Instr

Is it me? I guess it can be. I kinda hope it IS.

But this ad ("Promotional") appears/ed in my feed, while scrolling Posts in r/instructionaldesign ... (um, I guess you have to open post to see image. sorry.) .....

https://preview.redd.it/l6tjmbxyulge1.png?width=649&format=png&auto=webp&s=b64fa78af75bfb9ba5b00157f32fe97c67ebda84

So they would rather the learner be able to RELATE to the content, instead of having content be REAL / TRUE ??

I guess in the Brave New World -of "no more fact checking"- they don't even have to lie about lying!

Or, realized it: https://www.reddit.com/user/dscout/ , and then bailed, but the ad is still running?

Hey everyone,

I’m transitioning into instructional design and working on e-learning storyboards using PowerPoint. While I started with basic visual storyboard templates, I’ve noticed that companies often provide their own structured templates with specific requirements, such as:

• Reference links for animations, fonts and assets

• Character references and OST templates

• Detailed title screen formatting (logo placement, title size, footer notes, developer instructions)

• Slide-by-slide breakdowns with space for transcription, visuals, developer comments, asset references, background music and voiceover text

One thing I’m struggling with is how much detail to include in developer instructions. Should I be super specific (e.g., exact timing of animations, precise placement of elements) or is it better to leave some flexibility for the development team?

Also, I know there are different levels of storyboards depending on interactivity:

1. Basic – Simple layouts with static text and images
2. Intermediate – Click-to-reveal, hover effects, simple animations
3. Advanced – Slide layers, pop-ups, branching scenarios
4. Immersive – AR/VR, simulations

Does the level of the storyboard affect how much detail I should provide? How would you approach this?

Hello,

I work for a large company designing and maintaining their customer service training. I would like some advice from the community.

The leaders of the department have completely unrealistic expectations of the customer service agents, for context:

• most agents are hired seasonally so only stay with us for 3-6 months, they are hired in the Middle East and the Philippines to support predominantly Europe and American customers.
• the agents have to be able to support in over 400 topics - many of which have long complicated processes that are frequently changing.
• our quality assurance team have been working for the company for years, and their standards are insane, I heard one call recording, which last less than 5 minutes, of a customer wanting to cancel the project, agent had a lovely friendly, fluent tone throughout, confirmed the project and helped the customer, ended the call cancelled the product and sent an email confirming, they failed her because she didn’t cancel on the call (to cancel a product is very long winded and not something the agents do very often, she sent the email within 7 minutes of hanging up) she was failed because she didn’t cancel on the phone and she said “um” too much (I counted she said it 3 times in five minutes).
• when I asked the QA team for some sample call recordings that were good for training purposes, I was told there were no calls good enough from the agents.

Additionally: The agents have to support everything from day 1, on all channels, calls emails and chats. And support all 400 demand drivers.

For chats they are expected to handle 3 chats simultaneously in different languages and not let the customer wait more than 3 minutes between messages, despite our old clunky systems which can take up to 4 minutes to load. These 3 chats could be about completely different topics in different languages. After each chat they have to write a summary, categorise and do any follow up work. When I tried to explain how difficult this was for the agents I was told to design better training!!

If the agents aren’t perfect pretty much from day 1, it’s training that gets blamed.

I’m personally so frustrated by the unreasonable demands on both agents and training, I really don’t know how to get through to leaders and QA that it’s not the agents or the training, it’s the job their expected to do and the standard required.

Please could you give me some advice?

Hello all, I'm a California resident looking into instructional design.

Explored iDOL courses as well as Cal State Fullerton Instructional Design Masters. I had my application filled out for that in 2020 but didn't follow through. Anyone know if the program is decent? It's fairly priced for California residents and fully online.

I do want a lot of hands on experience with design in addition to some theory. I know I can likely do a lot of design on the side/and offer projects for my current job in this area as well.

I know a Masters is not always required but I'd like it to open job prospects in both a university as well as corporate setting.

Let me know if anyone has insight on Cal State Fullerton as well as other reputable CA programs

Thanks!

Since your GDITs, GP Strategies, Leidios, and any other job tied to a Fed Job / Dept. must now all be frozen, and unavailable, right?

While I haven’t see any job postings removed yet, a Federal Hiring freeze will certainly impact any of those jobs and make them go away immediately.

Or how about the fact that the gov. client contact just got offered to buyout to leave?

:/

From my perspective, we slap badges on eLearning modules like they’re some magical engagement tool. But are learners genuinely motivated by them?

I understand the intended purpose of badges, but I'm really questioning their impact.

Has anyone found true value in badging systems, or successfully replaced them with meaningful skill validation?

My company is wondering if it's still worth it to go to DEVLEARN2025 this year? If not, why not? If so, why?

Hello All,

I am eternally grateful to anyone willing to provide feedback.

I need fresh eyes. I've made so many edits to it, it's like saying the same word over and over until it no longer sounds like a real word.

Resume Link

• Questions are in blue.
• Not included is a general question I have about phrasing. For example, in the first bullet point I use "instructional materials", but in the second bullet point, I used "learning assets". Same question for the second to last bullet point "performance data" vs "assessment".

I am looking for a role in the corporate sector, but will entertain all possibilities in this job market.

Thank you in advance!

You read that right. I’m pretty tech savvy, aware, and smart and fell for a recruitment scam (well…initially at least). Sharing this to ensure everyone stays vigilant during these hard times for IDs that apparently recruiters want to prey on.

What happened: -A company of a job I applied for on LinkedIn reached out to me via email saying they were impressed with my resume and wanted to interview me for a remote position. I responded, told them I was interested, and received a job-specific document that had more info.

🚩Red flags so far: email address ended in .team, job title was slightly different from the one I applied for, and the pay was six figures.

I opened up the document and thought the objectives aligned well with my experience and was excited to read the equipment listed: A MacBook and an iPad! Also, my favorite authoring tools including the Articulate Suite. The doc asked me to send a Teams message to the person who was assigned my recruiter.

🚩Document didn’t have the company’s branding or logo, what do I need an iPad for, Articulate is not compatible with Mac without an alternate desktop situation, Teams message is so random.

After reading through the doc and thinking about it for a bit, I messaged the “assigned recruiter” on Teams. She responded later in the day and essentially did a Teams messaging Interview/screening. She also mentioned that the company would have me purchase my equipment using a company account they give me.

🚩Teams messaging-weird. Recruiter had many English errors, BUYING OWN EQUIPMENT??

She told me that I did a great job and she’d get back to me in the next day about the next steps which would be a technical interview with her. I looked up her email address using https://who.is/ and for the grand finale discovered the email was created yesterday and originated in Reykjavik. Asked for the original req number and she magically disappeared.

TLDR: Be diligent because people be scamming us with “LinkedIn” job interviews/offers. Sending lots of good vibes to all looking for jobs in this market. The company was Toro in case anyone else experiences this.

I am looking to design a eLearning interaction (Storyline) that gives the user the experience of being presented information in a language unknown to them with no graphics or contextual support (just a talking head) and then give them the same content but WITH contextual support to help them understand the role of Comprehensible Input in second language acquisition. I don’t want to use a language that would be familiar to learners so I was thinking something like Klingon, LOTR Elvish, or Sims. Does anyone know of a tool that could translate text from English into a made-up language? Even better, if it could also do text-to-speech? Would ElevenLabs be able to do text-to-speech for something like this? If none of this is possible, does anyone know where I could get some made-up audio to simulate a presentation (kind of like Ipsum Lorem for audio).

Practically my entire company was laid off or furloughed this week as a result of the recent Executive Orders on DEI and foreign aid/international development. We were a company of 400+, many of whom were in ID-related roles providing trainings to federal agencies like USAID. We are just one of the many companies and some of the many thousands of people now abruptly out of work. I know people whose entire household income is now wiped out because both adults in the family did work in DEIA or international development on topics like climate change, anti-corruption, crisis prevention, and humanitarian assistance. It’s been a devastating week.

Looking for:

• ID-specific job boards
• ID communities to join on Slack, FB, Discord, LinkedIn, etc.
• Networking opportunities and suggestions
• Any other help or support you think might be helpful

I feel compelled to say sorry that many of us are going to be flooding the ID job market (myself included). I know it has been a tough job market lately, and some of you in here are also looking for jobs. I’m so sorry that it’s going to be even tougher.

Tell us your weekly accomplishments, rants, or raves!

And as a reminder, be excellent to one another.

What Articulate 360 builds are impressive to Employers?

There are some undisputably great tools out there like ElevenLabs and motion graphic sites. But the price difference between their individual plans and business plans are preposterous. Not every business/department can justify the cost especially if it's predominantly for internal use. What's the workaround?

I'm sharing this recent article from Articulate for some discussion. It seems really benign on the surface, but it speaks to a larger trend that has been bouncing around in my head for several years.

I don't know if anyone recalls when Articulate first launched Rise.com. Well, when they did, they put out this short promo video, which featured Steve, the clunky, nerdy instructional designer who designed all of their training. Cut to a scene with this modern, savvy businesswoman who plays the stakeholder. She comes in and says something along the lines of "We don't need to waste any time doing all that ID stuff; we can just plug it all into Rise! And voila, we have eLearning!"

Now, the video was funny on the surface and has some truth to it, but it has a very clear undertone that instructional design takes too much time, that instructional designers are just getting in the way, and that plugging your content into Rise is the answer to it all.

I'll be the first to admit that marketing message never sat right with me, as it totally neglected all of the stuff that actually goes into good instructional design, beyond plugging in content. But, it wasn't a video targeted for L&D professionals—it was a video for business stakeholders and decision-makers.

I share all of that because this recent article they just put out promotes a similar idea: You don't need an instructional designer to do all that ID crap—you can just upload your PowerPoints to the Articulate Assistant AI, and it'll do the rest for you!

Now, I don't like to make predictions about the future of AI or the future of instructional design...but I know this for sure:

If your current MO is copying and pasting content into Rise and creating a glorified PDF document with some clicky-click interactions...then, yes, you should expect to be the first ones to be replaced by AI. And why do I know that? Because this article is sending that exact message to your stakeholders and decision-makers...and it's telling them how.

What are your thoughts?

Tim

Hi everyone!

I’m new to my role as an instructional designer in higher ed and I've been working to ensure all of our eLearning modules are fully accessible. This includes adding alt text, closed captioning, adjusting focus order, and providing different formats like PDFs and audio files. While I’ve put a lot of effort into these aspects every day, I’m curious about how others in the field gauge the impact of accessibility features in their courses.

Moving forward, I’m thinking of working with our IT team to track downloads of accessible formats (like PDFs or audio) and potentially adding accessibility-related questions to course surveys to better understand any pain points.

I’d love to hear from others: How do you assess the effectiveness and impact of accessibility work in your courses? Any tools and strategies you'd recommend?

Thank you!

As a veteran or entry-level instructional designer, how do you format your artifacts like needs analyses, design documents, and recommendations reports? Do you format them in a regular text document? Or is it better to format them in a slides presentation (to showcase during an interview for example)? As a hiring manager, what is your preference?

Hi there!

I’m new to Genially and am creating a quiz. Does anyone know if I can include a “matching” question in a Kujenga templated quiz? Or any other type of quiz template?

I see the “Image selection” option under “Interactive Questions”, however I’d just like to use text, not images.

For the matching question, there are 7 items that need to be matched. Essentially, match each of the terms with the correct definition.

The other questions will be multiple choice.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm planning out my 5 year plan and considering my end-of-career goals as well. In my current position I am titled as the Technical Trainer; of the many hats I wear, I oversee and create instructional design, training program coordination, LMS administration (I'm actually building the LMS for my company) and I own part of the new hire orientation. I have my bachelor's degree in education, but I'm planning my next degree or certificate. I've outlined a couple paths I could take, but I'm a department of 1 at my current company and I don't have a mentor that would share some wisdom with me.

Future goals:

• Near future would include more training in applying AI tools into my current role and learning analytics and data science in relation to a LMS.
• At the end of my career I could 100% see myself as a Learning and Development Manager/Director.

Which path would really benefit me most?

1. A master's degree from UNT's College of Information in Learning Technologies with a concentration in AI and Learning Analytics. This is affordable enough that I could get my company to cover most funds.

2. A master's degree from WGU in Education Technology and Instructional Design. I feel like there could be a stigma against WGU, but again I don't have a mentor to really provide that insight for my long-term goals. I'd pair this with a certificate in Data Analytics from somewhere. This is very affordable and my company could cover all of the funds.

3. Multiple certificates in Data Analytics and Instructional Technologies - still researching programs for this option. I'd probably be able to get this option fully covered by my company. Anyone have a great school that allows you to stack multiple certificates to one day earn a master's degree?

4. UPenn's new Learning Analytics and AI program checks off a majority of my boxes, but I will not and cannot take out a loan for a master's degree. (Still paying my bachelor's off). However, my mother (who just retired early from a successful investing firm and used to work with "mega-rich people" - her words) thinks the Ivy League degree would open many more doors for me. Ultimately, the only way I could attend would be with scholarships - so it's an uphill climb that looks stressful from the bottom of the mountain.

With any of these options I'd be able to achieve my short term career goals. But would any of these options set me up for greater success in my long-term career goals?

hello all.

I'm new to the group so sorry in advance if this post isn't appropriate for the channel lol.

I've been put in charge of finding a new LMS, so I'm looking for recommendations for an LMS that is a bit more affordable for my company. we're moving on from Absorb LMS due to costs and not really having the greatest experience with them. So far a few suggestions i was given:

Docebo LMS
Axis LMS
Litmos

Curious if anyone has any experience with any of those platforms or has suggestions outside of those 3. We are just shy of 150 monthly users and can spend roughly around $4k-$7k a year.

Thanks in advance and #GoBirds

Hi everyone! I went to DevLearn 2024 and found that the courses around my area of expertise, video production and design, were quite lacking. This inspired me to teach a course!

I was wondering if anyone who has pitched and delivered a course at DevLearn could give me tips on what makes a successful pitch. I have already created a great outline with tips and takeaways, but I want to make sure that they see the value in what I pitch.

Any tips?

Hello, new here and looking for any hint of recreating this issue. We have clients that have users experiencing this regularly enough to inform us of the issue. We export AICC. Basically what we know is that the user progress is not being reported after a time. We have a verify session active in the training that kicks them out if the LMS stops receiving the put params. If we log out, we get the error, we have tried on various web browsers and devices, turning internet on and off, going full screen mode, clearing cookies, and more but can't recreate the problem. Is anyone else experiencing this issue?

I'm interested in what ID professionals use as a rule of thumb today for ILT course design for leadership courses. Over the years I have used a range of 4 - 10 hours of development for an hour of instruction.

Why am I asking? I subcontract to IDs regularly. Wanted to double check my assumptions so I stay relevant. That is one I haven't really gut checked for a long time.

Appreciate any advice from your current work.

I have a M.Ed in Organizational Leadership and Adult Learning and looking to either pursue a second M.Ed more geared toward ISD or possibly graduate-level certificates. Any recommendations on programs out there (either degree or certificates) that hold weight in pursuing a job in ISD.

Side note: I'm active duty military, so wouldn't be able to complete any programs that involve an internship (at least not until I get closer to retirement).

Share your portfolio, a project, whatever! Let people know if you are seeking feedback or not.

I work as a multimedia artist and have been considering a master’s in instructional design for the past year. With LinkedIn Premium, I’ve noticed that almost every ID job applicant has a master’s (50%) or at least a bachelor’s (30%), which is honestly concerning. In a job market flooded with 1000+ applicants, I’m wondering if the prestige of a university—its name, reputation, and alumni network—could be the real game changer. I hear great things about FSU and Boise State’s programs, but I’m wondering if schools like Harvard, NYU, or Columbia would give an edge despite weaker ID programs. Maybe strong alumni networks and industry connections matter more than just having the best ID curriculum? Has anyone seen this play out in hiring, or is it all about experience at this point?

Especially for entry level jobs?

Hi everyone,

I’m currently a one-person eLearning team working in higher ed, and I need to create a lot of walkthrough videos to help learners navigate a new system. At my previous job, I used Camtasia extensively, and I loved its features, zooming in and out, adding blurry effects, and annotations.

For my current role, though, I realized we probably don’t have the budget for Camtasia, so I tried using Storyline's screen recording feature to create a slide-by-slide walkthrough. To my surprise, it looks not bad! But I want to make sure I’m fully weighing the pros and cons of each option before I commit to a workflow.

If anyone here has used both Camtasia and Storyline for screen recordings, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Here’s what I’ve found so far:

Camtasia Pros:

• Advanced features: Zoom effects, callouts, annotations, and animations.
• Intuitive UI: Great for quick, high-quality video creation without a steep learning curve.

Storyline Pros:

• Slide-by-slide recording: Lets you break down the walkthrough into digestible steps for learners.
• Built-in interactivity:
• SCORM compatibility:
• Easy to export to Word and convert into a supplementary PDF

Is there anything I’m missing or that you’d like to add?

Thank you!

Did you ever use an informal theme for your New Employee Orientation materials? Me, I am planning to use Wizardy as a theme. Do you think it is inappropriate in a corporate setting?