Nineteenth-century British moral philosopher John Stuart Mill famously said, “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.” — John Stuart Mill As instructional designers, we are often tasked with creating “satisfying” educational and learning experiences. We take for granted that education… Read More

Collaboration is often touted as an inherent virtue in the modern world, whether in business, education, product development, or product design (instructional design or otherwise). It is important, however, to distinguish between productive collaboration and unproductive collaboration (or, even worse, counterproductive collaboration). Unquestionably collaboration has many benefits, such as inclusiveness, the sharing of a plurality… Read More

As an instructional designer, working with subject matter experts and course writers can be a complex process with many potential challenges, from setting expectations and discussing requirements to navigating the multitude of personalities and challenges you may encounter from course writer to course writer. The following overview covers some of the many aspects that are… Read More

By Tom Armbrecht I changed careers in 2016 when I stopped being a French professor and became an instructional designer. In the eyes of some my former university colleagues, my resignation meant that I effectively switched teams when I abandoned my “noble vocation” as teacher and researcher for a job at a for-profit enterprise. Although… Read More

When you are teaching a face-to-face course, you have some freedom to provide assignment instructions to your students that are somewhat imprecise. This is because you have the opportunity to provide further clarification or to answer any questions in person when your students are right in front of you. In an online course, however, assignment… Read More

Just as a carpenter or an architect each has a set of essential tools for his or her craft, so does the working instructional designer come prepared with a set of essential instructional design tools. These essential instructional design tools vary from instructional designer to instructional designer based on his or her own experience as… Read More

I did not begin my career as an instructional designer. Having spent several years in the classroom as a college- and university-level instructor of philosophy and logic, I stumbled into instructional design by way of educational content development as a learning design author and subject matter expert, combining my classroom experience and subject matter expertise… Read More

Trauma is such a common experience in today’s world that almost all teachers encounter it, at least indirectly, in their classrooms. Even though I worked with academically successful young adults who, by and large, led stable lives, many had lived through traumatizing situations at home or in school. (According to the 2016 National Survey of… Read More

The following quote, along with its many variants, is usually (but perhaps mistakenly) attributed to Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company: If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. — Henry Ford Regardless of whether Henry Ford ever actually said these words, the principle about innovation… Read More

One of my most formative television/film experiences was the television miniseries adaptation of Anne of Green Gables (Sullivan Entertainment, 1985), based on the book of the same name (1908) by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Set on Prince Edward Island in the first decade of the 1900s, Anne of Green Gables follows the adventures of Anne Shirley,… Read More

Although opinions differ about the role of hanging indents in the post-print digital era, from time to time you may need to add hanging indents for things like APA references in your online course materials. Unfortunately, the WYSIWYG (“What You See Is What You Get”) editors in many Learning Management Systems do not give you… Read More

Anyone old enough to remember the mid-1990s internet browsing experience will remember largely text-based web pages with some number of hyperlinks to other web pages. As I have described in a previous article, Rediscovering the Power of the Link, the ability to hyperlink to other pages has an almost magical quality, opening up a world… Read More

An important part of maintaining online course materials is keeping them up to date. Over time, an online course can become out of date as textbooks are updated, current events change, or new research occurs within a particular field of study. Sometimes the motivation for updating online course materials is pedagogical: It’s clearly important pedagogically… Read More

Throughout my career as an instructional designer, author, and developer of online course materials, I have been privileged to collaborate with top-notch graphic designers and illustrators who have helped me bring my creative vision for how to teach topics and concepts to life visually through illustrations and animations. I recently took it upon myself to… Read More