring a Phd. What?!!!
I wish I had read your dissertation during my final months of Grad School. Your exploration of communication and collaboration adds depth to my understanding!
Thank you for this insight into the cons of being an ID. Will you please explain what you mean about the 2 feuding parties? Who are those parties, and what are they typically feuding about?
Good questions! It all depends, but you could have 2 SMEs arguing about content, your director vs instructor over budgets, another ID vs a vendor, etc.
RE: Job applicants - I noticed about 2 weeks ago LinkedIn stopped showing the actual number of supposed job applicants once it reaches 50 or more....now it only says More than 50 applicants. Found that curious.
Interesting! Thank you for sharing. I still see those huge numbers on my end, but I've heard that LinkedIn Jobs has also not been showing some jobs all together. I wonder if a change is happening.
I'm not even sure if you still check messages from here. Out of curiosity, does it matter the degree title? My school is in transition and I have the option of keeping it as MS LxDEdTech or switching it to MEd Ed Tech and Instructional Design. I am torn between the two and trying to figure out which is best. Any advice or opinion?
So yes, I still check comments on RU-vid. 😀 If I were in your shoes, I would look at search term analytics over the last couple of months specifically for degrees. I would be thinking about this from a marketing perspective. If more prospective students are searching ID over LXD, you have your answer.
Thanks for talking about this topic! I’m new to ID (was introduced to this field recently and started working on an ID certificate only a month ago) but now that I’m more familiar with these ideas, I’m astonished how pedagogy is de facto assumed mindlessly when it comes to teaching/instructing adults.
Hi Luke. Great info. I totally agree that all of this adult learning principles are very important and sadly overlooked by many instructors. Motivation, especially relevancy, is vital. I also really liked that you mentioned the importance of having a growth mindset. An interesting aspect to consider regarding principles of andragogy is the idea of experience and confidence. The idea is that if an adult has more experience and confidence reading the material learned then andragogy is more applicable and important. If they have less experience/confidence then pedagogy would be more applicable. Additionally regarding andragogy it isn't so much about chronological age as it is about other factors such as cognitive development, experiences, and responsibilities. Great topic, thank you for great podcast.
Absolutely! I can actually do better than that. If you go to this article and go down to the portfolio section, it will explain about what I love to see in a portfolio! drlukehobson.com/blog1/so-you-want-to-become-an-instructional-designer
For the first time I knew HR's will find it confusing as I heard about the field I knew right away it involves multimedia, tech innovation for workplace transformation and change manageent. @Dr. Luke Hobson can you make a video on this letting the HR sect know why ID/learning or communication related role isn't theirs role😎...?
I'm wondering if it's worth going into instructional design now. I there will soon be an AI Sidekick to help create throughout the process, wouldn't that eliminate the need for an instructional designer who isn't at an advanced level?
It’s a good question, Christina! Even though AI is incredible, it’s not able to replace an instructional designer. I have spent countless hours using ChatGPT, Google Bard, etc., and they still heavily need a human to ensure accuracy and to add creativity. The other thing too is that individual instructional designers are experimenting with these tools but, organizations are so far behind the curve. It will be years before they can catchup. Orgs are still hiring constantly for designers so I do still think it’s worth it to enter the field today.
Can totally relate to never having dreamed of being in a leadership role, and yet here I am..part of the Legacy FM leadership team. It's been surreal, and marked by lots of impostor syndrome, and yet I'm still dealing with impostor syndrome as an ID too. Double whammy, right? It's been challenging for me to think how I can overcome that and still contribute my best to my team who, in some ways, are better at some aspects of ID than I am. I would be really interested in hearing more on that topic, actually. How do you lead people in this field who are probably better than you at a lot of stuff? Hope that makes sense. :P
