The instructional designer skillset is unique, and it's what makes us awesome. In this presentation, we'll talk about some of the special skills needed to be successful in your role - in addition to the theory and the tools.
Luis Malbas
Okay, welcome back, everybody. Last session of the day, our closing keynotes, we have Laura and Heidi here. Before I get going, I want to say a few words. First of all, I want everyone to give Heidi a huge round of applause for pulling together such an incredibly wonderful group of speakers. This was just been a really fun event today, it went by by just like that, for me, I just was just compelled the entire time. And you know, the subject matter isn't even that relevant to me, but I still really, really enjoyed it. So thank you, Heidi, for pulling together all of your friends and, and having them share with CLDC. And, and also, I want to just tell people next week, having another event if you're interested. It's called writing for instructional design. I have four speakers for that one. I know their names, but I'm blanking. Now it's Kim, Laura, Jen and Christie Tucker is going to be there. So that's gonna be great. It's definitely a topic that should be covered more often writing for instructional design, they'll be talking about standard technical English and technical writing and writing for voiceover, all that stuff. So if you're a member, you can join that one next week. And with that, I'm gonna let Laura and in Heidi introduce themselves. I'm going to disappear from this. Yes, take it away.
Heidi Kirby
Hello, everyone. We're really excited to be here. And I just wanted to take a minute to thank Luis for doing TL DC for, you know, being the founder and the person behind TL DC behind all of this and for being able to offer something like this for free. And to Sarah and Raven, and Tim and Luke. I don't know. Can you guys hear my dog in the background? Can you hear that, Laura? Okay, good. Um, but thank you to all the speakers. I think this has been wonderful. I think I referred to us as the lnd Avengers at one point to multiple people. So it was really fun to just bring everybody together and be able to do this. And so I'll just go ahead and share my screen
Laura Hoyer
I like the L&D Avengers though.
Heidi Kirby
yeah, right. With that, totally. So now that you have gone through kind of all of the the getting ready to be an instructional designer, Laura and I wanted to cover more of the alright, I'm here now what do I do? Right? So um, can everybody see my screen? Okay. Yep. Awesome.
Laura Hoyer
I like the little reactions that come up on the bottom. I know. I really enjoy it. So do you want me to go ahead and introduce myself? Yeah, go for it. Okay, so I am Laura, where I am a former middle school English teacher had did a couple years of that I taught sixth and seventh grade English. Since 2017. I've been an instructional designer. I was an instructional designer in higher ed. And then I also worked for a jumbo company and some midsize companies in between. And now I'm an Instructional Designer team lead. And I also do resume writing on the side as well as career coaching and I specialize in helping teachers. So that's why I am here today.
Heidi Kirby
Yay. And I am also a former educator, but I worked in the college space as an adjunct instructor for four or five different institutions in my area. But back in 2017, I made the switch to corporate instructional design. And I was one of like the pandemic content creators, if you will, unfortunately, I didn't go with tick tock. But I did start a podcast during the pandemic in July of 2020 called the block or building learning and organizational culture podcast where I get to talk to some really amazing learning and development professionals. I'm currently working on my PhD in Instructional Design and Technology and hopefully, defending my dissertation at some point this year, and I just landed a couple of new positions. I'm a customer education manager at a company called Pantheon and I'm also an adjunct podcasting professor for the University of Florida's communications grad school. And my Ph. D program just because the question just came in is with Old Dominion University.
So I wanted to kind of touch on what you've already been through today and what you've kind of you go through with your, your process of finding a new position. So before you become an instructional designer, you start learning the terminology, you start looking through all the different job descriptions, and you learn some of the tools, maybe download a free trial of Camtasia or storyline, you do some research on different ID models and theories. Maybe you read some scholarly journal articles, buy some books, by Luke Hobson's book, by Tim sleds book, buy some of those books that they have that are really great and helpful. But when you actually become an ID, a lot of thing a lot of the times people don't realize some of the non technical, if you will, or leadership skills that are involved with the day to day instructional design work. So you have to manage your own projects, you are in charge of a project, typically from the idea phase to its implementation, you have to work within deadlines, and you have to work within a certain budget. And so sometimes you can feel like I know, I felt like, you know, I got into the field, I actually started the work. And I'm like, Okay, now what do I do? So we're going to talk about some of those very critical skills today. And I'm going to let Laura take over here.
Laura Hoyer
Thanks. So when you're designing learning for the classroom, or for professional development session, you act as the instructional designer, but you're also acting as the Smee. And oftentimes the stakeholder all in one, and you're the one deciding what content to include, because you understand the content inside and out. And that's not always the case, once you become an instructional designer. So it's a little bit different as an ID, even if you know the inside the content inside and out, which sometimes you don't. And that's okay. You have to get training content from your subject matter experts are your sneeze, and get the training approved by other people. That includes mes and stakeholders. So sometimes as an ID, you have a project manager assigned to your project. And they're the ones making sure that deadlines are met, and everything's happening on time and all those kinds of things. But other times you're managing the project yourself, a lot of that comes down to the size of the organization or the size of the project itself. So again, varies, but it also includes if you're managing the project yourself, it includes managing the team of subject matter experts have stakeholders and sometimes other instructional designers through the entire project to meet your deadlines. So that you can complete your project and you complete it on time and within budget, which is two main things you need to do as an instructional designer. So you may be developing one elearning, but it could include multiple pieces and deliverables that you need to develop. So that could include videos, activities, documents, audio files, and project management is how you keep track of your to do list, if you will, to make sure everything's completed on time and within budget. So project management is key to leading meetings with those C suite executives. They may want to know what your plan is, how long delivering the project is going to take how long implementation is going to be, who you're working with how much it'll cost. And having a detailed project plan is key to being able to answer those questions before you even begin building. Because we all know that you can answer all those questions at the end of the project, but they often want those answers before you even start. So the key to figuring out all that and getting buy in from stakeholders and sneeze and letting your C suite execs know what's going on is to have a project plan. Having a plan in place to tackle the project is often how you get buy in from other people. You tell them exactly what you're planning how long everything's going to take when the deadlines are going to be. And yeah, it also helps you have difficult conversations about scope. So a lot of times people want to add on to the project after it's been started. And they say Oh, this is a great opportunity to address XY and Z while we're at it. And having a project plan is a great way to come back to them and say it's not possible given this timeline, and these other deliverables that need to happen. And if you, you can say to them, Hey, this isn't gonna work, something's got to give project management. It's also how you make sure that everything's on time. And so you can meet meet each deliverable deadline and the overall project deadline. And then it helps gait risk from the very beginning. So, by having a project plan, and starting it, before you even start building training, really, you're able to identify early on if any part of the project is at risk of falling behind. This makes it easier for you to communicate with your stakeholders, your sneeze, and C suite executives, if necessary, to keep them informed of anything that's falling behind or is at risk. And then that also helps you troubleshoot problems and challenges. So if you're falling behind, or let's say there's a tech problem that's preventing you from moving forward, or have a sneeze, giving you a hard time having a project plan, and sharing it from the beginning, with your everybody working together on this project, you'll be able to better navigate these challenges and speak to how it's going to affect the rest of the project timeline and deadlines and scope. And then you can come back to your knees and stakeholders and better explain what the challenges are and how you need their help to overcome those challenges. So this is something you may learn about. And you definitely have skills with from being in the classroom, but it's a little bit different to implement it in practice as an ID.
So Heidi is going to show you an example of a project management plan. So this is one of my project management trackers, if you will, from a project that I did a while ago, names have been blurred out and things but there's still some really valuable information in here. And I will say to to not scare anybody. But this was a very large project. Not all project plans need to be this detailed or have this many moving pieces to them. But this is an example of a project that I did where I had multiple subject matter experts that were providing information, and I had to kind of keep track of all of it. So on the left, you'll see if you look closely, there are tasks broken down into very small pieces. And you'll see that some of the pieces are collapsed, and some are expanded. So each piece that's also collapsed has more to do is under it. But um, you'll see things like build knowledge checks me review, knowledge, check lnd review of the knowledge check and then upload it all very, not very small, but some of them are smaller than others these tasks, but it helps to put it in this to do list and tag who's responsible for each and the dates that it's got, it needs to happen. So that way you can better keep track of is everything on task, everything on track to be completed when it needs to be completed. So then next to that task column, there's start and end dates. And these were defined when I started the project. And then you'll see too, that there's a revised finished column because things change all the time. And then there's also an actual finish so that we could keep track of did we meet the original deadline we proposed did we not did something take longer than usual. So that tells me to, if I'm developing a knowledge check like this in the future, it didn't take me three days, like I expected it to It actually took me five. And then you can also easily see what's complete what's in progress, what's not started. And in that column with the assigned to, you really only see my name, but there are actually other people that I worked with all of my smoothies were listed there. And they were tagged, by the way used Smartsheet to build this. So in Smartsheet, you can tag people, so they get a notification about their row. So that's what I did here. So one I could keep track of who was responsible for what customer what information, but also helped me keep track of if I wasn't moving forward with this particular piece who to talk to about it. So I know that was a lot.
Heidi Kirby
No, that was good. Um, the only thing that I wanted to add was just to reiterate what you already said about the importance of when you're leading a project. It can be a little bit like herding cats, right? Because you will be telling like you're essentially having to tell someone who's technically above you in the organization like a director or a VP or a C suite member, even you know, leader top leadership of the company, you're giving them deadlines, and expecting them to meet those. You're the one who's going to have I have to tell them that if they don't meet those deadlines, that the project's not going to be done in time. And so there's a very important level of finesse and how you approach somebody. And in my experience in certain places where I worked, you can't just email and like the Chief Marketing Officer of an organization, right, like that's frowned upon for like, someone who's just an individual contributor to just hit them up, or, you know, in other organizations, it's a lot more open. So it's really kind of important to understand the, the way that your organization is the hierarchy and what's, you know, acceptable versus not acceptable, and really foster and build those relationships and learn how to collaborate because you are going to be leading people who technically lead you.
Laura Hoyer
One more thing I want to add, before you move on, is I'm kind of along that point. So it's important to remember that this might be your full time job, but they're doing it in addition to theirs. And they're doing it off the side of their desk. So by setting up your project plan like this with dates very early on, like you start with the end in mind and work backwards, right. But if you start with dates, and you tag people in it, they can see that on July 1, I'm going to be sending them something for review, and I'm going to get back from them on July 3. And that helps communication across the board with like making sure things are on track from the very beginning. Because like I said, this is not their full time job. And they have other things to do. And sometimes they can forget. So if you let them know upfront, or let them know, to put it on their calendar to expect something from you for review, it usually works out much better in the end.
Heidi Kirby
Yeah, absolutely. So part of setting the project up for success is completing a needs analysis at the beginning of the project. And so this is how an instructional designer determines the gap between what is the current performance and what's the desired performance. A lot of times, it's kind of I feel like it's over simplified and reduced a little bit when it's talked about kind of on the internet, and it makes it seem like a needs analysis is I'm just asking questions about the training somebody or ordering. And that's not it at all, it's really digging in to look at where's the performance right now? And where do you want it to be. And also, it's how you decide whether trainings the right solution or something else altogether as the solution. So based on just my experience, and my dissertation dissertation research, where I talked to 25 different instructional designers who've had at least three years of experience, they identified that if a proper needs analysis isn't completed before a project, it tends to go south really quickly. And that needs analysis is one of the critical key competencies between a successful project and a failed project. And so one of the things when I took a course on needs analysis, right. And so I had this idea in my mind, that what I got out there in the world and into the field, somebody was going to like, come up with a clipboard and be like, I need a training and that we'd sit down and they'd be like, Okay, go ahead and start your needs analysis, ask me whatever you want. And that is rarely, okay. No, that is never how it's gone for me. So same thing, right? And it just doesn't go that way. So a lot of times someone approaches or sends your boss an email and says, I need a training on x. And it's your job to then pull back and say, Okay, why, right? And so, the process is not formal. It can be in at the end of a meeting where somebody is like, Oh, hey, by the way, I need a training on this, right? Um, so, here are some questions to ask for different areas of analysis. There are actually a lot of different needs analysis templates and frameworks out there. Textbooks on needs assessment and needs analysis that will give you kind of step by step guides of how to assess the needs. at your organization. I saw someone mentioned in the chat Kathy Moore And then there's just a ton of other resources as well. So this particular document is looking at the performance gaps, like we talked about, also, is it feasible? Is it something that should be done? What are the goals and the job task analysis is another really important one, because it's the way you determine the path forward. Right? So if someone's doing the job incorrectly, what do they need to be doing to do it correctly, and that that will then determine the training content, how you deliver the training, content, all sorts of the those different types of things, and then who the training is going to write so and to give an example, I really forget, who told me this example. But it was a great one. And I always love to share it, because it was, hey, we need a training because these people who are working in the factory in this certain part of the assembly line are just not doing it, right, everything they put out is below the standard that we want. And the person really started doing some digging and doing some real needs analysis. And what they found out was that there was insufficient lighting in the factory in that portion, that area, so they couldn't see what they were doing. So that's why it was, you know, creating subpar materials or whatever they were creating. But a needs, our training wouldn't have helped that right, they couldn't have trained those four people until they were falling asleep, and it wouldn't have made any difference. So it's super important to remember that not everything can be solved with training as well. Laura, do you have anything to add to that?
Laura Hoyer
I was just going to add that that's exactly why you're doing the needs analysis, you're trying to figure out the best way to train people, but trainings even necessary. I just had the same thing happen. come across my desk, actually yesterday where I had a training request for something that I know has been trained multiple times over the past five years. And that, to me immediately is a red flag where I'm like, it's not a training problem, if we've tried to fix this that many times. So now, this is another skill that comes from being an ID. Now I have to go back to them and say I don't think it's training. But I want to do a thorough needs analysis to figure out what exactly it is, and then solve that. But it's not necessarily automatically training, because we've been having the same issue for a while. So training may be part of the solution. But to me, it's not the entire solution, because it hasn't worked so far. And I did she come up in the chat that I feel like we could just address really quickly. Does the Id do this on their own? Or is this done with a smear or other stakeholders? And the answer is yes. You ask the questions to sneeze and stakeholders. Absolutely. But I would also argue that the most valuable needs analysis is with the audience. Like if this means and stakeholders are managing the audience, they're going to have very different answers to these questions and people who actually would be taking the training.
Heidi Kirby
And on that note, sometimes you don't always have access to your audience, right? Like sometimes you can't, you know, your learners, our external customers or something like that. And so you have to get creative, and talk to the people that interface with them every day, or find different ways of getting that information you need. And sometimes it requires going to a lot of different sources in your organization before you really get a good answer.
Laura Hoyer
Yeah, and needs analysis isn't as simple as sitting down with one person and just asking these questions on this screen. And that's it, it's done. It usually takes a while. And that's usually why it's something that's skipped, and a lot of instructional design processes, because we feel like we don't have the time to do it. But that's why I'm so glad Heidi brought up the point that like it's necessary to create good training, because without it, the rest of it falls apart. I know you educators out there know exactly what I'm talking about, too. If you're just teaching something for the sake of teaching it and not because there's a need to learn it, then you're going to have a very different teaching experience.
Heidi Kirby
For sure. And one thing I did want to add because I I heard Tim say this, he said that he doesn't like to do the needs analysis part so that he so he doesn't, you know, he doesn't do that he doesn't add that to his portfolio. There are absolutely roles that are instructional design, where someone else is doing the needs analysis, I experienced that. I was one of a team of seven instructional designers. Our boss was the one who did all the needs analysis and then just assign out the different projects to us, after she had already determined everything. So it's about kind of finding out what the role entails through the job description and through the interview process and I believe that elearning developers do a lot less of the needs analysis, if you're looking for kind of like role specific guidance.
Laura Hoyer
Yeah, it's often expected that they crank things out a lot faster. And this is usually one of the first things to go. And the process unfortunately, for sure. Okay, accessibility is another thing that I definitely didn't learn about until I got into instructional design. But accessibility refers to how training materials and learning experiences are able to be consumed by all learners, not just people who don't have visual impairments or hearing impairments. But we want to make sure that everyone, including those with disabilities, and those who are neurodiverse, can access the training information and understand it. And this is something that you might not think about until you do a lot of elearning builds. Because I know, as an educator, we did a lot with differentiation, and considering people with special needs in the classroom, but designing something that's completely online is a very different beast. So certain organizations have legal requirements, that everything has to be accessible. But even if they don't, it's a best practice to make sure that things are accessible anyway. So some considerations include alt text for images. And we'll give you an example of that in a minute. Text Size for people with visual impairments, again, color choices and contrast making sure that it's the right ratio, so that those with visual impairments can see it and read it. And hyperlinks and reading order. So not just saying Click here for more information, but making the hyperlink the piece that you want somebody to click on, a screen reader will read text, and they will read click here. And then it'll read the hyperlink for somebody versus reading just the text itself. So I'm keeping that in mind as well. And then captions and subtitles for people with hearing impairments, and keyboard only now navigation, which might not be something that immediately comes to mind. But there are a lot of people who can't use a mouse, and asking them to click on a million things and move their mouse around isn't always possible. So making sure that what you design can be accessed by a tool that uses keyboard only navigation is also key. So here are just two very basic examples I just mentioned a whole bunch. And that's not even all accessibility things that we need to keep in mind. But on the left is an example of alt texts. And on the right is that contrast example, but on the left, when you hover over an image, the text that comes up is considered the alt text. And the first example is kind of a poor example. It just says picture of a student. And then the one below says a postgraduate engineering student working for the new in the new electron microscope lab. So somebody who cannot see the picture or cannot view the picture can still understand what's in it. And I also want to call out that all text applies to graphs as well, if you're including a graph in training, and somebody can't see the graph, you still need to include alt text, so that way they understand what's being shown in there. And especially if that image or graph or multimedia piece, if it's if it's not there, if for whatever reason, they can't view it, they still get the learning from it. And then on the right is just a very basic example of like good contrast and bad contrast. I know we automatically think black and white is the best possible contrast you have. But there are ratios of good and bad contrast. And on the right is a couple of examples. And you can see the ratios vary, but they still have better contrast than those on the left. So just minus two design.
Heidi Kirby
Yes, definitely. But the and this is just like this is just scratching the surface. There are so many other things to consider with accessibility. We just wanted to highlight some of the most common things we've run into right. And the most common things that we've had to design for but this is not an exhaustive list by any means. And actually, what I chose this image for the contrast, I tried to pick something that was like the least offensive because there are people who are sensitive to color clashing and like it makes them physically ill to look at colors that clash really hard. So I tried to pick something that wasn't too bad in that sense. But there's there are free web aim checkers to check your contrast. There are definitely I saw a quick no in the chat that says Do we? Do we do accessibility for English language learners? Absolutely. There's, you know, one example off the top of my head is we don't use idioms, right? Like we don't use phrases that are common in the English language, because, you know, they might not understand the nuance of what that means. And there are just so many different, different areas. But I did share in the chat, Harvard's website right now, their homepage, they're highlighting accessibility. Somebody shared it at my work yesterday, but they've got this really cool, interactive thing going on their homepage, where they explain every different choice that they've made and how that applies to accessibility. So definitely check that out, too. I love
Laura Hoyer
that. And one more quick thing, before we move on, I did see this come up in the chat, a question about the hyperlinks. So let's just say, instead of saying click here, to learn more about accessibility best practices, I would change the wording of the entire sentence to say, accessibility best practices, etc, etc. And then like accessibility best practices is the part that I would make the link because that's what I'm referring to. And that's what the link would take somebody to, instead of click here, or instead of including the hyperlinks separately, because if you had a screen reader who read every single letter, and number two, you would not want to sit there and listen to the entire hyperlink being
Heidi Kirby
100%. Yeah. Yeah. And there's, there's some really good other links shared in the chat. For those of you who might be following Kara, north, she shares a lot of really good accessibility and like, curated websites that she selects that have a lot of different considerations all kind of blended together for accessibility. So that's a really good
Laura Hoyer
person to follow. For sure. And the good news is that there are a ton of resources out there on that.
Heidi Kirby
Absolutely. Yeah. 100%. So where do you go from here, this was just a few of the list that Laura and I have been talking about, what we're actually in the process of doing right now is putting together a instructional design coaching cohort for people who are new to the field of instructional design and new to their jobs, and just to provide some extra support on these different things. So aligning with the business needs, how to communicate and collaborate with your sneeze, how to plan for the evaluation phase, presenting your training proposal to your stakeholders, managing your time properly, creating content that's meant to be available all the time, forever, for years, right and how to make it last, I'm proposing those non instructional interventions like, hey, this isn't really a training problem designing empathic learning considering your learner at the center, determining which tools to use, leading the feedback process and review for your Smedes and stakeholders, and then evaluating your training and thinking about the return on investment to.
Laura Hoyer
And this is just the list that Heidi and I came up with, when we were talking about when we got our first instructional design job, what we really didn't fully understand
Heidi Kirby
what we were blindsided with. Like we said, you
Laura Hoyer
learn, for example, project management, you can do all of the research on project management and how it works and how to use it and practice using it. But it's a totally different beast to be using it for a product and start using it that way. And it's one of those things where like, you can help yourself out by learning a lot about these things before you even get the job. But then once you get the job, I just really want to level set that like it is expected that you're going to have a learning curve there too.
Heidi Kirby
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. No one is going to be like, How come you don't know how long it takes you to think a 40 hour course. Right? Yeah, so I think we can go to the questions. Now. Let's check those out. All right. So the first question is, how do you calculate time for a specific task? If you don't have experience for an example project involving or for example, a project involving a given amount of video content?
Laura Hoyer
That's a great question. And you literally just said that.
Heidi Kirby
I know. I know.
Laura Hoyer
So, I don't, I'm fine with whatever but um, I would say you don't calculate a time you make an estimate. I would say that given what you know of yourself and your skills, you first of all, you explain to the person asking that you don't have an exact number yet, but you can estimate how long it would take. And this is something that changes over time to way I developed when I was just starting Instructional Design Thinking way longer than it does now. And that's to be expected to. But even now, I can't tell you exactly how long the projects going to take me. I can tell you what I think it'll take. And based on my other projects that I've done, but like Heidi said, I've never done a 40 hour course before, so it's hard to estimate. But to help yourself out, when somebody asks you that question, I would say give yourself extra time. So you would say, like, in your mind, maybe you're like, Okay, maybe five days, it might take me to produce x. So honestly, I'd say six days. So that way, you give yourself a buffer where if something happens, you have technology problems, it's not going as fast as you hoped you at least built in a little buffer time for yourself.
Heidi Kirby
Yeah, absolutely. And I think that answers the second question there, too, if you have no experience, how do you know the time and budget required for each project? The thing about budget is that typically, in my experience, anyway, as an individual contributor, the budget is told to me, sometimes the timeline to sometimes you get some autonomy for choosing your own timeline, but there are definitely times where both of those things are chosen for you, and you really have no, no control over it. So then the next question is, do you have a preferred project management software program, and all all answer that, um, from the perspective of working for multiple different organizations, and kind of hopping from job to job, typically, you may not have a preferred project management software, but your organization should. Sometimes they don't, and you get to use whatever you want. But typically, there's something within your organization, JIRA notion, teamwork, there's so many, there's as many project management software programs out there, as there are learning management systems just to give you have an idea.
Laura Hoyer
I personally prefer Smartsheet. I like that it's very simple. And it's basically made for project management. But there's also Monday, there's Trello. And I, I recommend, at least before you get a job playing with a couple different of the different ones, that way you understand your style better. So if if you could, you could volunteer with a nonprofit or charity to do instructional design work for them. And then you would get experience working with a Smee and stakeholder reviewing your information. And that's a perfect way to try out managing that project in one of these software systems. So like Smartsheet, as you saw, the way that I had it set up was very like task list, like very list oriented, and that's how I am. But for example, I think it's Trello. You it's like a drag and drop, where you have like different columns, and you'd move things from one column to another. And that would not at all work well for me. But like Heidi said, sometimes you don't necessarily get a say, but some of these programs to have at least a free trial or free level. So let's say my company is using Trello. And that's not my favorite, and I prefer using Smartsheet, I could potentially use Smartsheet on my own in like a free account. But that's not always ideal. And it's not always possible.
Heidi Kirby
Totally. So the next question is, what's the best way to answer questions about different tools that you don't have a lot of experience with yet, for example, Camtasia
Laura Hoyer
I'd love to hear your perspective on this as like a hiring manager.
Heidi Kirby
Um, so my first thought is, hopefully in the job description, it is outlining what specific tool they're looking for experience with so that you know, which jobs to apply to, based on this, the tools that you do have experience with. Um, but if it's something that you don't have a lot of, it's like if you've dabbled in it, right, but you maybe don't have the experience that you're looking for. One of the things that I always encourage people to do is to be honest about it and say, you know, I haven't worked a lot in this program, but you know, I have this content in my portfolio that I'd like you to look at to see, you know, what skills I do have and then also share like, what, what you've been working on, you know, it's kind of like how you answer that what's your biggest weakness question like, you answer what your weaknesses, honestly but then too, you know, turn it around you you say how you're working to improve that right? So say same thing kind of goes there. Laura, what do you think?
Laura Hoyer
Exactly? I was gonna say first of all, you got to be on You can't sit in there and say, Yeah, that's cool. I've never heard of before, I'm totally an expert in, because people will pick up on that pretty quickly. But the example you gave was Camtasia. Right? You might not have experience with Camtasia. But if you have experience with other video editing software, you can tell them like I'm learning Camtasia. But I'm also proficient in this other tool already. So I would imagine that it would be a pretty quick ramp up, I'm excited to learn more. But it also shows your attention to detail. Maybe like Heidi mentioned, if it's in the job description, I would expect them to ask you about it. So if it's in the job description, you've never heard of it before, before your interview, at the very least is check it out. Take a look at it, download it, play with it for five minutes. So that way, when you go to the interview, you can say, you know, I hadn't heard of this before seeing your job description. But when I saw it, I was really excited about this role. So I downloaded it, and I've been playing with it because I want to learn more about it.
Heidi Kirby
Totally. And so Jacqueline had like a follow up in the chat, where she said, sometimes they list like four or five tools. And they then you know, say like, or such like, right. And I have a couple of thoughts about that. First of all, if they really don't care which tools you use, or have experience with, because maybe they have a huge instructional design team. And you'll be able to pick and choose which tools you use, definitely focus on the ones that you've actually played with in the interview process. And like, just don't mention those other ones, right. Because if you do have a choice, why not focus on what you're strong in. The other reason that that happens in job descriptions is because they don't have tools yet. And so I would caution anyone who is coming in as a new instructional designer, when there's not tool set up when there's not an LMS set up, when there's not somebody that you'd be reporting to who has knowledge of instructional design, that may not be the best fit of a role for you, because you want to grow, you want to learn from somebody. And if you're the point person who you come in, and they're like, Alright, now you have to pick which tools you're going to use, you have to pick which LMS and you're the expert on learning and development in this organization. Now, it may not be the best place to start and grow that career for you.
Laura Hoyer
I was totally in that position. Years ago, I was hired at a jumbo company. But I was the only instructional designer in my sector of the business. So that meant I was responsible for training 200 plus people. And my manager was a sales manager, she had no experience with instructional design, no experience with tools, anything. And I was expected to manage all of it. And to be completely transparent. I had been doing instructional design work for two years at this point. So like, to me, I was like, Cool, I can handle that on my own. And that's a lot. It's a lot to like, not have anybody to bounce ideas off of. And then you're also making all these decisions. You're defining your process, how you're accepting proposals, how you're structuring them, like, it's, it's a lot. So just keep that in mind. I don't want to discourage anybody from taking on an extreme challenge like that, because I really did grow and learn a lot about myself, isn't it then. But I don't think I would have been nearly successful if that was my very first ID job.
Heidi Kirby
For sure. Cool. So I think we have a few more minutes for a few more questions. The next one is how do we join your learning cohort. So I want to just be clear that the cohort that Laura and I are starting is for people who are already working in instructional design, but are new to it. So definitely, if that's you, and that's your situation, just connect with both of us on LinkedIn, and stay tuned. We haven't released too much about it yet. So this time, we're talking about it. It really is the first time we're publicly talking about it. Yes. Um, and then the next question is, do either both of you have a preferred ID model? If so, what is or are they? My research shows that all the academic stuff falls by the wayside as experience takes over? Have you experienced the same thing?
Laura Hoyer
I have thoughts on this for sure. Um, so in my mind, the two main models right are Addie and Sam. And in my mind, they're also extremely similar. Like, I wouldn't say that they're two completely different models, because they're very much the same thing. For example, you do the analysis piece, and then design and development or it's like cyclical because you're building and getting feedback, and then you're implementing feedback and you're continuing to work on it and then you're building more and sending it back. What about this, what do you think? So that that kind of is just like Sam the Successive Approximation Model where you're doing iterative design, and then you end went and evaluate and all that stuff. So if I had to pick, pick and choose which one I would say, Addy just because that's how my brain works. Like there's a phase for each part of the project. But that doesn't mean that the way I develop isn't very similar to the SAM model.
Heidi Kirby
I like it. Um, and kind of the same thing. But like Addie doesn't really have prescriptive steps for new instructional designers. It's like, here's a giant bucket called analysis, figure out what to do, right. And so, while I always kind of think of projects in that light, now that I've had a few years of experience under my belt, it was really just about getting into the role and figuring out what the process is at your organization to. Um, and yeah, I think that the latter part of the question has been more true for me that like, the academic stuff falls by the wayside as experience takes over. And that it's different every organization, and sometimes every project, you know that your process is completely different. It's good to know, some of the different ID models that are out there, there's like a, there's a newer one called the learning cluster design model, for example, that's more about organizational goals and kind of tying into business goals. But it's good to have that knowledge. But it's not always like you kind of mentioned it's, it doesn't always work out in practice to follow every single step to the tee, right?
Laura Hoyer
I would argue to that. It I don't think it's necessarily the academic stuff falling to the wayside, I just think it becomes second nature and CompTIA. Kind of like common sense. So a lot of us in this room are educators or former educators. And that's just how we design training and learning. Like, that's just, it makes sense. And that's how the brain works is you have to figure out what the exact problem is, and then design a solution to fix it, then you build that, and so on and so forth. So, as you do instructional design work, you your brain goes less like, Okay, now we're moving into the design element or anything like that. It's just kind of like, okay, this is the next piece, I need their feedback on this than that, and less so checking off each box. And you can also get to a point in the project where you're like, we really need to go back to that analysis and maybe ask a few different questions or a few more questions, because something's not adding up here. So it's not necessarily linear.
Heidi Kirby
For sure. I don't know if we have time for more questions, I guess we can just, we can speed round these last these last few. How about that? How can you determine the contrast? So a couple of people shared some links in the chat where you can go and actually enter the hex code for your font and the hex code for your background color that you're using. And it will give you the contrast ratio. There's I think, web aim.
Laura Hoyer
Let's see, they have a lot of good accessibility resources in general.
Heidi Kirby
Yeah, absolutely. I'll throw a link in the chat for you for WebAIM. Because that's the one that I always use. Um, yeah, that's that. I'm going to ask the next question, and then throw this link in the chat. Um, let's see. scenario, you're asked to produce a learning solution. But you determined that it's a motivation issue. What's the next step? How do you handle someone who's adamant about wanting a learning solution? Skipped away? Anyway? Do you just make the pizza?
Laura Hoyer
I have thoughts on this, because like I said, this is something that just came up yesterday for me in my full time job. First of all, communicate that with the person sharing that with you be transparent, and say, you know, I don't necessarily think this is a training need. But it's also one of those things where you say that in order to determine if it is a training need or not, you really need to do a thorough needs analysis. And in some cases, like, in the case that came up for me yesterday, we don't have a choice on whether we're going to do one part of this training or not, because our customer specifically requested it. So like what the customer wants the customer gets. But what I'm saying to the stakeholder who's requesting it is yes, we will do that piece of training. But we're also going to look very closely at what the actual issue is, and figure out if additional training is necessary for that or if there's something else that's the problem here was a little bit of like compromise, but also conversation. And it definitely comes with time and it does involve a lot of finesse, like Heidi said.
Heidi Kirby
Yeah, and I had answered this in the chat too, very quickly, but like that's the importance of building trust with your state. shoulders. That's the importance of gaining that by and that's the importance of having a positive collaborative relationship with the people you're working with is that they're more likely to be like, Okay, gotcha. Like, I trust your opinion on this, you become the expert when when you build that trust, for sure. Okay, so if you answered the other question that Liv had about Laura, what do you use for your project plan? And that was Smartsheet. And then the last question is, for me, what motivated me to do my PhD? And what am I getting out of researching instructional design. And the first thing that I'll just say really quickly is, I don't recommend that everyone get a PE, especially now that I'm like, at the end of it, I'm like, don't do it. But for me, it was very much I, it was a personal goal, right? Like, I've always just wanted to get my doctorate. And so that's how it started out. And I aspire to be a learning and development leader, you know, maybe chief learning officer someday, something like that. So it's helped me to kind of build up that credibility and that reputation. And the research has helped me because I'm looking at leadership competencies that instructional designers need to lead successful design projects. So I've really enjoyed that piece of it. And it's helped me with a lot of foundational knowledge. But is it for everybody? Definitely not. It's expensive, and it's time consuming.
Laura Hoyer
I would say the same is true for a master's degree program. And Luke was talking about this in his session, too, that like, it's not necessarily the root for everyone. I personally got my Master's in instructional design. But having an education degree and an education background, I wouldn't say that aside from like, the names of theories and things that I learned the whole time. Granted, I'm glad that I got my master's degree, but I was not necessary.
Heidi Kirby
Totally. I think I'm trying to go through and make sure that oh, wait, there's one more question that snuck in that I did not see. It says what career Should I look into, if I would love to do the needs analysis, but I'm less interested in the development,
Laura Hoyer
oh, consulting. You can brand yourself as a consultant that goes to organizations to help them figure out what their actual needs are and recommend solutions. And then you just kind of, there you go, there's a recommendation, have a great time. But I will say that there are some times when you do give a recommendation, and they have a great experience working with you, and then they want to continue working with you. So I would challenge you that like you. I personally like seeing it through and it's worth trying that first. And that gives you more credibility to if you want to go into consulting and just do needs analysis later on. What are your thoughts, Heidi?
Heidi Kirby
Yeah, no, I agree. I think that, um, I think it was Kayleen. That said earlier that she's had consulting as a freelance roles where she's just done the needs analysis piece. So I think that's good, um, possibly a program manager position, where you're overseeing particular curriculum, like if you're overseeing onboarding or something, but that kind of really depends on the makeup of the team. And if there are people developing as well. So
Laura Hoyer
yeah, in the organization if they even have a program manager.
Heidi Kirby
Totally. Yeah. Yeah. 100% awesome. I think those were all the questions so Louise can come back up now and close things out if you like, Luis.
Laura Hoyer
No, he's like, you're on your own. Bye, guys. Like
Heidi Kirby
I'm leaving. Oh, he heard us. Oh, good.
Luis Malbas
Yeah, no, I'm just listening the whole time did did it to do Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, what can be said, You guys have so much information. I love the K liens out there too. Because Kaylene is just like a wealth of incredible information. I'm really, really glad Caitlin was able to participate. But Thanks, you too. This was fantastic. This was great information, if I feel like we had like three events in one day. Right. You know, it's it's kind of crazy. There was just so much going on. And, but all of it is really, really valuable and valuable. I want to remind everybody recordings will be available. I mean, you can actually go back to watch some of the recorded sessions if you'd like now, I'll keep this I usually keep this like, conference instance open, like for the weekend for anybody that wants to go back and then I'll download everything and format them and just make them readily available. I do have to get speakers permissions of course, before I can do that, so I'll be sending an email out to everybody to make sure that it's cool for me to repost these. And with that, I think that's it. Thanks again, everybody. Thank you all All right all right bye everybody have a great weekend bye
