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Welcome, Stephanie, to Demystifying Instructional Design, a podcast where I

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interview instructional designers to help figure out what it is

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instructional designers do. To begin with,

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can you start by introducing yourself?

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Hi, my name is Stephanie Smith.

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I am the learning and design manager for Tri-State, which

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is an electric utility co-op.

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So a very interesting part of the business to be in

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the energy sector at this time. And I've been in instructional design for about 16 years.

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And then before that I was a teacher for seven

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years, and then in the education field for quite some time

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at this point.

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How did you get into instructional design?

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How did you make that transition?

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Yeah, I was teaching.

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I had become a master teacher and I was really

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hitting burnout, as many do, and I was like, what

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is my favorite part besides the kids that I love?

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And that was curriculum design and and building things.

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I started this was way back before I think even

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e-learning had its big... I mean, there was some stuff out there, but it

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wasn't huge. It was distance learning type of things that were out

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there at that time. And so I started working for the Library of Congress

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doing these sort of virtual field trips and stuff,

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creating these experiences for students.

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And I used that as the base of my portfolio

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and then I begged for a job.

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I found a company wasn't a great company but found

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they were hiring. And I just begged quite a few times and

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then they finally gave me a chance and I came

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in. I'm trying to remember all of it, but I came

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in and I felt really comfortable on the design side.

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But I really had to learn technology where I think

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a lot of teachers feel that sometimes, which is funny

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because I tell people like, You really don't need to

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know the technology as well as you think you do.

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But I sat with people. I learned... we had a recession hit at that point.

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Everybody was losing their jobs. So I thought, I better I don't have to be

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the best, but I better not be the worst designer.

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So I started reading a lot of books, really trying

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to just up my game as an instructional designer.

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I was doing a lot of I was doing a lot of e-learning and video and I think finally my,

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my boss, who was also my mentor at the

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time, he's like, if you've read all of these books,

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why don't you just finish your master's degree?

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And I had read the entire curriculum for my master's

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degree before I ever even got there and took the

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master's program.

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He recommended me, I got in and I got to work with

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some really amazing people in our industry, like Patti Shank.

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She became a mentor for me as well. So it was really good.

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I've had two really big mentors in my career that

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have taken me to those next steps, those next levels

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both times. So it was really, really beneficial to have that.

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A question for you is how do you describe what

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you do when when you say, hey, I'm an instructional

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designer, How do you describe that to people?

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So what I tell people is that we use a

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lot of we use like brain science, we use learning

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theory to really help people learn skills and knowledge to

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help further... like in the corporate world, we do that for for

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employees. And part of that is, gosh, I'm trying to think

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of how I would answer that question. But I think one of the big pieces that I

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try and explain to people is anybody can, like a SME

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can put together a PowerPoint or they can put together

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a training and really where our where we're really beneficial

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is that we represent the learner, right?

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We are looking at what is the best way to

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convey this information? What is the best way for this

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learner to learn? We know there's not going to be a ton of

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retention for a two hour course versus smaller chunking pieces.

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And so we as brain science and we use learning theory and we and we put together our best methods

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of trying to transmit that information to improve performance.

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Cool! What kind of projects do you find fun?

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I think in my career I've really enjoyed when

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they have an actual problem and I have to really

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think it through and really do analysis and to do.

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I had one where, you know, they came back and

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they're like, we have to teach this skill.

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It's a super important safety type of skill and we

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go through this whole process of analysis and we realize

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that as we're going through this analysis and talking and

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interviewing people on the job, that everybody was doing something

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different. And so we realized that there was a there was

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a huge discrepancy on what was supposed to be the

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actual process. So I actually love projects that have a problem where

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I have to really be creative and think outside the

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box. And then I also really do love doing courses that

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are fun with lots of different multimedia.

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I love doing video, so there's a development side that

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I enjoy. But from that design side, I really love figuring out,

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Hey, this is the problem. What are the nuances of the problem?

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And then coming up with different types of solutions that

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will really attack that and help.

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And so what are the biggest challenges you face as

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an instructional designer?

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I think one of the biggest ones is order taker

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versus consultant. A lot of instructional designers, especially newer ones, they come

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in and what do you want? You want a video?

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I'll make you a video.

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You want that?

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They take the order and they create the product, versus

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really trying to get down to what is the issue,

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what is the problem you're solving for?

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And really being able to guide the customer into a

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solution that's going to be the best solution for a

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learner. And one of the things that I've always had guide

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me is if I wasn't willing to take my own

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training, that I didn't do a good job.

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It's because it's funny. I've been a teacher, I've been a trainer,

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and if I can't sit through it because I just

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I'm not a good student sometimes. And so one of my benchmarks.

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If I can't stand it and didn't hit it out

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of the park.

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I totally relate to that.

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And when I was working in tech writing, it was

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the same thing. If I didn't use the stuff that I was writing

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as a reference, then it's not good enough.

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It's not solving the problem.

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And so that's very interesting. And I really like the order taker versus consultants analogy

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there because there is so much of that, especially when

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people don't understand what instructional designers do.

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It's, oh, build this training for me. I want training for that.

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Yeah, I want an e-learning course.

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Okay. Why?

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What exactly do you want it to do? Yes.

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What do you think you're going to get from it? Yeah.

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And having having them get something from it.

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Right. You want to be able to have that return on

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investment and I would say corporate.

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In the corporate world, we don't do a great job on doing that.

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But I've really worked hard to try for our department

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to make sure that we're showing our value right.

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I'm trying to advertise, hey, these are all of the

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things that we fixed for the company that we did

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for the company. And so that it... that's the other thing, right?

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In a recession, what's the first department to get killed?

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We don't need training, showing your value, being a consultant

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and a huge portion of that is starting a project

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as the lead. You've got to lead the project.

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You've got to guide your customer through those processes, but

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explain what we're doing and trying to teach them.

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I have at this point, some of the people we

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work with, they just love it. They're like, I know you're going to handle it.

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You're going to guide me each step, and they really enjoy it working with us.

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That's awesome. So what skills do you find most useful in your

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work?

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I have seen very successful instructional designers in my career

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and not so successful. There really is a brain for it and it's not

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necessarily something that you're going to learn in a program.

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But one of the biggest skills is managing a project.

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If you can't manage a project well, you will have

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scope creep and you will you will have a you'll

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have a very impatient customer who then starts changing their

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mind and then you don't know what you're doing anymore.

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So having really good project management skills, and part of that's

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customer service and communication pieces of talking your way through

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the process and then having this mental ability to organize

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and chunk content and to look at content and convert

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it into something that is a lot more easier to

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digest. For example, I might look at a participant guide and

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if I see paragraph after paragraph, I'm like, I'm going to

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snore through. This isn't working. How do you create graphics?

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How do you pop things out? How do you make it digestible?

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And those are some really key things.

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And so when I'm interviewing, we create scenario questions because

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want to see how how does their brain work?

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How do you get from A to B to C?

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And that's going to show me what kind of designer

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you are. So there is a brain to it.

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It's not always, hey, I can make a really great

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job aid or I can make a video.

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It really comes down to how do you organize and

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chunk information so that learners can

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consume that and be able to retain it.

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What advice would you give to the new instructional designer?

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My first mentor, one of the things he had us

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do was we would take learning theory and then we

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would try and figure out how to apply it in real life.

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And so we would do these sort of workshop scenarios.

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And I will tell you that you start to really

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learn a learning theory that way and really think about

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how if you're looking at behaviorism, how am I applying

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that to what I can do for my learner?

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And so they weren't always. A lot of them were very rhetorical and discussions, but

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we really tried to figure out how do you take

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these concepts and apply them in different mediums.

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So that was one of the things that I think

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can really help.

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Do you have an example of that? Do you have one that off the top of your

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head?

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One of the ones that I did through that process,

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I did the format theory, which is not actually really

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obscure, but a teacher think she was a teacher.

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She came up with this one. But basically it combines a whole bunch of things from

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like Kolbe's Learning Theory of how we perceive and internalize

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training as being able to take some of that and

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apply like how do you give time to give content

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and then allow for processing and then communicating that that

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content out. So that was one that we did.

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It's harder to do with e-learning, but it's pretty easy

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to do in the classroom, right? You can present content, you can allow them to.

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Then you have to look at what is the schema

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of the learner. Having a learner that's somewhat familiar with the content.

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Like if you're teaching something about dogs and you're like,

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Oh, I love dogs! That's the learner's brain's going to do

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right? There can be like, I'm learning all this content about

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dogs. They're going to reference their memories and experience of dogs

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and you're going to encode that that into their schema

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and then having them have a chance to think about

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it, to process it, and then to communicate that back,

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that's going to help reinforce what they're learning.

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And so those are some types of examples that haven't

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used that one. But I should say I've used that one as an

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example to use, but I haven't actually got to do

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an amazing course about dogs.

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I would love that.

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And so you mentioned you're a hiring manager and so

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when you're hiring an instructional designer, what are you looking

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for?

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One of the biggest pieces for me is do they

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fit on my team personality wise?

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And I think that's where I've seen a lot of people online very discouraged, where they're like, I didn't get

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this job, or I went through this whole hiring process

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and sometimes it has nothing to do with your skill

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set. Sometimes it has to do with how are you going

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to fit in with the rest of my team because

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I need you to be able to work together.

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Yes, there are skills, there are competencies that I am

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specifically looking for, but that is one of the bigger

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pieces of what, of who gets hired over someone else.

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I recently was looking at two different candidates and they

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were really equally strong and one one of them didn't

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have a strong portfolio. But you know what?

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She sent me emails thanking me. She followed up.

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She got a lot of eagerness from her.

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And so when I went to compare the two, because

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they looked really close, I was like, I'm going to

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take the one who just put just a teeny bit

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more effort into it.

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And that's what I ended up going with.

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I know it's brutal out there, but knowing learning theory

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and understanding the difference between learning theory and instructional design

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theory, that's a big one. You should know the difference.

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A lot of people can't answer that question, which is

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really surprising our industry.

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And so having being able to like take a scenario,

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walk through it, I have I've hired people who said

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I don't know to a question.

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I can teach that. So being honest, if you don't know something is totally

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fine For me as a hiring manager and portfolios, honestly,

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they can help you, but they don't get you the

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job. For me as a manager, I'm really looking at like

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how your resume looks and that's going to get you

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in my pile of interviews and looking to see how

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you perform on that, those interviews.

14:05

And then I'll probably take a look at your portfolio

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and see you. It looks like you have those skill sets or but

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you're going to talk about that in your interview with

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me. You know, it can be a lot of things,

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but the portfolio doesn't make or break for the job

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hunt.

14:20

And what can somebody do to stand out.

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And guess that should be... okay.

14:25

I have hired somebody based on their portfolio before.

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And this person, he was straight out of college.

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He'd never had a job before. He had an amazing portfolio.

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I didn't believe he made it. So I called him because I didn't think

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he made it, and he did!

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And he walked me through his process and he walked

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me through what he did with his portfolio. And I hired him and I trained him on all

14:50

the other stuff. But so I have hired somebody based on their portfolio.

14:54

Guess I should be honest about that. But that was because he had zero experience, right?

14:59

So he had an amazing portfolio, zero experience.

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But most of the time I see a lot of

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people who have decent portfolios and some experience.

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So you have a stack of resumes. What makes some person someone stand out

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over someone else?

15:16

Good. That's a good question. Okay. So things I'm looking at, when you have, and I'll

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take you've got some of your job titles.

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But what I'm specifically looking at is do you have

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the tasks that an instructional designer does in that

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list of what you did for that job?

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So are you managing projects and SMEs? Ae you communicating

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with those stakeholders? Are you are you following the ADDIE process, doing analysis

15:44

on different projects? Are you developing?

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Some people are not developers. There's a lot of instructional designers that just do the

15:53

first analysis and design and they hand it off right.

15:57

I work in a shop where we do everything from

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soup to nuts, so I want to see that you

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know how to do everything from soup to nuts.

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And if you have that, then I'm usually in the

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yes pile. I'm going to I'm going to at least give you a chance and give you an interview.

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Cool. You mentioned that when you get to that

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interview, one of the things you do is scenario.

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Can you give an example of the types of things you ask people?

16:23

Yeah. So one of the questions I will ask is if

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you had to teach the color red, how would you

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do that? So if your objective is describe the color red, how

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do you fulfill that? What would you do?

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What what learning theories would you bring in?

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What would you do to teach that?

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Wow, that one's got me really thinking! I was, like the

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color red. Really? That's interesting.

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And then in a sense, it's a little bit of a trick question because anytime you have the word describe,

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you're really, really what that does in instructional design is you're telling

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me what it is and what it isn't. I've used red, I've used the I've used an elephant

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or a moose. We've used all sorts of different things depending upon the

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interview, but we're really looking at, can you tell me,

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can you describe what it is and can you describe

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what it isn't? You create learning pieces around that, and a lot of

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times what people do, they'll go and say, Oh, I

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want to teach them the parts of a moose and I want to teach them what an elephant sounds like.

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So they'll start to get that. And I know that's where their brain is going.

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And that's really the answer to the question.

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The color red is particularly hard because there aren't

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parts to it. But it's funny because the thing that went to my

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mind, are okay, so the RGB values and the hues

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and all of the things that make the color red.

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Red like the prism.

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Yeah, that would be a correct answer. Yeah!

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Thta's fascinating.

17:54

Or one of the other ones is I'll ask and

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I'll say, tell me about your your favorite learning theory.

17:59

Why do you use it a lot? What do you use it for?

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How do you use it? So just getting to talk about how they're applying those

18:07

instructional design pieces around that.

18:09

I also ask a question like, if you were going

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to design...

18:16

You got a project to design new hire

18:20

benefits, like you came on to the company and you

18:23

have to teach a new hire about their benefits.

18:25

What would you do? So things I'm looking for are getting stakeholders involved, starting

18:32

with analysis. It's really an ADDIE question, right?

18:34

What are the points of. And so just having them talk through that sort of

18:39

scenario tells me that they understand the process and they

18:43

understand how to... if they SAM or if they

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use something else, that's fine too. I just want to see that they can apply the

18:50

instructional design theory and follow up with that.

18:53

What are the biggest mistakes that people make during the

18:56

interview process?

18:58

So having examples and using examples that don't fit with

19:04

an adult learner. So the big red flags I have, if they if

19:08

you start talking about, Oh, I can have somebody do a crossword puzzle, what's the actual benefit of that besides

19:14

busy work? You can do some vocabulary, things like that.

19:18

Just to say I use it for vocabulary, but that's

19:20

about it.

19:21

Yeah, but typically that's not going to be something that

19:24

we're and if you use that as an example, that's

19:26

okay. But I've had a lot of people who, who don't

19:29

seem with the examples that they use, they're not thinking

19:32

about what an adult learner is. And then I know that's not going to fit with

19:37

my clients, right?

19:39

They're going to be like, why am I filling out

19:42

a crossword puzzle? Whereas they're trying to learn.

19:46

One of the things that we do at my company is we have we have apprenticeships, so people are coming

19:51

in and it's like a college in a lot of

19:54

ways.

19:54

It's not to say that we don't do vocabulary with

19:56

them, but that is... they're looking at pieces of machinery

20:00

and how things fit together. And so you've got to you've got to think about

20:04

what's going to engage an adult learner and what

20:08

makes sense for them, if that makes sense.

20:10

So that's usually a red flag. I also again, I'm looking at different types of teamwork

20:17

questions or part of the interview process is it's two

20:21

sided, right? We are interviewing you to see if you fit with

20:24

us, but you should be interviewing us to see if

20:27

we fit for you. You think people forget that sometimes.

20:31

And part of that is I'll ask you a question

20:34

like what's your favorite part of the process or what's

20:38

your favorite things to do at work? And if it's completely different than what we do, then

20:44

we know we're not probably a fit. We want,

20:46

I want you to be happy. I want you to stay and work for me for

20:50

a long time and be engaged.

20:52

And so I want to find somebody that's going to

20:55

want to do what we do.

20:56

It makes total sense. How big is your team and what is it comprised of?

21:00

What types of people, do you

21:02

have instructional designers, but do you have other trades as

21:05

well?

21:06

Yes. So we have three instructional designers and then I have

21:13

an IT trainer, so she does some of the design work.

21:18

She's like a SME in-house for IT projects and then she's

21:22

also our trainer. Then I have an LMS administrator and

21:26

she also helps manage and run the apprenticeship programs that

21:30

we have. I team manage partner with our other team, which is

21:36

our trades and crafts facilitators. I think there's nine of them.

21:40

So they are doing training on all the different facets

21:45

of an energy company from generation of transmission.

21:48

So we have somebody who's teaching linemen how to be

21:51

linemen, teaching electricians and mechanics how to operate a plant.

21:56

So it's very extensive. So there's nine of those guys, and then we also

22:01

partner with the safety department.

22:03

So the safety they have, gosh, I don't know how

22:06

many facilitators they have, they might have up

22:09

to ten. It might be like somewhere between 5 and 10.

22:12

I'm not sure how many facilitators they have over there

22:15

that go out and do safety teaching and we support

22:18

them.

22:18

We build programs for them as well.

22:21

And then we have an organizational organizational development person.

22:25

So she's looking at our leadership programs and some of

22:31

it is like change management. So some of it's that sort of big picture piece.

22:34

So we partner with her and then we have on

22:37

my team, my instructional designers are part of they do

22:40

they're part of a DEI committee, some leadership, different committees.

22:43

So not only are they doing that, but they're also

22:46

trying to be part of these bigger corporate changes that

22:52

are integral to what we have to do in-house.

22:56

And yeah, and my team of designers, I think instructional

22:58

designers, I usually have anywhere between 3 and 4.

23:02

I have four right now, sorry.

23:04

When you're looking at portfolios because you mentioned you

23:06

look at resumes first, but then interview and look at

23:08

portfolios. What are you looking for in the portfolio?

23:11

What do you want to see?

23:13

That's a good question. So the first thing I will say is I've had

23:18

people submit portfolios that are locked where I have to

23:21

go in and I try and get in there and

23:24

then I contact them to give me permission to see

23:27

it. That wastes my time.

23:29

So having something that is easily consumable is very important

23:35

because if I have to waste time, I'm going to

23:38

go to the next person. Not to say that I won't take a look at

23:41

it, but and totally understand all of the sort of

23:45

IP types of issues that that come with that.

23:49

But make it easy for me as the hiring manager

23:52

so I can see your stuff really quickly.

23:54

I will say that I spend probably about five minutes

23:57

in there, so I'm looking for examples of do you

24:01

have an e-learning project? Do you have... does it have audio, so can you do

24:05

audio? Do you have a video project?

24:07

Do you have a participant guide? Do you have some examples of job aids or writing?

24:13

I had one person who had a portfolio where she

24:18

showed this really cool interactive job aid to get started

24:22

with jobs. It was something so different I had I've never seen.

24:26

She immediately got an interview. Like I was like, yeah, I want to talk to

24:29

her because this looks cool. So if there is something really special that you've made

24:34

that stands out, I know a lot of the colleges

24:37

will have you do write ups. I am skimming.

24:40

I am looking for... Do you have the basic development skills?

24:43

Your resume should show me that you have the knowledge

24:47

skills for instructional design.

24:49

But can you show me that you have the development

24:53

skills? Do you have a PowerPoint?

24:55

I've had a hard time too, where there's only Rise

24:59

courses in somebody's portfolio. That's not e-learning, where it's higher

25:04

level e-learning, branching with different types of questions and application

25:10

pieces. I want to see that you can build some of

25:12

that. So some of it is really just to show some

25:15

examples or or skills. I will even take screenshots like if I can just

25:20

see, hey, you did build something like that.

25:22

Works for me. But again, I may have 20 resumes so you get

25:26

five minutes. So it just needs to be clean.

25:29

I don't want to have to try and figure out

25:31

where it is. If there's a huge file structure that happens too!

25:36

So those are anything that makes it not.

25:39

I might dig into something a little bit longer if

25:41

I'm really interested in your your stuff, but you have

25:46

to, it has to have that five minute mark. I'm going to just skim it.

25:49

And if it looks good, you're in the "Yes" pile,

25:52

that kind of thing.

25:53

You mentioned earlier that you use an LMS for your

25:56

e-learning. What? Which I'm curious... which LMS?

26:00

Yeah. Right now we're using Sumtotal Learn which just got

26:04

bought by Cornerstone. I've worked, I actually had a job at one point

26:09

where we used to sell our training and part of

26:12

my job was to get it implemented on customers' learning

26:16

management systems. So I ended up like learning a ton about learning

26:21

management systems. And it's really funny because it's like a dime a dozen, some

26:25

of them work great. You have to know what your... what do you need

26:29

it for? And then usually you can find a product that's going

26:33

to meet that. So Sumtotal, it is not the... it looks good

26:38

on the user end, on the back end it's a lot of work, but it meets the needs

26:43

for what our company needed at

26:46

the time.

26:46

I'm running out of questions. I'm wondering if there's any question you want me to

26:50

ask.

26:51

I see a lot of people wanting to transition into.

26:57

Instructional design. And then there's a lot of there's a lot of

27:00

debates about whether you have a master's degree or you

27:03

do a certification. I went the master's degree route for myself.

27:08

I actually felt... did my program prepare me for everything?

27:11

No! But it took me to that next level.

27:14

It did bring me where... it built.

27:17

I would say some confidence, but it also took me

27:21

into I would say that if you're it took me

27:24

to that senior level of design, if that makes sense.

27:27

I will look at people who have a certification.

27:31

I know there's a lot of great programs.

27:33

There's not so great programs. But I will say a master's holds a lot more

27:37

weight for me as a hiring manager just because I

27:40

feel like you get a lot more of design theory

27:44

and you get a lot more skills.

27:46

And I know some people come out and they're like, I don't know how to do Articulate or I don't

27:51

know how to do Captivate. Oh, they're easy.

27:54

Don't worry, I'll teach you.

27:56

I'll teach you that stuff on the job. But having a good understanding of adult learning theory and

28:02

having a good understanding of how to apply

28:07

learning theory and how to think through.

28:09

I remember doing a capstone project where I was running

28:12

my own business and I thought at the time, I

28:15

go, I'm never going to need this.

28:18

I'm always going to work for someone else. And I ended up having a consulting side business and

28:24

I used that! I took the stuff that I used from there and

28:27

and was able to apply it and then I felt

28:30

a little bit better. Okay, I could work for myself if I wanted to.

28:33

But I do love I like being in the corporate

28:36

sphere as much as I enjoyed the consulting piece, but

28:41

that's where I really like being.

28:43

Yeah, everyone has their preference, right?

28:45

Like they do. And one of my employees, she came,

28:50

she was on her way to be a college professor.

28:52

And she's an amazing designer.

28:55

She's... so talented, and I really want to keep her.

28:59

so... right? So as a manager have to really work hard at that.

29:02

But it's I wouldn't say that there's a waste with

29:05

with having a master's degree. That being said, if you're a teacher and you're transitioning

29:09

the and it's not in instructional technologies, that's okay. Because

29:15

think if you have anything in that sort of realm

29:18

whether that's. Whether that's like leadership, organizational development.

29:22

I think all of those kind of feed together. I usually

29:26

flag those first. And then the other big one that people miss

29:31

they think that instructional technologies means like they're learning the

29:36

tech side of instruction. And that's it's actually the science of instruction.

29:42

And I think that's really funny that a lot of people miss that one, or they'll misuse it.

29:46

And I'm like, that's not totally what that means, but

29:48

that's okay.

29:49

Yes. Yeah, we get a lot of the, oh, do you

29:53

know, Articulate? or will I be learning Articulate or will

29:55

I be learning Captivate? I'm like, Sure, I'll teach you H5P, though it's free,

30:00

but it doesn't really matter which one as long as

30:04

you know how to apply it in the right context.

30:07

And the really the funny part is that technology just

30:10

keeps getting easier. So back in my day when I first started e-learning,

30:14

we had to code by hand , in these like Excel

30:17

sheets to get the XML file to work old school.

30:21

And then now I'm on my phone and I can

30:24

click on my kids' pictures and it pops out

30:27

the background and I'm like, You don't even need Photoshop

30:30

anymore!

30:31

Yeah, exactly, Exactly.

30:34

It's funny because, yeah, when I started out, I was

30:36

I would storyboard and so my first job as an

30:40

instructional designer was actually writing storyboards that we then handed

30:44

to programmers who would create the Flash interactions.

30:48

And an interaction was a page flip.

30:50

It was considered interactive if you could, if you had

30:53

to click next. And that was like, yeah, wow, we've come a long

30:56

way.

30:57

We have come a long way. Yeah. And I still look at projects and we have that

31:02

on our team. We'll have some stuff that we know we're going

31:05

to do a cheaper level. It's probably going to be slide show next button with

31:09

a quiz at the end versus something...

31:11

we have one that's for our cybersecurity program that is

31:17

scenario based. Instead of talking head based.

31:21

So it puts you in a virtual environment.

31:24

You have to make decisions for cybersecurity and then it

31:28

teaches you as you go. So that's a very high level, high design, type of

31:34

course. People loved it!

31:37

Oh yeah.

31:37

Because they're like, there's no talking person.

31:40

People actually learn.

31:42

Yeah. And then our cybersecurity team, we have videos, so if

31:46

they may, if they do something, then they'll pop up

31:48

and then they'll tell them, but it's their own people

31:51

that they work with. So it's really, it's a great course.

31:54

So I'm pretty proud of my team for that one.

31:57

So yeah, we mean we go the gambit and understanding

32:01

as you go through your your career, you will have

32:05

an understanding of. cost versus sometimes we build things cheap, sometimes we don't.

32:12

But even understanding the cost of instructor led versus e-learning,

32:17

right? E-learning is very expensive upfront, but it has, you don't

32:21

have to bring in your people from all over the

32:24

country to take a course, but sometimes that's needed.

32:28

So understanding the cost of things, I think that's something

32:32

as you go through your career, you'll start to really understand, but that's not necessarily something we focus and teach

32:38

on early on.

32:40

So the last question I have, which I ask everybody,

32:43

is what's your prediction for the future of instructional design?

32:46

I think we're already seeing it. It's learning in the moment.

32:53

And this is so this is really interesting.

32:55

So my company right now is converting to Oracle, and

32:59

Oracle has a program called Oracle Guided Learning.

33:04

And it is basically like Articulate or Captivate that's embedded

33:09

into their program. So my designers and we're going to we have a

33:13

meeting coming up. We we thought, oh, we're going to

33:16

build job aids, we're going to do this. And then we got this tool and went, we have

33:21

to rethink everything we're doing, what needs to pop out,

33:25

and what needs to tell them how to do something

33:27

while they're doing it. So to me, and that comes into you can't frontload

33:33

training anymore, you've got to do it while they need

33:37

it. That's when it's most meaningful. That's when they're going to remember it.

33:41

So I think that's we saw that with the sort

33:45

of the MOOC movement, these small bite size pieces.

33:48

But now I think it's going to be like, what

33:50

can we put into MS Teams?

33:53

What can we put into... it's almost like the reliving

33:58

Clippy that would come up. It's not dumb, but I do think that's really where

34:04

things are. It's going to be when I need it, just on

34:07

demand, easily consumable pieces.

34:11

I think that's really where we're heading.

34:13

Performance support.

34:14

Yeah.

34:15

Yeah. And it's really yeah, in the corporate world, that's really

34:18

a big trend.

34:20

Yeah. Not to say that people are and I'm always surprised

34:24

there's a lot of people, adult learners who love podcasts,

34:28

who love TedTalks, who do books, and so you

34:32

still have people consuming some of these sort of bigger

34:36

mediums or longer, I should say, for an attention span.

34:40

But I do think that that's one of the biggest

34:44

directions we're seeing on the corporate side.

34:47

Well, thank you very much.

34:50

This has been really insightful, really great.

34:53

Yeah. So thank you for being a guest on Demystifying Instructional

34:56

Design.

34:57

Thank you. It was great. I'm so glad to help out and and help guide

35:02

people as they come in. And this is a, it's a wonderful field.

35:06

I love this field. Makes me happy to go to work.