Tell us your weekly accomplishments, rants, or raves!

And as a reminder, be excellent to one another.

Hi community,

November is a very busy month for our industry, with so many events packed into just a few weeks. Are you one of the lucky ones able to attend any of these? If not, there are still plenty of interesting, free remote events to check out this month.

Here’s a snapshot of some of the key themes we see in the L&D space as we start this golden month and approach the end of the year:

AI in Learning
AI continues to reshape learning design, with practical sessions on using AI for content creation, personalized learning, and improved efficiency.

Creating Memorable Learning Content
With a focus on neuroscience-backed methods, this month’s events will help you make content stick and keep learners engaged.

Reflective and Emotional Practices
Reflective learning and emotional intelligence are taking center stage, offering tools for creating deeper, more meaningful learning experiences.

Accessibility and Inclusivity
Designing accessible, inclusive learning for global audiences is a key focus, with events exploring strategies for creating open, equitable learning content.

And here are the LXD picks of the month:

The Future of Learning: What to Expect in Digital Learning in 2025 – November 5
A free webinar offering insights into AI, VR, and gamification trends that will shape digital learning in the coming year.

Ending 2024 on a High with Reflective Practice in L&D – November 5
A free webinar that delves into reflective practices and how they can be integrated into L&D to improve learning outcomes and provide year-end insights.

The Positive Psychology Toolbox: Science-backed Tools for Facilitators and Trainers – November 5
Hosted by SessionLab, this free session offers practical tools to manage emotions and boost energy in workshops using science-based techniques.

Do We Still Need L&D? How to Stay Relevant with Context, Skills, and AI – November 12
This session explores how L&D can remain relevant by delivering context-driven learning, embracing decentralization, and adopting future-focused strategies.

Measuring the Impact of Learning – November 14
A practical session focusing on how to assess learning outcomes and communicate results effectively to stakeholders.

[Learning Tech Showcase] Learning Management Systems – November 18
This session highlights the role of modern LMS platforms in corporate training, exploring how they can centralize learning content and support diverse learning formats, presenting different options.

If you know of any other events this month, feel free to add them here,

Happy learning,

LXD

What are internal communication practices you do to increase the completion rates of your modules?

Especially when it takes 3.2 business days to save

Like ATD seems to be the most popular certifications, but it's one you have to keep paying to re-up your cert.

I'm looking for ones you pay once and then you're finished.

Any recommendations?

I’ve been a change practitioner for 7 years now and am burnt out from having to be “on” in front of clients while speaking to strategy. I also Just joined a new company and I’m starting to realize my heart isn’t in it anymore.

I’m very much an introvert and love doing heads down work and seeing something “tangible” with my work. I totally understand there would be aspects where I’d still have to present, speak to stakeholders to collect information etc but I’m wondering if this would be a good tangent to change management.

I’ve also had experience designing live and video trainings from curriculum to actually conducting the live training / developing the video (on camtasia). Just never had formal training or built out a portfolio.

Just wanted to get some thoughts and I

Any idea about when I launch a course from my LMS, using Firefox only, the course loads with 3 dots. The dots are stuck there until you click, then the course plays. Doesn't happen in other browsers. I've cleared cache and verified others have the same problem.

Hello Instructional Designers,

Are you an instructional designer working in a corporate environment with insights into managing stakeholder expectations? If so, I invite you to participate in a research study aimed at exploring the strategies and skills that instructional designers use to manage expectations and build productive relationships with stakeholders. Your experiences and insights could be invaluable to this study, especially for instructional designers who are newer to the field.

What you need to know…

• Who: This study is conducted by a student in the Instructional Design and Learning Technology program at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater.
• What: The study seeks to understand how instructional designers manage stakeholder expectations, align project goals, and handle challenges in a fast-paced corporate environment.
• Where: Participation involves completing a short online survey (5 minutes), where you can reflect on your experiences and share your insights.
• Next Steps: If you’re interested in participating, please click the survey link here: Survey Link. Your responses will remain confidential, and you can answer only the questions you feel comfortable with.

Thank you for considering this opportunity to contribute valuable knowledge to the field of instructional design. Your participation would be a tremendous help to this research!

Warm regards,

Cate

IDLT Graduate Student

Sorry if this is posted often but the posts I found seemed older than what the current job climate may be.

I'm an instructional designer at a software company and have been doing this for about 7 years now. I was a technical writer for 2 years before that at the same place (a very similar role as the ID work.) I'm tech savvy and I handle a lot of pretty technical training, and I could put together a portfolio of work to reflect that.

Long story short: I just can't see myself working at this place any longer and want to try something new. How difficult have you all experienced finding remote ID work? It's obviously a terrible idea to quit my job without something else lined up but my current job gives me anxiety and I have burnt out on it.

I just want to know if its likely I'd be waiting 8+ months until I realistically found a different remote gig or what you all who have been on the job hunt have experienced.

Thanks

Hi! I’m new to this industry and wanted to get an idea if this is right for me. I’ve been seeing some posts about the issues of the current state of the industry with things like AI taking over. Also I’ve heard the ID job market is rough right now.

So I wanted to ask what you all believe are the biggest problems are in the industry?

Can you help me understand the difference in two masters level programs? One is ID and technology and the other is ID and ID and Educational Technology. I am currently taking ID and Technology but they are starting an ID and Ed Tech program in January. I really want to switch programs but it will extend the time it takes to finish and therefore cost me because I won’t receive my raise for having my masters. I will only have to take one additional course but because it doesn’t start until January, I’ll lose about 5 months.

Like the title says what does a typical day in ID look like for you? I’m interested in instructional design and thinking about doing a certificate or masters but before I do any of that I want to make sure that I have a good idea of what my work life might look like.

How does a day in corporate ID, EdTech, higher ed ID, government, etc differ?

How often are you face to face/face to screen (lol) with clients and coworkers?

How much time is spent working individually on your project?

I’m coming from a medical background, so do y’all have productivity standards similar to what we do in the medical field?

I understand that every company is different so you can’t tell me exactly what it would be like but a general idea of what your day to day looks like would be a big help!

Thanks!!

Good Morning ID,

As the title says, I'm working with a nontraditional student in a higher education program that has numerous exams with short response questions that require typed answers. They are a bright student, but they never picked up typing as a skill and don't have time to practice in the short term before their upcoming exams.

The student has no learning disabilities so that speech-to-text programs won't be an option for testing.

Does anyone have any suggestions on some short-term strategies or fixes that could be employed?

I know this might trigger those of us who have been in L&D a long time, but it’s time to face the music: frameworks like ADDIE, Kirkpatrick, and Gagne’s could soon be obsolete.

With AI stepping up, emerging learning platforms are set to handle everything inherently, automating the heavy lifting while letting us focus on one thing—outcomes.

According to a recent Gartner survey, 85% of L&D leaders say there’s a surge coming in skills development needs, thanks to AI and digital trends.

Here’s what’s driving the shift to outcome-driven, agile learning:

1.	Learning tied directly to earning

2.	Embedded in day-to-day workflows

3.	Hands-on experiential learning > theory

4.	Just-in-time microbursts

5.	Personalized, dynamic pathways

6.	Layered skills that build over time

7.	AI = speed and scale like never before

8.	Shared collective impact across the org

Are we finally done with the legacy models that don’t keep up with today’s needs?

Or is there still life left in them?

What do you think?

Would love to hear where you stand! 👇

First of all, thanks to chat gpt for translation

Hi everyone,

I’ve had this idea rattling around in my head for a while: creating a mini-series for Instagram using some animation software (specifically Vyond). I activated the free trial, and I’m really enjoying the idea of creating characters that can do and say all kinds of things. For simplicity and obvious reasons, I’d be doing all the voice-overs later on for about four characters. The setting would be an office or a pub, so I’d stick to the same background to keep things simple (think The Big Bang Theory or Friends style).

Do you think this is doable (I’m aiming for short stories around 60-90 seconds), or are there better programs for this kind of project, given that I don’t have much experience with animation and all that?

Thanks a bunch!

To what Industries can an Instructional Designer smoothly transition and get good or more money?

On this subreddit there are a lot of people wanting to break into learning design and instructional design as a career. One common question boils down to:

What skills should I focus on to become a learning designer?

Should I learn authoring Tools like Rise, Storyline? Adult learning learning theories? UI-UX design? HTML CSS and Javascript? Copywriting? Project management skills? These are all useful skills that make up what a great learning designer needs in their career.

I have some advice on what NOT TO DO.

Do not learn an LMS. Seriously! Learning how to configure learning management systems IS A COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME and your time could be much better spent elsewhere.

Why you shouldn’t learn an LMS

Learning Management Systems like Moodle, Canvas, Blackboard, D2L are software applications which administer, deliver learning materials to students, things like PDF’s, videos, podcasts, interactive learning tools like H5P.

This is what you should focus your time and effort on - The skills and abilities to create effective learning artefacts which involve skills like storyboarding, writing, UI-UX layouts, video editing etc. These also look great in any future learning design portfolio in which you can use to showcase your skills.

You should NOT focus on learning the intricacies of an LMS (LTI tools, Single Sign On operability, SCORM packages etc). That stuff can come later.

As a learning designer you will never setup an LMS from scratch. Any institution changing an LMS literally takes years of deliberation and transition. No junior learning designer will ever be given the responsibility of setting up an LMS themselves.

I hope this was useful to those who are contemplating about what skills to learn to get your foot in the door as a learning designer. Your time is valuable. Don’t waste it.

Not sure if this is useful to anyone in this sub, but it came through my email and I thought I'd share.

Lucha's 2024 L&D Paid Ads Report

The big "take-away" is the L&D stats on page 18. Not super enlightening and probably not relevant if you're not running an L&D business but somewhat interesting just to get a benchmark of how folks are using ads in this space. Wish they did stats on how much it impacted the bottom line though or how many companies saw an increase in leads and signed contracts.

https://preview.redd.it/vmys2ld5yvxd1.png?width=1462&format=png&auto=webp&s=18e6f114f84cf55f687b1cc15c6c3cd7922558a1

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

If training courses could be made available right in your browser while you’re on specific pages, would you find that helpful or more of a distraction?

Hi everyone,

Seeking advice! I'm trying to get into Instructional Design, but most jobs require 2-3 years of experience.

How did you get started in ID? Did you start with curriculum design? Thoughts on freelancing?

Thanks for sharing!

Hi all, Im an Instructional designer at corporate MNC currently, and i wanted to know ⁠what career advancement opportunities exist for Instructional Designers in the corporate sector, or how can I position myself for future growth. Because i need to know what should i do next?

I am not searching for a job, but honest question. I hear how much job seekers are struggling with finding ID work right now, but I’m curious why people don’t go into broader L&D roles that include ID?

Roles like L&D Specialist (this is my role), corporate trainer, company trainer, etc etc.

Is it because of the ILT/VILT side of things is scary, not interesting or people just are uncomfortable public speaking in front of large groups? I know these type of roles value presentation skills so maybe that is an issue. I see a lot of roles around like these and always wondered this.

Most L&D roles will have some sort of ID or eLearning component nowadays, but these roles give more balance and provide different projects to work on.

Curious if these types of roles interest people?

I want to create some SCORM courses to share them with future employers. How do you approach this?

Where to host and administer those courses? What different type of courses should I showcase? Should this courses be open to the wide public or only viewed by invitation? What things are important in that scenario?

My goal is to show them when attending job interviews

Hi all, I'm working on my masters in instructional design.

For my capstone, I need to design a learning experience for a group and then implement that to an audience and get user completions and feedback.

Does anyone have any suggestions on free LMSs that can handle a Scorm 1.2 package (using Rise 360) and I can get learner completions / learning data.

I checked out Canvas but it doesn't seem that the free version comes with Scorm support.

Any help is appreciated.

As the title, I'm curious why these terms are almost universally present in ID job descriptions. Did they show up once in a JD and everyone's just been copying everyone else's homework when speccing out ID job descriptions? I'm not sure how else to approach content creation or what the alternatives would be-- no analysis? No evaluation? No iteration? Help me understand!

I work at a company training people to assemble and wire control panels, quality inspectors, harness assemblers, electrical testers, warehouse and receiving employees. Our company is in search of an LMS to facilitate the training of these employees. We have a checklist of items we want the LMS to have and would appreciate any recommendations for an LMS based on these points:

1. Integration to add new hires automatically

2. Integration with Paycor

3. Ability to manually add new hires to the LMS

4. Variable levels of access for HR sensitive information

5. Ability to rent content? (Save money by not renting content?)

6. Compatible with SCORM 1.2 and better

7. Do they provide content generation? (Save money?)

8. Ability to track individual records

9. Ability to easily report on individual records

10. Does it have a visual matrix? (Standard)

11. How can records be exported?

12. What is considered the base product and what are the add-ons that are charged for?

13. Hidden/Additional cost?

14. Structure for creating and uploading individual courses and programs and assigning to individuals

15. Ability to assign a whole course program to a trainee

16. Ability to create and print a certificate of completion

17. Ability to password protect content and automate lost password

18. Storage and cost of content

19. Ability to create and track instructor lead training within the system and confirmed by the instructor

20. Ability of learner to access content for review after completion

21. AI? (Is it useful? Worth the cost?)

22. Guaranteed uptime? National coverage of servers?

23. Can you track trainee progress through partial or complete course work?

24. Creating and assigning early recurring trainings which need to be completed on an annual basis

25. Once a course is created, can the content be updated after it has been assigned or does the course need to be created from scratch again?

26. If a course is updated, can it be reassigned to staff who have initially completed the course to view the uploaded material?

Hopefully this post isn’t against the rules. I’ve seen similar posts on this sub so it seemed fit to post the question here. I tried to flair the post to the closest flair I thought would fit best. We’re currently adapting our in person training modules into electronic versions by the day and tweaking courses to better suit and fill our business needs as necessary. An LMS that comes ready out of the box would be best. We are moving away from paper certifications to electronic ones. Tracking certifications through the LMS is one of our goals and having a visual matrix included would be great.

Thank you in advance for any recommendations.