Recommended ID Books

Every ID should be aware of the best practices and the proven capabilities of the elearning industry. After all, expectations from an ID has undergone a drastic change (Refer to my blog: 7 key questions every e-learning company should ask to Instructional Designers).

Quickly, I wanted to share the list of books that is said to be a must read for every ID. This list is a product of some 2 days research, so I think you can trust me for the fact that the books will be useful.

I was in serach of some good ID books and now I know what will be on my shelf (or my lap) for next couples of days.

Read out:

. “Design Of Everyday Things” by Donald A. Norman
· “Designing Web Usability” by Jakob Nielsen
· “Metaphors We Live By” by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
· “Thinking, Problem Solving, Cognition” by Richard E. Mayer
· “Teaching Thinking Skills: Theory And Practice” by Joan Boykoff Baron and Robert J. Sternberg
· “Frame Analysis” by Erving Goffman
. “How To Solve It” by G. Polya
· “E- Learning” by Marc J. Rosenberg
· “Digital Game-Based Learning” by Marc Prensky

Have you read any of these? Will you recommend it to others?

7 key questions every e-learning company should ask to Instructional Designers

E-learning is mounting like a bubble (that will not burst soon) and thus Instructional Designers (IDs) are becoming the most sought-after professionals in the market. And, why not? Instructional Designing is not merely a task or an acquired skills but a knowledge and competence level that is desired by many but attained by a few.

This is why, every e-learning company is investing big in recruiting, training and utilising the best available IDs. And every company needs to justify this investment by making profits. So basically, you cannot afford to go wrong when making choices while picking best IDs from the lot (if 'Fired' is not your pet word).

Though I haven't attended many interviews but from whatever I've gathered from my gang is that almost every interviewer talks about Gagne and Blooms. And if you can sell them all this, you are ‘IN’ (to) your dream company baby! Congratulations on your new job!

But, I'm not sure whether to greet the company as well.

Let's stop getting impressed by the use of heavy ID terminologies like 'approach', 'strategy', 'application', 'cognitive' and the list is long!

In addition to the history of e-learning and on-the-job experience, what will make a good instructional designer is the thirst to explore and the urge to remain updated.

How many of your IDs know about e-learning 2.0, web 2.0, on-the-demand learning, rapid instructional design, how to incorporate wikis and create interactive e-case studies...

You can ask your managers to create and maintain a checklist that IDs in their team need to update for recent industry developments (check my blog post: Expectations from an Instructional Designer - Checklist) and then once in a month, organise a discussion session on the same. You can also encourage employees to contribute by awarding the best entry.

With cost becoming an important factor for both you and your client, it's extremely essential that your IDs deliver the most apt product collaborated with the latest tools and technology. To attain this knowledge, it’s more essential for them to know what's happening around than what happened a century ago.

Quickly listing the key questions that I think are important to ask your IDs while interviewing them:

1. Which ID strategies have you used to deliver ROI to the client?
2. List the three most common instructional designing flaws you saw in a developed course(s).
2a. At what stages did you observe them?
2b. What measures did you took to bring forward the flaws?
2c. Does anything changed - any learning took place - for you and others?
3. As an ID, how do you keep your skills updated? What is your latest discovery?
4. Which 3 books would you recommend to IDs?
5. You are in a situation where your manager proposes an ID approach/standard that you don't agree to. What will you do?
6. Your client is well aware of Instructional Designing. He proposed a strategy and has a pre-defined approach on how he wants you to progress on his course? What will be your next step?
7. Which were the 3 projects in which you think your contribution was instrumental and why?

I'm sure you will have more points to add on.

To all the guys who are recruiting, try these questions out and please let me know if these work or even if they don't work for you.

You can also take this as a questionnaire among your current ID team. I'm sure you'll realise how much is there for you to discover in your employees and unveil their potential or how much is there for you to fill the gap. In either case, you'll be on the winning side. Because here, ignorance is not bliss!

Expectations from an Instructional Designer - Checklist

I'm not loaded with much work today, which means time and space for a new thinking process. What was spinning in my mind (sometime back) was about all kinds of expectations that my industry has from me or the instructional designers (IDs) gang, basically.

Carrying this incomplete thinking process, I utilized my today's time to create a checklist based on my earlier blog post (7 key questions every e-learning company should ask to Instructional Designers).

Being part of such an evolving and dynamic industry, we, IDs need to be updated with recent developments and upcoming trends all the time. So, I decided to craft a broad-level checklist defining the areas that are prone to regular updates. Broadly speaking, these areas include everything ranging from ID strategies to ID blogs.

In the checklist, I also made reservations about specifying the next due date at which I'm suppose to explore the web for updates, recording/listing these updates, and specifying the relevant links for accessing background information.

I know that by only reading and recording the latest developments will take me half-way through my learning target. To complete the learning process, it is necessary for me to register other's eye-opening perspectives and experiences to my checklist and then ensure implementation of the learning in the upcoming, relevant projects.

For example, after reading loads of information about the difference between formal and informal writing styles/tones (check my blog: Formal and Informal Tone), I:

1. recorded the key point in my checklist.
2. provided the links I liked the most.
3. discussed the learning with my peers and friends. As a result of discussion, I can see a clear demarcation between the two styles.
4. finally, incorporate my learning in real life by suggesting an appropriate writing style to my next client backed by a solid reasoning.

And I know, I still need to update it - as not all best opinions are captured yet. So, send me your opinions on the Formal and Informal Tone post.

This way, I tried to make most out of the checklist and ensure it has the ingredients that will keep pulling me back on the next due date :)

Frens, I'll upload my version of the Checklist at 05:00 pm IST on Apr. 26. 2007. In the meantime, why don't you guys create your checklists?

Once mine is uploaded, we can map our checklists and see how close we are - as IDs and creative professionals.

As always, I appreciate your time and warmly welcome your opinion(s).

Formal and Informal Tone

Instructional designers across the globe mainly use two styles (or tones) of writing while developing content. These styles are formal and informal. The formal style or tone will sound more sophisticated and indirect yet straightforward. The tone will be more suggestive than instructive. On the other hand, the informal tone will read more casual and direct. Thus, it's more of instructive than suggestive.
To better understand the difference between them, let's consider the following example taken from one of G-mail's feature:

"Never file another message or create another folder. Use Gmail's built-in Google search to quickly find the email you need."

Its formal version would be:

"Use Gmail's built-in Google search to easily locate your emails. It also relieves you from the tasks of filing new messages and creating different folders."

Some more useful tips for identifying the informal tone would include:

1. Use of contractions (you'll, you're and it's)
2. Beginning sentences with conjunctions (and, but, or)
3. Using phrases or incomplete sentences
4. Missing prepositions like commas at certain instances

The type of tone you should choose for your content solely depends upon factors such as subject matter and audience. If the subject matter is technical in nature or related to some kind of management, the formal tone is preferred to retain clarity of the concept and avoid misinterpretation of the facts. The audience for such subjects are also generally well-versed with technical terminology and does not need heavy explanations. In such cases, you want to provide complete control to the learner so the tone is always suggestive. However, informal tone is generally preferred for subject matters that are related to soft issues. Here, audience is generally non-technical and prefers guided form of learning. The tone is also suitable for audience whose first language is not English (or the language in which content is delivered).

Also, it's a mis-(perception) that the informal tone makes use of colloquial and slang.