105: Video Episode- We Went LIVE to Talk About Instructional Design with Nadia Johnson, Luke Hobson, and Heidi Kirby!

0:01 Hello everyone. We are here. It is 6:00 PM kind of on the East Coast. We have all finished up our work days and we're here with you and I am live at UP at Tech. We are here with Doctor Luke Hopson, Nadia Johnson and Doctor Heidi Kirby, and we're super excited to talk to you about instructional design, our favorite topic to, as Luke puts it, nerd out on. So we're just going to get right into it. And before you know, we talk about all things instructional design, I want each of you to take the time to introduce yourself, tell us all the wonderful things that you're doing. So, Nadia, let's start with you Well. Hello, I'm Nadia.

0:47 I'm Nadia Johnson. I am a learning designer at Zaner Brozer and have been in the Ed tech in K12 industry for about 7 years. Awesome. How do you want to go next? Sure. I'm doctor Heidi Kirby. I am. I have been in L&D for several years now and was a college professor before that, so came to instructional design by way of education like a lot of people do. And now I work as an L&D leader and my next role that hasn't even started yet is joining. The good learning agency as a fractional chief learning officer and learning strategist.

1:33 All right, awesome stuff. I'm. I'm sure we're going to talk more about that, Luke. And I guess I'll go next. Hello, folks. I'm Luke. You probably know me on the Internet as Doctor Luke Hobson. I am a learning nerd. I'm a senior instructional designer at MIT. I'm also a lecturer at the University of Miami. I'm an author. I wrote two books. Now what I wish to do Before Becoming an instructional designer. And So You want to Become an instructional designer. And I make a lot of content on the Internet talking about designing, learning experiences. That's what I do, yeah. And it's pretty awesome. Like a combination of like this is like the the perfect storm of instructional design coming together and Ed tech. It's like all the synergy. I'm going to just apologize in advance for the dog that's barking in the background.

2:17 I am at home, but we all get that. So I want to jump into it. I want to know and Luke, because a lot of people have read your book and Heidi, because I know you and Nadia, because I know you very well. Now I want you to tell us a little bit about your stories, about how you've gotten to instructional design and you know what that was like for you. Just give us, you know, some background about. Sure you. Want me to go first? Yeah, absolutely. Jump right. Not a problem, so. Kind of weird about how I found myself inside of this type of a educational space. I actually failed out of high school my junior year. I just completely bombed and flunked out. So kind of a fun fact that now I work at MIT. Kind of weird.

2:58 Life is Strange is all I really have to say about that. I love it. I love it. Fast forward several years though. I found myself working at 7 to Hampshire University and I was an academic advisor and I was just chatting and doing all these different types of coffee chats with people. Happened to chat with one friend. And he said that he was an instructional designer. And I'm like, well, what the heck is that? And he's like, well, you know how you're walking your students through all of these different types of courses? Well, someone has to design those. It's not just professors. There's all this other different form of support involved, and that's instructional design. That's actually what we do here. I was like, I had no idea. You can get paid for a living to help with designing online learning experiences. So that quickly became a passion of mine and tried to being able to do that and eventually took a couple years to me to finally crack the code and figure out how to do it. But then eventually I ended up moving on over into that space and becoming an ID at Northeastern University. And that's it.

3:57 It's been happening ever since. Now you're at MIT, and now you teach in a doctoral program at University of Miami, EU. Nothing makes sense. Life does not make sense on these paths. Yep, absolutely. Who wants to go next? Nadia, tell us your story. Sure. I'll try to keep it short. We as much as possible. My story is a little similar. I came from an education background, teaching in the classroom and my friend. I guess my first introduction was I had a colleague talking about it teaching.

4:43 She has started the program at Georgia State University. I'm not sure. Can you guys hear an echo? Yeah, I'm hearing a little bit of an echo. Let me see if we can do some audio things on the background here. Hold on one second. It's driving, but keep talking. OK, but. She was telling me about intra pro design. She just started at Georgia State University and the the way she explained it to me was corporate. And if she she was like you can build corporate program running program. And at first I was telling you like I'm not for that. Really the route I want to go because I was very happy and Fast forward to the pandemic I took a role for. A, A.

5:31 An online learning Academy. And my my role was really more of supporting teachers but building out courses because all of our curriculum was now online due to the pandemic. And once I started in Kansas, I was kind of like, I really enjoyed this, I love this, it's fun. How can I do this all the time? And so then I thought about. Instructional design that plug that I have and I pursued it went to Georgia State University, pursued my maths and instructional design almost done and moved into Edson as a learning designer and where I am.

6:13 And here we are, all the fun things. All right, Heidi, how about you? I love it. I love how there's like so many similar parallels to all of our stories and like where they overlap so. I was teaching college English and I had done a graduate degree program in curriculum and instruction, so I kind of had an idea of what instructional design was from that program. And then I became pregnant with my son and I was like, I can't keep doing this adjuncting at 5 different colleges in my area thing, right? If you've ever done adjuncting, you know I can't be working or like not working while I'm paying for daycare, right? And so I actually started a pH.

6:57 D program in instructional design when he was six months old. Little little wild. Little extreme of a move, but I did it and I actually attended the program at Old Dominion University. And a couple semesters in, I was like, wait, I was already doing this as a professor? Like, this is the fun part of the job that I was enjoying. Like I didn't enjoy the facilitation as much. And so I was able to kind of leverage the skills I already had to land my first instructional design role at NASA, of all places. And so that's how how I got in so many like big names and name dropping Nadia didn't mention that she worked for near pod as a contractor so a lot of different big negatives here and and totally unexpected that's the that's the great thing in instructional design when you are you know transitioning into the role it just it it's not a it's not a limited path So people always say like well my my story really unique and yes it is but instructional design is like that and and into the different sectors so really very unique stories coming from each of you but I like you said Heidi I do see a lot of similarities between those stories. So what I want to ask is now my mom's up here scolding the dog. This is fun.

8:19 This is fun. Real life things happen. This is. What happens when you go live? Holly Yeah, this is. Immediately this is. This is a real podcast experience all day, most people. Hear most people hear the edited version, the cleaned up Polish version. This is the raw, real stuff that we do as podcasters. This is the real life authentic version of of going live. So one of the things I want to ask, and any anyone of you can answer this, there are probably a lot of people in the audience. I'm assuming from the almost 300 registrants that we had about the Go Live that are thinking about becoming instructional designers, whether that's from education or they're in higher Ed or they're they're transitioning out from a different profession.

9:00 What kind of advice can you give people about transitioning to a role like this? Anybody can pick it up. I'll, I'll go, I talk a lot so I'll I'll start first with with everything. So trying to be able to think about this, the first thing I would really try to be able to wrap your mind around is thinking about your current strengths, your talents, and your skill sets right now but you currently do possess. Because depending upon where you want to be able to go, what you want to be able to do. We always say about how people are trying to transition over into instructional design. But instructional design is an umbrella term. There are so many different types of roles within this learning and development space that you can go into. And you might find that your skill set maybe is not exactly aligned of instructional design, but it could be something else along the lines of more for educational support or as a technologist, A strategist.

9:51 There's always ever different types of paths. So first thing is first, bringing out exactly your strength. What makes you unique? What do you possess? And then going out and trying to be able to tackle and then to do all of those things. So that's kind of step one. Once you then figure that out, then by all means do all the things that we talked about for updating your LinkedIn profile and the resumes and everything else. But like step one, is that because I quickly learned about how we have so many different types of job titles that when you're searching for jobs, by the way, if you're trying to be able to do this via from the instructional design space. You're going to see sometimes that there are exactly 2 jobs that are called instructional designers. And then you go through and you read everything as far as the qualifications, what the job's actually about, and you're like it's not the same job.

10:37 Like 1 focuses on this one side with tools and tech and everything. One's much more under the hood and focusing on research and learning science. Yet we're still called the same thing. So think about you first and then you can figure out the path you're going to be taking. It definitely vary. It definitely varies by company too. I tell people that like what people see. Instructional designer has look at it. We have an edtech. We have higher Ed. We have corporate. There's nonprofit, there's government. There's so many different types of roles that are available in this space. Yeah, who wants to jump in next And to? Be off of that, OK. I think there's a big thing and especially the additional features like this trend.

11:20 No idea where. It's like I have all these transferable skills coming from a future to move into the faith. But I think sometimes we forget is like how all these skills are utilized. They're utilized differently and I do they then maybe they were the previous. So I think it's important to understand that yet you have these skills. We all have different skills, but we need to know how they're you know. And make ourselves aware and understand how they're utilized and then you know up still in that in that space. So I think that's just the biggest because like management and communication in another sector or another role is completely different than that same deal and I do.

12:15 So I think it's important to. Go into it. No, no, I love it how you you talk about those transferable skills and like you you can have certain things and we'll get into this so that you can do as an educator that are transition, you can transition to instructional design. But as an educator, you know, we ought to be careful that you're not saying you're an instructional designer depending upon what you're doing in the space. Because if you're maybe if you're a coach or technology support individual, yes, you're doing some instructional design. But as an educator, lots of differences there, Heidi. I definitely want to hear what you have to say. Yeah. No, everybody brings up really great points. And to just kind of elaborate on all of them, like, it is a career shift, right?

13:01 And whenever you're making a career shift, even if you're coming from education, which you know is a very popular path, you know, a lot of times people are sold this bill of goods that it's easy or there's a fast way and like. There's no fact way to change your career, right? Like, there's just not like it's going to take some upskilling. It's going to take some realization. And and to your point about like, not saying that you were in an instructional designer before, like not kind of misrepresenting your past because you're afraid of how your background in education will be perceived. It's much worse when I see a resume that has somebody saying. Oh, I was an instructional designer at San Pedro Elementary School the last 20 years, because I know full well that there's a really great chance that they are probably not.

13:52 Your title is probably not instructional designer there, right? And to me that says that you haven't done the work or the research or the upskilling to understand the nuance of the difference between what you were doing before and, like Nadia said, connecting those transferable skills. To what instructional design is all about. So to me that's actually a red flag that you don't quite get it yet, right. And so I would say really understand that it is a career shift and that it does take time. Especially because like Luke said, there's all these different titles or there's the same title, but there's all these different roles that have that same title. And so you really have to kind of learn some things and some new things to be able to to kind of move within the space.

14:39 Yeah, I don't know about you all and we're gonna get into the different sectors here in a minute. But every role that I've had, even within like higher Ed corporate, you know, on freelance, it's they're all different. They're all very different. You know, there's different responsibilities and roles and things. And Speaking of higher Ed, Luke, we want to talk about instructional design in higher Ed. And I spent the better part of my career in higher Ed. So this is a, this is a wheelhouse for me for sure. But from you working at MIT and all your experience in this area, how is instructional design impacting higher Ed? And also, what is it like being an instructional designer in the higher Ed space?

15:19 It's so interesting because it's constantly evolving. So I was kind of doing a little bit more research and diving on into the recent trends and enrollments within higher education. And one of the things I really do believe in is that right now we really do have the tools, the experience, the knowledge to be able to really create incredible, meaningful and relevant types of learning experiences for. Students, whether they're going to be for adult students who are coming back to school after a period of time or for those who are just coming in right after high school and transitioning on over because people are trying to be able to do more flexibility and autonomy. They want to be able to do exactly what they find is working for them and taking the very best approach.

16:01 And if you have gone through anything with any form of higher education, which most of us have done, no doubt you have taken some form of traditional course and you're like this. This wasn't that great and it's just like, yeah, that's that needs to shift. We need to move away from this and now make sure that as we are setting people up that we're setting them up for complete success from all the different angles and perspectives about the learning experience. So when I say learning experience as far As for with someone like myself does inside of this space. I do work with professors and subject matter experts, where they are the experts in regards to teaching the forward facing instruction. They know about the content absolutely. But thinking about things from the back end and thinking about things from the students perspectives and making sure that everything as far As for the learning and the design is properly incorporated, that's huge. And that's only going to grow, as I've now seen with like every single university and college and institution hiring for more and more instructional designers. Which makes me very, very happy to be able to hear as someone who took some courses online back in the day that were kind of, they weren't so great.

17:08 And I hope that we move away from those and work towards these better, different types of learning experiences. And the way to do it in my opinion is to make sure that we do have the right support team, hence the instructional designers, the advisors, the professors and everyone else. And that's what's really going to make this a unique experience for everybody. So that's what I'm seeing in the higher education space. Ollie, I'm half tempted to ask you about AI right now, but I'm going to hold off because I know higher Ed has has quite the issue with AI. And I know you you're going to tell us a little bit about. I'm going to hold off. I'm going to, I'm going to entice the audience a little bit, but you. Mean to say that higher education is afraid of change, Holly? Is is that is that what you just supplied? 2 words?

17:54 2 words make higher education afraid of change, Academic freedom. Yeah, education some areas is just afraid of change. Yeah, absolutely. So Nadia, I mean and I want to move to you and then I want to move the hiding next for the the corporate space. So when we're thinking about instructional design in the Ed tech industry and what's happening there, any key insights or like challenges that are going on that instructional designers are facing in that space that you're in? Yeah. So I'm going to kind of clump with like challenges and opportunities, and I'm going to look at like a Venn Diagram. There's so many opportunities and challenges, but stick out close to me with the Ed Tech Field 3 is. I would say the first one.

18:51 The first challenge I think would be Nadia. Well, I don't know what's happening, but we're getting like, it's getting the the audio is is like every other word is coming through. It's like old school Verizon where he's like, can you hear me now? I don't know if it's on Riverside's end or your end, but the Internet was very choppy. Let me see. Yeah, it says in your video shut off, but that's OK Why don't we go over to Heidi and then we'll come back to you. Is that OK? Yeah, perfect. All right, Heidi, same similar question like in the corporate space. I'm new to this now and you're very much a veteran in this space.

19:35 And somebody I look up to, to like what to do. Like I freak out. And I'm like, I'll just read Heidi's post and I'll be OK. I'll. I'll be fine. So how it is instructional design in the corporate space. What are some like best practices you could share with people? What is that environment like? Yeah, I. Think the further we get into kind of this economic downturn and where we've got like these tech companies laying off, I'm seeing L&D people getting laid off every single day. I think it's more critical than ever that we focus on the utility of what we're creating, number one first, right? Because I think sometimes we tend to. Want to just do what we're comfortable with or do what we think is fun for us to make. I know I was that kind of designer when I first started. It's like, oh, I really want to create this cartoon and. The game of vacation.

20:27 Yeah, so that's what it will be really fun. But like, I'm not really thinking about whether it's useful. And I think that we need to not only be concerned about what's useful for our learners, but what's useful for the business. And we really need to grow our business acumen and really be working with the other teams and departments in our organization if we want to keep our jobs moving forward. Because L&D is a cost center. And if we struggle to prove that value or that worth and we can't connect what we're doing to the ROI or the organizational goals of the business, we're putting ourselves up on the chopping block as well. And so I think that you know to your point about bringing up AI, like we should not be using AI for content creation. I will die on that hill all day.

21:15 Like we should be using it to make our jobs more efficient, right, To help us with like meetings to help us automate communications that go out after a good training. You know like to help us with those logistical or as I like to call them administrative BS things that we do so that we can then focus on creating those learning experiences And it works so much better and we can get so much more trust and buy in from our organization when we can do that and really show the you know value or the impact that what we're creating has on the overall organization. Yeah. And when I stepped into corporate recently, I'm going on two years now and I've learned so much and I I I still, I straddle both like higher Ed and corporate because I still teach.

22:03 But corporate is so much more. No offense, higher Ed. No offense, Luke. So much more innovative, and you're able to move things forward, especially if the business wants it. It's really easy to get things approved and hit that buy in. And a lot of people there don't. They're like, I'm not, they're not designing the learning experiences or working alongside you say like higher Ed faculty who have this idea of what it's supposed to be. So that is a very open and I love that. About the corporate space, I really love that. Yeah, you can really become like the trusted expert, right? Like you can really become the advisor in a different way that you can in higher Ed. Because the people your subject matter experts think they know at least a little bit about what you do, right? Yeah, absolutely.

22:48 Now let's go back to Nadia. We we love to see your face. The the video came back, let's go back to Ed Tech. Tell us a little bit more about what that looks like from an instructional design perspective and anything that you've experienced over the years in the industry as an ID? Can you hear me? We can hear you. Yay. I'm trying to get rid of that but it's not working. I had the echo turned off but I don't know it it's not echoing on my end. OK, poo poo. So. I'm in thinking about opportunity challenges. There's there's plenty of opportunities and challenges within the editing space. Do you hear me?

23:31 Is it? Oh, it it went in and out again. I'm not. I think it's the echo that's causing this because it's looking fine on my. So there, Nadia. Oh jeez. Oh no. Isn't technology awesome? Yeah, we're having an instructional design chat and you know, technology in the Internet is telling us that we're living back in the 9th 1995 with dial up. It happened to me today too on an Amazon meeting. My whole thing cut out. I was like, this is ridiculous in 2023. Luke is I. Did a can. You can you see me?

24:13 I can't see you and I can only see Heidi and Luke and your video has gone away unfortunately. Because I can't see Luke and I can only see. Got a little bit of delay. So it's weird. It's it's every other word that we're getting. OK, all right, we'll we'll try to come back because you did come back and it was very clear and your image was really clear and it was, it was flowing. But I want to move into some of the other questions that we have. And we we're talking about technology and like as technology is continuing to evolve especially with AI and different things and Luke in the higher Ed space, what are instructional designers doing? What should they be aware of when it comes to these sort of technologies?

25:02 How are we going to help people navigate this? So there is a way I'm trying to carefully phrase these things AI to me. By the way, it is a Kickstarter for ideas. As Heidi was saying, AI is not going to be that. You ask it to be able to do something, it then gives you a perfect answer and you're like done publish like send it out to the masses. We can't rely on AI in that type of capacity. So to me, if I'm using ChatGPT or Google Bart or Dolly or any of the other different types of various forms right now are producing these different types of elements to help you out with your job, it's fantastic. But at the same time, we need to recognize the limitations about everything.

25:44 There is always going to be a human element from an empathetic perspective, a critical thinking perspective. You need someone to make sure that whatever you are giving to ChatGPT, or Google bar, that it actually is giving you the correct types of things that you were looking to be able to see and do. And certainly we've seen plenty of cases where this was not the case and there was a whole bunch of different forms of issues. I think now everyone recognizes that AI is so strange because we've only been talking about. ChatGPT for about not even a year. It's it's been out for longer, don't get me wrong. But I feel like since last December we were kind of talking about it and then it kind of just like blew up on the Internet and around March ish or so and then that's when we all started to recognize it. So everyone's aware about fake citations. But of course now GPT 4 and Google Bar are connected to the Internet.

26:31 So that's kind of going away from that type of perspective. But overall, now what I'm seeing from AI, which is so interesting, is a new ways to being able to use it. Right now I've been creating different forms of simulations from scratch. I never thought that was possible. Like that is mind boggling to me. I was listening to some instructional designers, aspiring instructional designers. And they were saying how great it would be if we could actually practice going through a mock up type of a interview for an instructional design job. So I was like, all right, I can do this. I created some feedback, some guidelines, use ChatGPT and all of a sudden I have a simulation about how to go through this for an interview process, which is like, OK, this is cool.

27:12 So instead of me trying to be able to pay X amount of dollars for customization from an organization, if I can start producing things on my own at this capacity. You know, that's pretty game changing from a higher education perspective. One of the things though, if you are an ID and you're just looking for a way to be able to start with this, certainly I have a lot of content out there about that on on YouTube and podcasts and stuff. But what I want you to be able to try to do is just to experiment with AI because it's different. It is not what you think. If there's a lot of people who I've seen online who have essentially said I did this one thing, it didn't do what I wanted to do, I'm done. And it's like, that's cool. That's not how the world is going to work. It's not just going to magically go away just because of the A1 failed attempt.

27:56 You need to be able to do more of prompt engineering with learning more about how to really use this, because AI is already in exactly everything that we do. And I don't know why. For some people, they're like, what do you mean it's in Grammarly and it's on my smartphone and it's doing, it's like it's it's here, like it's not going away. But we need to be smart about how we use this by far for everything. And from higher education's perspective, one thing that we have not cracked the code yet is talking about from a plagiarism perspective. There's still no way to detect. 100. Percent certainty of plagiarism. So that's a huge thing with higher Ed right now. Yeah. I think that that kind of makes people shiver a little bit in higher education, but also too on the other side of that. You have to create these authentic types of assessments where you're the learning experience is something that where you're tapping into what the learners know it's it's real world applicable and I feel like sometimes like writing papers and stuff while that's important if you're continuing your studies like other things.

28:56 Can substitute for that like. So yeah, so thinking about it from an instructional design perspective, it's changing the assessment, which is one of the things that we certainly do and thinking about from learning experiences is making sure that our learners are on track. And this is of course how we do this with assessments and then providing guidance and support from there. He's talking with a composition teacher the everyday. And he was asking is this like well how do I do this if AI teach about writing? So what What do I do? And I was like, well, you should do what I do with my students because many I DS right now are like, it's going to replace me. I'm like, no, it's not there yet. It can produce things but doesn't mean that they're good. So I told the instructor to be able to do that as well. Was this like have ChatGPT create for you an article and then I want your class to be able to essentially go and tear it apart?

29:44 Talk about how it didn't write this thing correctly or how it didn't cite this properly or anything like that. Because I do that with my ID students, where we create different forms of syllabi and outlines and whatnot. And I say look at it from a universal design for learning perspective. Did it do things correctly? Are there other different areas we can pursue to be able to improve upon these things? And there's always ways for us to be able to do that. So it's getting more creative but being able to do so, but that's the direction we need to go in. Absolutely 100% agree with you. 100% Heidi what is this doing for corporate? I mean I'm getting the thing if I and I don't do this. I'm not saying I do this. This is a hypothetical situation go on my Amazon computer ChatGPT.

30:28 It has me acknowledge that I'm not sharing any confidential information if I'm on ChatGPT or if I'm, you know, trying to like how is this going to impact us as I it's it's a similar problem to plagiarism, right? But it's just in that it it's like way heavier, right? Because like you know, plagiarism doesn't involve multi $1,000,000 lawsuits. You know, sometimes I think it should as a former comp teacher, maybe it should. But you know, like you have a lot of companies saying don't use it, right? And that's like the general, the let's not approach it with a sense of curiosity and see what it can be for us.

31:10 It's like a hard no right now, right, Like it's like don't use it because you can't protect our IP, we can't protect our company information and our proprietary. So yeah, like to your point, when you go on the Amazon chat, JPT from your work computer, it's like, hey, don't share anything. And so I think that it's a little bit, it depends on the company too, right? You know, I most recently worked for a smaller organization and so they were more open to the idea and weren't saying like, hey, don't use it, but it was just like whoa, we don't know what to think about this. And so, you know, I think to Luke's point, like, I don't think we need to be worried about it taking our jobs yet, right? Like the, the core, the corporate sense is like, whoa, this is terrifying, right?

31:55 And they're still not even warmed up to the idea yet. And so if we can find ways to use it, it's not going to hopefully, hopefully it's not going to be to like, pump out courses. Like, I've seen some of those, right, Like the AI, let's pump out an entire course and like, oh, here's an I actually just saw one on Tiktok that was actually using material off of YouTube and then charging people for it. And it's like material that friends of mine that are L&D creators give out for free on YouTube. And they're like, whoa, hold on, this is not OK. So I think there's there's like a lot of legal layers to it yet that we need to sort out before people are going to be able to use it.

32:39 Unfortunately, yeah, me too. I definitely think that, like for generic things like outlining and stuff, that's what really helps. Ideas. Brainstorm ideas. Yeah, sometimes I'm not good with my words and I know what I want to say, but ChatGPT says it's so much better than I do. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, I want to take a moment and I actually want to pause and I want to highlight our sponsor of this event. So ispring. Is wonderful. They sponsor our podcast quite frequently and we're so excited that they they have the, they have sponsored this event for us with all these lovely individuals. So thank you Ispring and I definitely encourage all of you to go out and check out Ispring.

33:22 I'll put a link in the chat and I'll put it out when we show this on YouTube and in the show notes when this becomes an episode. So Ispring has over 60,000 clients in more than 150 countries. And they've been in the market for 22 years. That's unbelievable. So everything I spring, I use it, I love it. I do lots of webinars with them. I know that Luke's come across it, Nadia and Heidi, it's a really great tools to go check it out. All right, let's talk a little bit about technology. So when you're jumping into this instructional design role and we're going to kind of go towards the the career path a little bit more. People have a common misconception. I feel like that if you know all this technology, you're going to be a great instructional designer. Like if you know Articulate.

34:11 I Spring, Blackboard, Moodle, Canvas, Captivate, Adobe products like I'm going to be the best instructional designer ever. Canva, Graphic Design. Luke, you're a graphic designer, you are a graphic designer. I can tell you do all the the fancy things on the web. Skills. Have really gone down over the years. Definitely not as good as I was in college. Is this the case? Do you have to knowing all this? Does that make you a good instructional designer? God, no. Absolutely not. Just no. No. That was the answer. Next question, Heidi. No to explain more about that though is that. There are so many different types of mom. Let me back up for a second.

34:51 When you think about an instructional designer, we have a couple of different types of paths and technology is certainly one of them. But what makes up an instructional designer? We have the learning expert, we have the project manager, we have the researcher and of course indeed we do have the technologist. But also I would say that we also have a fifth element which is like the relationship manager, those who work with other people. Instructional design is a people first job. We are people focused. We work with people all the time. There's so much collaboration, working with subject matter experts, being able to interview and talk with potential learners, coming into our courses and working with engineering and support and you name it. We're constantly working with people. So there is a huge emphasis on like, yes, we know how learning works, but also people is like the big, big thing about what is it that we do decision making, influencing, negotiation, all those different types of elements.

35:40 That is like is step one for everything when you're thinking about from the tools perspective, whatever the project is going to call for, that's the tool you should be using. Where if we're taking the approach, Holly that you just mentioned is that the tool comes first and then you build around the tool and that's not the proper way of being able to do so. Do we have tools that we'd use and we identify because the organization uses them, then sure. Of course you you mentioned about a whole bunch of and not to dismiss any of the tools you mentioned. Oh, those are fabulous tools. And I'm not saying that, but like, as far As for them not being great or anything of a sort, but every organization has a license to use X, so therefore the ID is going to be using that. And that's plenty fine and OK. But I know it's super confusing for the new IDs out there because you read a job posting.

36:27 Depending upon which one you read, it could have had listed any of the ones that Holly just described and then some, but often times they're actually competitors of one another. So it doesn't make sense to know all 10 things that all do the exact same thing. So that's kind of like this. Weird. I'm glad you said that. Yeah. Yeah, they all do. Like especially learning management systems, like they all do the same stuff, just in different ways. It it it's really like if you know one and you know the basics of 1 and how to do stuff on the back end like you're going to be able to figure it out in the next for sure. I I can train anyone to use blackboard or canvas. That's that's no problem. Where I find the struggle is no, We're thinking more about how do you collaborate with SME's, How do you pivot when Plan ABC and D all fail and you're on Plan E and you're trying to be able to go from there, You know, it's that innovation, it's that flexibility, it's that relentlessness like that's something that you definitely need inside of a designer, and that's harder to find.

37:27 So yeah, absolutely. I saw Nadia back for a minute. I want to see if we can hear you. Nadia, I don't want to leave you out of this. You have so much to add. That's why you're here. I'm in time out. Can you hear me? You're you're in you like Tran you you got your time machine and went back you know it's October 25th, 1988. Isn't that what Back to the Future is? That's the little where he goes back or two or whatever. I I just. I have so much to add to this space. Yeah, it is lagging still. All right. All right. Heidi, tell us about technology and how that impacts the corporate space. And like, if I know, like, I can't tell you how many LinkedIn messages I get.

38:15 Like, if I learn Articulate, if I learn Camtasia, if I learn Adobe, is that what I need to do? Do I need to buy all this? Do I need to get all this to be a great instructional designer? I think one of the most common misconceptions is that you also need to build a website for your portfolio as an instructional designer like I've gotten by for years with a Google Drive folder. Listen because web development shouldn't be a skill you need unless there's a reason for it, right? Like Luke's saying, like there's a reason for every kind of tool I haven't need to know web development or any kind of programming languages for. I love that. That scares me. That scares me.

38:59 So much for for all all of the job stands. One random, not normal contract that I did Once Upon a time, right? And I didn't even really have to know coding for that, it just was taught how because I was working in an LMS that didn't have a front end so I had to like program everything and copy and paste. But outside of that, like, you don't need to build a website even, right? And a good instructional designer can be a good instructional designer with a notebook and a pen, right? And it's kind of it's hard to understand, especially when you're brand new and you're aspiring and you don't know the processes or you don't know what a needs assessment is, or you don't know what a Smee is.

39:43 But let me break it down for you like this. If you wanted to become a photographer and the only thing that you were fussing over is what kind of camera to buy, yeah, you could go out and buy the most expensive camera and there's probably a good chance that you'll take some good photos. But what would be even better is if you could learn things like composition, or how lighting effects things, or how to position people in a certain way that's going to make the photo look amazing no matter whether you're using a Polaroid or a digital camera. We're all millennials here like we used to use back when we were teenagers and in college used to carry out with us everywhere. Or a $15,000 camera, right? Mm hmm.

40:26 I love it that you put it in that perspective because driving the Toyota Corolla can be just as good as driving the Range Rover with instructional design. Yeah, I mean, people do so many creative things with One of our leadership principles at Amazon is Be Frugal. And we have done so many great things just being frugal and so many great projects and things have come out of of that aspect like you don't need the most expensive piece of software to do something wonderful and have a great learning experience. Appreciate. It it makes you become a better designer, it does. Yeah, I don't have a budget for this. What am I going to do? It's like a really crafty.

41:07 And that's and that's really where, like the design element shines real like what learning strategy can I use on a budget, which is not going to cost me anything, but I can still make this awesome and like that's a fun challenge. That's. I like that about it really, too. What's? How's this going to work? Yeah, How's this all going to piece? How are we going to piece meal this together? I haven't seen a technology yet. So for all you founders and people listening, that does it all that we need to do as instructional designers. I have not seen a piece. It's all like piece meal. You have to go to this one for that. You have to go to this one for this. So I'm not going to mention any names, don't want to get people in trouble. So I want to shift a little bit and talk about one of the the topics that I'm finding, especially in the corporate space, that isn't as focused on as much as it should be or in my my experience is accessibility.

42:02 Like when it comes to accessibility, and this is something that's pretty important because there's laws and different acts and things that surround accessibility. I know in higher Ed there was, you know, a big, there's a big push for accessibility and and there's different recommendations and their support service has been incorporated. It's a little bit absent, you know. So I I I've kind of trained my team, but Heidi and definitely Luke going to hear from you about accessibility. How does that work in corporate and what can we do to make it better so that everybody can have access? Yeah. So I think it's really, it's been really difficult for me to argue for anything accessible as part of internal L&D teams where I've really been able to leverage just like the utmost care for accessibility is for in in customer education which is where I've most recently worked. Because you don't know your customers abilities, right, You don't know what they're running into on a daily basis. There might be customers using their product, using your product that can't use a mouse, right. Like, I think it's something some, you know, amazing number, like 30% of people, well, at some point, whether it's a temporary injury or otherwise not be able to use a mouse, right.

43:23 And so, like, there are so many, so many people are color blind, right. And we see these like terrible font jobs, right, that are just hard for me to read and I'm not color blind, right. And so I think that it really depends on the organization's commitment to accessibility. But if you can find that and you can embrace that, you know the unfortunate part is that it automatically rules out some authoring tools, some LMSS to be 100% accessible. Some of those tools get kind of ousted immediately if you're really focused on heavy accessibility. Yeah. And I think it's something, it's something definitely like you're saying, it's a priority.

44:05 It's something to consider when you're purchasing a tool or a system or something. And I know higher Ed, you have to loop what you're about to talk about. You have to jump through some hoops and get some things approved before you actually can purchase the tool. So tell us a little bit about accessibility and higher Ed and how that all works. Yeah, so actually I wanna go back to AI real quick. This is where I'm excited about, by the way, for AI, it's accessibility. It's actually designing for all people. So when we talk about how we try to design, learning experiences for everybody, if we have essentially A sidekick to be able to help us out to do this, this can be done. And we've seen this if a couple of different examples that are mind blowing. I'm not sure if any of you have followed the updates would be my eyes.

44:48 Have any of you seen the updates in that recently? Be My Eyes is an app that is designed to be able to help those visual impairments, those who are fully blind, all the way to a slight type of visual impairment. And the way that the app works is that think about it kind of like FaceTime is that you have a volunteer on the other side from the Be My Eyes organization and then you have the person with the visual impairments. They're essentially walking around their house with holding up their phone and the other person is able to actually go into a system. So if they go into their fridge and they pick up a carton of milk, they can just say like, can you read this for me? Tell me the expiration date and the other person on the phone could go in and say this. Now of course it's kind of intrusive. You don't want a random stranger in your house all the time. So be my eyes was able to partner with Open AI to now have the ability to use ChatGPT inside of the app. So instead when you go into your fridge and yes, it can tell you if you're scanning it in of is this expired or not. It could do so, but if that is still good, then you can be able to say, scan everything inside of my fridge and then tell me what can I make for dinner tonight. Create for me a recipe of what I currently have in stock. That's like, oh, oh, we could OK was like, so now we're helping all people because now thinking about it from an educational perspective, we can help out so many students in so many different ways, whether they wanted to go and explore culinary or for fitness or for fashion or whatever it is like, it's incredible about where this could potentially go. So yes, there is this whole talk about how AI is not great and then all these other different

46:19 things about nature. Don't get me wrong, but this is where I hope that. We truly move the needle as far As for with using accessibility, making that a priority, which is like a really difficult conversation as we're, you know, we're talking about right now is that it's always a welcoming and embracing conversation amongst those usually been L&Z and instructional designers where we're all like, yeah, absolutely. And then you talk with other people outside of your space and you're like, wait, why don't you feel that way? Like you we we need to like if not. Meeting with the resistance. Yeah. And it then it's like, oh, but but then people can't enjoy these same things as us. Like we we need to, you know. So it's extremely tricky to be able to guide those conversations and to get that going. But as Heidi was just saying, absolutely, if it does not meet certain types of compliance factors, then it's gone. You're like, Nope, it's like we can't do this. Or if you're going to be going through with something and sometimes something will pop up that you've never encountered before and you're like, OK.

47:17 I didn't realize this was a feature. How do I make sure that everyone can access this at the same time? So there's all these different types of things for you to be able to go through and to work very closely. I work extremely closely with the accessibility team, and I have all the past universities and institutions of like tell me more like, how can I improve upon this? How can I make this better? How can I revise things? Because always having a second set of eyes is extremely helpful, especially for the people who know way more than than you is. Fantastic. Yeah, that's another good point about instructional design. You don't have to know everything. Yeah. And like, when you talk about accessibility, I'm sure there's things that I know that Luke doesn't know. And Heidi and Nadia, we could all come together and probably know everything about accessibility.

47:58 But you don't have to know everything. There's just an awareness to this position. You're like the Jack Jane of all trades. You know? Different things are happening. Technology's changing. You want to be informed so that that level of awareness is important. I'm glad you mentioned that. And I really like the fact that instructional design departments work closely with, like the student disability services and and to make sure that you're designing, learning experiences and keeping, you know, certain things in mind. There's lots of checklists that float around about accessibility too. Yeah. Absolutely, Denadia. Are you? Back Nadia's. Back and she's clear. You're back. I think the problem I figured out.

48:40 I figured it out and This is why closing your tabs is super important. Friends like close your tabs because I think I had the guest tab and the audience tab open at the same time from earlier, like just testing out and it was like trying to compete with each other, you know and so I think that was the the big issue so. That was my fault. Sorry. close your tabs, everyone. close your tabs. Oh. My something so simple, something so simple. It happened. Well, we've we've been having a wonderful conversation. I want to kind of start wrapping things up here in the last 8 minutes that we have together because we, I know all of us could talk for five hours about this stuff, but I'm going to bed early tonight, so. The job market.

49:34 This is something that I focus on a lot in my LinkedIn post with my job postings. But instructional design has taken off. Three years ago pre COVID like finding a structural design. Higher Ed corporate was very far and few between. But now like I can do we can do job postings like twice a week I do 8. Multiply that by the 100 and some I've done. That's all the jobs that have become available. So for people looking to get into this industry and going through and all of these jobs are available, how do they navigate this space, whether that's an edtech, hire IT or corporate what, where do they start and like what's the best advice you can give them for finding a role in instructional design in your sector? I'll go.

50:21 Since I yeah, been in the corner. Well, I think the biggest thing because I've had to navigate this job market recently and I think the biggest thing is is like kind of like I want to say like the resume obviously gets you get your foot in the door, but it doesn't help you to land the role. And obviously what your, what your skills are like what and how you can sell yourself really is what's going to land you the role. And I think the biggest thing is like ditching imposter syndrome and. In order to do that, you really have to do. I think that's the biggest thing I've learned just in working with idle courses, Academy like action, doing like doing the work, learning upskilling, like being involved in the space, networking, learning from others. That's really going to give you the confidence to go into an interview and sell yourself in the space. So I think the biggest thing is like ditching the apostation syndrome and for transitioning teachers. Stop viewing yourself as a former teacher. Yes, you are.

51:27 Yes, teaching teachers are amazing. We love teachers. I love teachers. I still support teachers. OK? But you have to stop seeing yourself as a transition teacher or a former teacher and see yourself in that role so that you can sell yourself in that role. No one. If you don't see yourself there, you can't convince someone else that you're supposed to be there. So I think the biggest thing is just kind of like. Especially with the interview, the interviewing piece, you you have to be able to excel yourself and you're not going to be able to do that unless you're actively within the field learning and building that confidence with those skills. So that's my piece of advice.

52:07 I think like the resume gets you there or gets you in front of someone, but it doesn't get you the job. So I think that's important to keep in mind. And foster syndrome never goes away, by the way. No it doesn't. Throw that out there for all, all people who are like it goes away by the time you know it. No it doesn't. We, we, we still encounter it, even feel on top of the world sometimes. You're like, what am I doing here? What what's happening right now? And it's just And that's the real thing. To add to all those fabulous points, what I'll say is a couple of different pieces of advice about things. For one, you should absolutely, positively be connecting with as many folks as possible.

52:48 Learn as much as you can. Absorb that information for Masterminds. I love masterminds, and if you don't know what that is, essentially you were creating a group to help support one another with their goals. You check in every single week, share what you worked on for your progress. You talk about out loud what you're going to be working on next week, share some tips, and you just keep on repeating that every single week until you hit your goal. I have used. Reminds for everything. They help me to stay on track. That also helps me to follow my plan to and to hold me accountable. Because if I tell people that, hey, I'm interviewing for this job, I'm going to report back to you by next week, then that's what you're going to be sharing. They're going to be expecting to hear more about what is it that you've actually done. And of course, inside of these different forms of groups, you can share what's working for you and what's not working for you, because not every single tip is going to be working for people. Highly recommend to keep on building out your network by the way, the more you can learn from those from following them, seeing their posts.

53:43 You have three amazing people right here. You should be following all of them to read more about what they are constantly posting and sharing. Yourself in that. I'm fine, I'm OK. You can find it whatever. But the point is follow. These amazing people have been also heavily utilized Glassdoor if you haven't done so already. It's a type of a job website for reviewing and posting anonymous things as well talking about the organization if there are organizations. That there was one in particular I can think of in the Boston area that was hiring 12 instructional designers all at once. And I was like, either they are doing awesome or they're the worst place humanly possible to work. And I found out from Glassdoor that there was a new leadership team that came in and everybody quit. I was like, yeah, you don't want to work at that place right now. Give that some time to kind of settle. In waving that red flag really far wide. No, we don't want to work there, so make sure you're reading those reviews.

54:35 Yes, take it with a grain of salt, but there are some people who are not going to be happy and leaving those reviews, understandably so. But for the most part, they do shed some light on the interviewing process, talking about the culture, talking about leadership that benefits everything of a sort like that and just try to be able to learn from there. It's it's definitely going to help you out. Great advice. Absolutely. Heidi, how do you feel navigating this space? Yeah, I think. I think one of the important things is like everything in moderation, right? And I think that that's kind of what Luke and Nadia were getting at, right? Like study a little bit of the foundational theory, practice what you can meet with people. But like, all of those things need to kind of be combined. And you don't want to go too far down the rabbit hole into any one of those things, right?

55:21 Like, I remember seeing my friend Sarah posting about don't have a million coffee chats. Like at some point you're having way too many virtual coffee chats. You're not doing anything productive that's going to help you in an interview, right? Like everything kind of has to have a balance and you kind of have to make a plan for yourself, right? And really be self aware of like where do I need to upskill what you know, look up common instructional design interview questions, What are the questions you can't answer and what are you going to do about that, right? And also know that like you can absolutely do all the things for free.

56:01 I know that everybody on this call has something that we offer of value, right? And like there's nothing wrong with how you know, paying to upskill or paying to be involved in a certain program. But like, know that you also don't have to. And know that if you do, like you're making an investment and you need to be like really conscious of you know, who you're working with and who you're collaborating with and just really kind of be be be OK with being picky about that, right? And really know what your goal is. Because every different professional development service has a different purpose too. So really, figure out what you need to upskill in and then go ahead and invest in yourself or plan accordingly. Yeah, I feel like once you find your niche, that's when you start the investing of like paying people for their expertise.

56:51 But this level of awareness where you're like at the 30,000 foot view, you don't need to pay for certain things because then you're again, you're just piece mealing stuff together and you're like oh like the next shiny thing, the next shiny Academy or thing that's happening. But once you 0 in, that's when you should really start investing it in these these different opportunities for sure. That's why I tell people I'm like they they say, do you do coaching, Do you do this? I'm like, well, have you figured out where you want to be yet? And they're like, no, I don't know. And I'm like, well, you need to go check out these resources 1st and then come back to me when you have more of like a focus area, because otherwise we're just going to be all over the place. You're going to be wasting money. And I don't want to do that. I want you to meet your goals. So yeah, yeah.

57:35 But they just take your money right away from that and then that's a red flag. Yep. So absolutely got to be some. Checking process in there to make sure it's right for you, so yeah. Well, this is good segue into the final question I want to ask all of you is what are some of your favorite resources that you can share with people who want to be aspiring instructional designers? Please plug all your stuff that you have created, because I know and we all know we're all content creators. That it has taken a lot of hours and a lot of times. So please plug your stuff and just tell us what are your favorite things? Where can people go? Where can they find you? Tell us all the things. Who wants to go first?

58:16 Who wants to gloat first? OK, whatever. I'll be the bad guy. Hi, I'm Luke. I make content on the Internet about instructional design. No. So the best piece of content I can probably give for you who are transitioning right now into instructional designers. Is there is a blog post that I wrote that's called So You Want to Become an Instructional Designer. I'm turning it into an e-book. It's like 110 pages long. Literally. Everything humanly possible I can share with you is inside of that one thing. Feel free bookmark and you can go and find that thing and then just keep on going down that road. If you want to actually read a little bit more of a different type of insights about things I wish I knew about beforehand, I have a book on Amazon called So You Want to Become an Instructional Designer.

58:59 You can find that as well. But really if you just Google doctor. Luke Hobson, my blog, podcast, YouTube channel, all that stuff will pop up and if you really want to dive in deep, I do have a seven week long course that does do that over at Instructional Design Institute. So that's one thing you want. To just wrapped up, you just wrapped up a cohort, right? Another cohort, one, Another cohort start, another one starting up in December. OK, Yep, just keeps on. We're going to put everything in the show notes that you just mentioned. It'll all be there for people to go out and find. I appreciate the reminder, but yeah, but that's those are all my stuff, my stuffs and my things. Nadia, what about you? Can you hear me?

59:42 Yes. You are clear and we can hear you. It's wonderful. So, yeah, I would say. If you're kind of just starting and want to like build a portfolio or I know that Tim Slade had some awesome resources for building out portfolio. I I did mine on Google site super easy and that was awesome for me. I would also say I spring our sponsor for this episode or this live event is they have great, awesome free resources that you can. Download and utilize in your journey into ID and then as well as LinkedIn. I would say LinkedIn was like the biggest like piece that kind of helped me to network and learn and I've been able to kind of chat and learn from others within the field which has been an awesome awesome experience thus far. So I would say just tapping into your networking at LinkedIn and seeing what resources are provided there. Lastly, I will also say the Ed Up Ed Tech podcast in which I'm a Co host of.

1:00:51 We are always sharing new insights, so keep keep joining us for all of these awesome conversations and episodes. And you can find me on LinkedIn at Denadia Johnson. Yeah. Good ones. I like all of them, Heidi. Oh sure, that's all your stuff. The best way to find all my stuff is just to connect with me on LinkedIn, but I'll break it down a little further and say the website getusefulstuff.com is a place where you can find useful resources for L&D professionals. At the time of this recording though, if you're listening live, it's down temporarily. It'll be up shortly so don't panic if you go through it right now and it's down, but coming soon within the next couple of months are going to be hopefully some self-paced courses and cohort based courses for L&D professionals to upskill and things like podcasting and ID fundamentals, scenario based learning, things like that.

1:01:55 I also have a podcast called the Building Learning and Organizational Culture or Block Podcast and then the learning consultancy I've just joined at realgoodlearning.com. In the next couple of weeks is there's going to be a podcast launch and the Good Learning podcast is like case studies. Of people creating good learning, so it's gonna be a really, really good one for. I'm excited. I'm. Excited too. I'm very excited, yeah. Put it on the list. Put it on the list. Awesome. I love everybody in this space, in this community and I can't thank the three of you enough for taking the time. We did go a little bit over. But I know the audience appreciates you. I appreciate you and all the expertise and all the things that you share for this community. So thank you so much for coming on and sharing all your knowledge and all your tips and your tricks. It's it's been a lot of fun.

1:02:48 A lot of. I love this. Thank you for having. Us. Yes. Thanks for hosting. Absolutely anytime. You know, I love to host some some fun parties.