0:06

Welcome to Demystifying Instructional Design, a podcast where I interview

0:10

various instructional designers to figure out what instructional designers do.

0:14

I'm Rebecca Hogue, your podcast host. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider subscribing or leaving

0:20

a comment on the show Notes blog post and consider

0:23

helping to support the podcast with a donation to my

0:26

Patreon account. This interview is not an endorsement of the product one

0:30

way or the other. Please see this episode as a learning opportunity for both

0:34

myself as interviewer and the founders of Mindsmith.

0:38

We would love to hear your thoughts. Please leave a comment in the show notes at Demystifying

0:43

Instructional Design dot com. Today I've got some special guests.

0:46

I'm talking to the founders of Mindsmith.

0:49

Can you please introduce yourselves and tell us a little

0:52

bit about Mindsmith.

0:53

Hi, my name's Ethan. I'm the head of product at Mindsmith.

0:57

We all met through a program at Brigham Young

1:00

University called the Sandbox Program.

1:03

We're in the second cohort. It's a tech startup incubator.

1:06

So this is a really neat program where we just get

1:09

tons of school credit for starting a tech company.

1:13

Although it sounds like we're just in it for a

1:15

couple of semesters, we're actually in it for the long

1:17

haul. When we started as a team, we decided that this

1:21

is something that we wanted to be all in on. And as we've grown and as we have interviewed people

1:26

and grown as a company, we've realized that instructional design

1:30

is where we want to be. We started out in the higher ed space.

1:34

We wanted to create a tool for teachers that made

1:37

creating dynamic and interactive lessons much more easy and just

1:42

incredibly intuitive for teachers to pick up. But we realized that a lot of the problems that

1:46

teachers face are also faced by people all around the

1:49

world. So anyone that wants to create a lesson has a

1:53

hard time learning the current authoring tools for instructional designers.

1:57

Really, the only tools available to them right now are

1:59

things like PowerPoint, which don't allow for any sort of

2:02

interactive content or best practices and pedagogy.

2:06

We see ourselves as democratizing instructional design, bringing instructional design

2:10

to the masses. Like I said, I'm Ethan, Head of Product.

2:13

I'm Zach. I'm head of development here at Mindsmith.

2:16

And I'm Christy. I'm in charge of design and UX design.

2:20

We've listened to your podcast a little bit, Rebecca, but

2:23

let's hear an intro from you. Who are you?

2:25

Where did you find your passion for instructional design?

2:28

I'm an instructional designer and an instructor of instructional design.

2:32

I teach instructional design at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

2:35

I found instructional design when I was initially laid off.

2:40

I started my career in computer science as a quality

2:44

assurance person, which was great. Loved it.

2:47

But right up until Y2K. And then, of course, the tech bust happened.

2:50

And when the tech bust happens, I lost my job

2:53

and I had an opportunity to really reflect on what

2:57

I was doing and realize that even though I was

3:01

working in quality assurance and then in product management, I

3:04

realized that what I was doing all the time was

3:06

education and teaching customers and doing adult education and more

3:11

than adult education -- professional education.

3:14

I was teaching, I worked for a telecom company.

3:17

I was teaching people how to use the telecom equipment.

3:20

And in my explorations of that, I discovered that really

3:24

what I was doing was instructional design. And so I claimed the title of instructional designer.

3:30

I went back to school and did a master's, and

3:33

that really helped me make a career transition.

3:36

I haven't looked back since. I love helping create content.

3:41

I've worked for a variety of different companies and done

3:45

instructional design in the context of health care, but also

3:48

in the context of cryptography.

3:51

Wow. And corporate. Yeah, like a whole variety of different areas.

3:57

But at the moment, I'm really enjoying creating courses and

4:00

doing stuff in the higher ed space.

4:03

Can you tell us a little bit about how your

4:05

product works? What problem does it solve for me?

4:08

Yeah, that's a great question. Mindsmith. was born out of wanting to create a

4:15

product that was easy for teachers, like we mentioned teachers

4:19

and professors to pick up and start using.

4:22

We found that as we learned about the current tools,

4:25

the instructional design tools out there, things like Articulate, things

4:29

like Storyline, Captivate, even like the more modern ones, like

4:34

Chameleon or some of these other more newer instructional design

4:38

authoring tools that they all have long tutorial cycles.

4:43

And the teachers that we were interviewing didn't have time

4:46

to do those tutorials or learn how to use these

4:49

tools. And so what they were doing instead was outsourcing any

4:52

of the learning to their instructional design departments, who then

4:56

take a long time to build. And it's this whole back and forth that's a real

5:00

headache for teachers when they just want to build the

5:02

courses themselves. So we're like, okay, let's be the sort of Canva

5:06

of instructional design. Let's make it just so intuitive to create a course

5:11

that anyone can pick it up and start. And so that's where we are with teachers.

5:14

And like I said, we've transitioned more recently into the

5:16

private sector as well, helping companies like A Ramen House

5:20

train their employees on front of house best practices and

5:24

things like that. Yeah, so that's part of the problem we solve is

5:26

just like being intuitive. There are also like other smaller problems in instructional design

5:31

tools. Authoring tools like accessibility has been a big one that

5:36

we didn't know about going into the space. But people like instructional designers have told us time and

5:40

time again, most tools are hard to make fully accessible,

5:44

and that doesn't make any sense.

5:46

We also found that as we learned about pedagogy and

5:49

trends in instructional design, like cognitive load theory is a

5:53

huge thing. Like how are people processing information like for students?

5:58

We're given log textbook chapters, readings like we're given PowerPoint

6:01

slides and we don't engage with that content.

6:04

Like I'm an econ major and pretty much every class

6:07

I have textbook assignments and I have never done them

6:09

because they're just like way too much. I don't learn.

6:12

From them. And same with like corporate, like trainings are often long,

6:16

long trainings in person, or sometimes there are PowerPoints as well.

6:20

And so we're like, okay, what is solving this problem

6:23

of long form learning is not the best way of

6:25

learning. And this this trend is in microearning as well.

6:28

So we're like, how do we appeal to the modern

6:31

student? How do we appeal to the way that people actually

6:33

learn? And that's where we've had our focus on microlearning as

6:36

well, has been a really important thing for us.

6:39

So just, yeah, taking these huge concepts and breaking them

6:42

up into bite sized pieces.

6:44

One of the things I actually quite like is, is

6:46

the microlearning but not just that. Like you're not just creating it.

6:50

The product that...the learning that you output works on

6:53

any device. So it's not.

6:55

Yes. Yeah. And that's how we do with like companies like Seven Taps,

6:59

like they're mobile first, but they're mobile only and

7:02

it's, it doesn't make any sense because people learn in

7:05

all sorts of different environments and like we are mobile

7:08

first in the way that like when you are editing

7:11

a lesson, it looks like a phone viewer so they

7:13

know what it looks like for the phone people, but

7:16

you can send it out and it yeah, automatically fits

7:19

any sort of screen, whether it's an iPad, iPhone, Excel

7:23

or, I don't know, a Microsoft Zune, it doesn't matter.

7:25

And it's really important to have that versatility in an

7:28

authoring tool for sure.

7:29

You mentioned that you had some questions for me, so

7:31

why don't we just turn this over to you for

7:33

a little bit?

7:34

We wanted to ask our first question on the lines

7:38

of where we're talking right now about authoring tools and

7:41

the changes in the space. What would you change about current authoring tools?

7:47

What are some of your biggest hangups about what is

7:50

out there aside from Mindsmith?

7:51

Pricing and not looking old.

7:54

So what I can get access to for free typically

7:58

is h5p. I can do stuff in h5p It looks very

8:02

dated, right? So quite often the stuff that produces that are there,

8:06

if I want to make it look more modern, I have to do a lot of CSS and a lot

8:11

of changing of things to make it look more modern.

8:14

Sometimes simple is beautiful and being able to do that

8:19

is one of the things I don't like. There's this interesting balance because I also want to be

8:25

able to get behind the scenes sometimes, but that's because

8:29

I'm a pretty technical person and so I want to

8:33

be able to sometimes add some JavaScript or sometimes usually

8:37

it's tweaking CSS. I do that more than anything else.

8:41

I need it to look a particular way.

8:43

How do I make it look that way?

8:45

I'm actually doing a bunch of work in WordPress right now, and I find it interesting that understanding CSS is what's

8:52

needed in order to understand how the different things format

8:56

in WordPress, so they're not playing to either audience, right?

9:00

They don't have the WSYWIG audience of make it

9:03

easy, make it simple, just let me click a couple

9:06

buttons. Make it look like a word processor, Right?

9:09

Right.

9:09

Or you need to understand the CSS in order to

9:13

understand what all of the different configurations are.

9:15

So if you don't understand how CCS works, then you

9:18

know you don't understand what the different options are.

9:21

Yeah, it's like the worst of both worlds.

9:24

Yeah.

9:25

Yeah.

9:25

We've encountered a similar thing in that we're

9:28

using WebFlow right?

9:29

Yeah.

9:30

And that's very similar where it's like it feels like

9:33

it should be plug and play.

9:35

I have very limited CSS/HTML knowledge

9:37

and so it's not good for either

9:40

party. It's not great for people who want to stick with

9:43

code. And it's not great for people who don't know anything

9:46

about code.

9:46

Yeah, so we want to appeal to your very your

9:49

average user. You like base user, although we do have in the

9:53

pipeline. So we're still pretty new.

9:55

We soft launched in October, so it's been two months

9:59

and we're thinking like maybe we do want to be

10:01

robust enough that your instructional design professional will

10:06

use us as the go to. And so we're like, how do we... do we toggle

10:09

Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced mode?

10:14

Do we hide features somewhere?

10:16

where only an instructional designer would know or care to

10:19

look for them because I think there are ways to

10:22

to do it in both worlds. Like initially we are going into and it's like kind

10:26

of you're either or either you are WYSIWYG and

10:30

super simple, super basic or you're robust and have these

10:34

different tools and features. And we're like, we don't have to fit that.

10:38

There are there can be ways to appeal to both

10:41

crowds. And so that's what we're thinking through right now, especially

10:44

on stuff, is like, how do we how do we appeal to both groups of people?

10:48

So yeah, stay tuned for all you technical people

10:52

who are like want the CSS and want to do

10:55

some coding on your lessons.

10:58

Probably within the next few months we'll be doing some

11:00

updates that allow for more versatility.

11:03

Yes. So I guess we have another question for you.

11:05

Zach, do you want to ask the next one?

11:08

You've been doing all these interviews. You've talked to a lot of interesting people in this

11:12

space of instructional design. What have been your greatest insights, like the best takeaways

11:18

from them?

11:19

One of the biggest takeaways I've had has been that

11:23

it doesn't matter what what sector you're in.

11:29

A lot of the things that we do are the same.

11:31

So whether you're in the corporate sector or whether you're

11:35

in higher ed, your job descriptions may look very different.

11:39

But the processes that you follow and a lot of

11:42

the concepts that we do as instructional designers are precisely

11:47

the same.

11:47

I love that. I wanted to add on to what you were talking

11:51

about just now, about how many similarities there are between

11:55

the different types of instructional designers, because we found the

11:58

same thing like some of our advisors.

12:00

They're not like instructional design professionals, but they were like,

12:03

Maybe you shouldn't try to do both.

12:06

Maybe you shouldn't try to do higher ed instructional designers

12:09

and professors as well as corporate people.

12:12

And the more we've learned it's the same features.

12:14

Maybe a higher ed instructional designer will need an equations

12:18

feature or something, which we have built for our professors

12:21

and then very simple equations. But other than that, it's like it's the same stuff

12:26

and instructional design principles.

12:28

I can see certain corporate worlds that might need that.

12:31

If I think back to one of the people I've

12:34

interviewed recently, Darlesa Cahoon.

12:37

She works at the Seattle airport and has to train

12:39

everybody. And so sometimes that math might actually be part of

12:44

what she has to teach, right. And so giving a tool to allow her to create

12:50

a course that she can then roll out on the

12:53

phone or roll out on a tablet or any device

12:56

that's really valuable for her, because in her world, she

13:01

has to really pay attention. And that's another sort of interesting thing, really pay attention

13:05

to who the student is and what the student needs.

13:08

What is the what are the things that not just

13:11

what the instructor needs in order to put it in,

13:13

but what does the student need in order to digest?

13:16

And again, that's another one of those core things.

13:18

When we do analysis and instructional design, we ask the

13:21

question, who are our students? What are the characteristics?

13:23

What do we need to know about the students in

13:26

order to be effective at creating training material?

13:29

And one of the things I love about, like the

13:32

idea of democratizing instructional design is that if you have

13:37

the people building lessons, be the ones who interact with

13:40

those people on a daily basis, like it solves so

13:43

many of the problems that instructional designers deal with every

13:46

day. If your manager is collaboratively building a lesson with the

13:50

instructional designer on staff, then they can add those elements

13:54

that are unique to their learners that they know like

13:57

very intimately. And the instructional designer.

14:00

It seems like previously you have to do like these

14:02

very long interviews and learn about... try to get into

14:06

the manager or the leaders' shoes or point of view,

14:09

whereas let's just bring them to the table, have them

14:12

work collaboratively, put them on the lesson; let them

14:14

edit things and give input more directly rather than just

14:17

back and forth like this interview thing. And then the instructional designer has to like, synthesize it

14:22

in some way and then put it back in and let's just work together on this.

14:26

Yeah. So that's another thing that that we really encourage is

14:28

collaboration. So sharing lessons in between.

14:31

It's like sharing a Google doc. It's just super easy and two people can work on

14:35

it at the same time. Why are we still sending out static lessons, back

14:40

and forth between even our SCORM files update automatically as

14:43

a lesson is done. And so it's it's very cloud based and collaborative is

14:48

a really important feature of us as well.

14:51

So that's actually an interesting point. So if I create my microlearning lesson, I can then

14:57

add a second author is that...?

15:00

Yeah.

15:00

And directly collaborate. Yeah, that's actually a feature that a lot of tools

15:04

don't have. They make it very difficult.

15:07

It's surprising. Why are we

15:09

sending uneditable versions of things

15:14

like, especially, I don't know, professors and their instructional

15:17

design departments. They hate it, but they have to like they want

15:20

to edit one thing and it's like I have to

15:22

send an email to my department and they have to

15:25

get on their thing and then ship it back and

15:27

it's this whole thing. So yeah, just make it cloud-based.

15:31

Do you want to talk a little bit about your sort of

15:34

SCORM package? You mentioned SCORM. How does that work and how is that different from

15:38

what other people do?

15:40

Yeah at Mindsmith we're able to support all of

15:42

the common learning standards like XAPI, CMI5 and

15:45

SCORM, the different versions of SCORM.

15:49

And we're able to do this like very simply and

15:53

really elegantly by allowing essentially the package that gets exported

15:57

is just a link and a little interface to our

16:02

product. And so it just sends over the necessary data and

16:06

then everything that - the whole course and all of that - still

16:11

gets loaded from the source of truth which is your kind of Google

16:14

doc published version.

16:17

Okay, so the version in essence loads from what's on

16:22

your Mindsmith site So I can just log in to my site and

16:25

if I edit my lesson, the lesson that my students

16:31

see just gets updated. I don't have to go to my LMS and I

16:34

need to reexport and then import again to get it

16:38

to update in the elements that aren't to worry about

16:40

versions from that perspective.

16:43

Exactly. Yeah. And you can always, like, make copies.

16:47

And so you can have your old versions if you're

16:50

interested. And probably in the future we'll do publish buttons so

16:53

it doesn't automatically update if you're not ready to publish

16:56

it or something. But that's how it works currently. Yeah, it's just authored in the cloud.

17:00

And where do people go to access your tool?

17:05

Yeah. So Mindsmith is always, will always have, a free

17:10

forever plan. You can just go to Mindsmith dot org

17:13

up a free account.

17:15

Yeah. It'll take you to another site app.Mindsmith.org but...

17:18

Yeah, that's it. Just go to our website and you can learn about

17:22

us and learn about what we're doing.

17:24

And give it a try. Cool.

17:25

Yeah.

17:26

Before I ask my last question, are there other questions

17:29

you want to ask me?

17:31

Yes, Christy has one.

17:32

Yeah. You've probably mentioned this on previous podcasts but I'm

17:38

in UX design and it's new from the past 15-20

17:41

years. And so I get a lot of people asking me,

17:44

like, what is that? And I feel like it's the same for instructional design.

17:48

So it's not as well known.

17:50

So how would you describe instructional design to someone who

17:54

doesn't know what it is?

17:56

That's a great question. I ask a lot of the people I interview.

18:00

What's your elevator pitch? What? How do you describe instructional design?

18:04

I talk about how it's adult based learning and specifically

18:09

creating training materials or creating learning experiences for adults and

18:17

not within the K to 12, not typically within the

18:20

K-12 system, which is actually interesting because where instructional design

18:26

is in higher ed. So it is in formal education, but it's also in

18:30

the corporate world. And so it depends on who's asking me what their

18:36

background is, because I'm trying to find out in other

18:39

one of those cognitive theories, I'm trying to figure out

18:42

what they already know so I can give them an

18:44

example that ties in to what they know.

18:47

Right? So if they understand higher ed, I'm going to give

18:51

them an example of, Oh yeah, I work with professors

18:54

to help professors develop better courses because a lot of

18:56

professors are not trained on how to teach.

18:59

And so I can go in as the expert educator

19:02

but not the expert in their field and help them

19:06

create better courses. But if I'm talking to somebody who works at Starbucks,

19:10

for example, I can talk about their new hire training

19:15

and when they first started and learned how to make

19:17

the different things while somebody designed that, actually one of

19:20

my students was designing that the other day, how to

19:23

teach the baristas and what they need to know for

19:25

different things. And so there's a context everywhere for learning.

19:30

And so it's really about understanding how people learn and

19:35

how to create opportunities or experiences to help encourage

19:39

that learning or support that learning.

19:42

Wow. Thank you. That's like, that's it's cool to see how you can

19:47

look at people's backgrounds and explain to their understanding.

19:50

It requires an experienced instructor.

19:55

That's hard to come up with on the spot, but it's cool.

19:59

I do have one. One more question that I'm curious about.

20:03

I know that you've asked a lot in the past

20:06

to your guests like how do you see the future of instructional design or

20:10

how do you see instructional design changing? I'm curious, like, what do you see as the biggest

20:16

challenges to the instructional design field in the future?

20:20

Like moving forward.

20:22

Challenges? That's a great question.

20:25

One of the challenges I see is the lack of

20:32

credibility in the profession.

20:35

It's a particular challenge within the profession because we, for

20:39

example, don't have a certifying body.

20:42

And without that certifying body, it means that people have

20:46

different definitions of what... If you ask somebody what a goal is, an instructional

20:51

goal. You'll get four or five different answers, right, to that.

20:55

So we have concepts that we all understand, but we

21:00

label them differently, and that doesn't help us as a

21:04

profession to help other people understand what we do because

21:07

it makes us sound like we don't know what we're doing, but we do.

21:11

We just have to figure out what we're trying to

21:14

communicate with each other, what we're saying in the higher

21:16

ed space. One of the challenges we run into is cost cutting,

21:21

and it often is seen as one of the things

21:24

that can be cut pretty quickly. But on the other hand, like it's, as I mentioned,

21:30

a lot of professors were never taught how to

21:33

teach. And that's why you get lots of really boring lectures

21:37

and not taught how to create better courses.

21:40

And that's what instructional designers bring to the table is

21:44

how to take what, take the material you're trying to

21:47

teach and how to elevate it. And I think it's really yeah.

21:50

So I think the biggest challenge is one around credibility

21:53

and still around the people not knowing what instructional design

21:57

is. And I can add one more. That's a personal one, because I didn't know what instructional

22:02

design was when I graduated and when I graduated from

22:06

high school and...I only... the only career I knew about that involved

22:14

teaching was being a K-12 teacher.

22:17

And I knew that I was not a K-12 teacher.

22:20

That was never going to be me. And so I didn't know what instructional design was when

22:25

I was in that state where I could have made

22:29

my first career choice. And it probably would have been... I would have gone

22:33

that way had I known that was actually an option.

22:35

But I truly had no idea that that instructional design

22:40

was a career path. And so for you guys, I want to ask you

22:43

the question I ask everyone else, too.

22:45

But what do you see as the future?

22:48

What is the future of instructional design?

22:50

I think we should all answer this.

22:52

I don't know if this will necessarily be the future

22:54

of instructional design, but I think it would be great

22:58

if we started working towards not putting out content for

23:02

the sake of putting out content, but being mindful of

23:05

how we present it and how other people are like

23:08

taking it in and understanding it.

23:10

I like that. I think that the future one, a really cool thing

23:14

about democratizing instructional design is because is that I think

23:19

currently instructional designers sometimes see their job as being an

23:27

expert in a certain tool that they need that I

23:30

know how to use Storyline and I know how to

23:32

use Captivate and therefore I'm an instructional designer.

23:36

And I don't think that's what instructional design is at

23:39

all.

23:40

I think that it is knowing how people learn and

23:44

knowing the best practices and knowing how to teach to

23:48

the individual while also being able to scale lessons and

23:52

courses.

23:54

With democratizing instructional design.

23:57

You take a lot of the work out of...you

23:59

take a lot of the extraneous parts of being an

24:01

instructional designer. Learning tools and learning how to do this branching scenario

24:07

in this like complex way. And you allow instructional designers to focus on what their

24:12

expertise is. You allow them to focus on pedagogy.

24:16

So they're like they're more of like an editor rather

24:19

than a like a rogue

24:23

painter or something like working collaboratively

24:26

they can see things from the broader view and they

24:29

and they can fine tune to the needs of the people and really capture where their expertise is rather than

24:35

spending all this time learning extra tools.

24:38

Yeah.

24:38

So I think the future of instructional designers is like

24:41

to elevate instructional designers in their role and in their

24:46

in the functions that they actually do on a day

24:48

to day basis.

24:50

What I see as the future of instructional design, similar

24:54

to what Ethan was saying, once we remove that barrier

24:58

for our tutorial or having to learn the software, there's

25:02

things and so many people whose jobs can

25:07

be improved with a simple training so they know better

25:10

how to do their job or an assignment that's easier

25:14

and helps them learn more efficiently.

25:17

Once we remove these barriers to getting into instructional

25:21

design. I see a lot more people being up, being able

25:25

to create content and being able to experience content that's

25:29

really well designed for an instructional base.

25:33

Thank you folks for joining us on Demystifying Instructional Design.

25:37

I really enjoyed our conversation.

25:40

Thank you so much for having us.

25:42

You've been listening to Demystifying Instructional Design, a podcast where

25:45

I interview instructional designers about what they do.

25:49

I'm Rebecca Hogue, your podcast host. Show notes are posted

25:53

as a blog post on Demystifying Instructional Design dot com.

25:56

If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe or leave a

25:59

comment in the show notes Blog post.