Beginner Instructional Designers – In Pursuit Of Awareness

Beginner Instructional Designer I joined Upside Learning as an Instructional Designer in April 2010. I had four years of training delivery experience, but Instructional Design was a completely new ball game! My first few weeks at Upside Learning were overwhelming and also intimidating to an extent. Almost everything that was discussed in team meetings and training sessions was akin to Greek and Latin.

Beginner Instructional Designers

The Challenge

Learning about Instructional Design basics was easier said than done. I found it very difficult to pick-up concepts from our team training sessions, and I needed to learn at my own pace.

The Lifesavers

I decided to try my luck online. In my quest for awareness, I came across quite a few resources that helped me learn about the basic concepts of Instructional Design and ELearning. I have listed some of them below for my fellow rookie Instructional Designers.

www.elearninglearning.com – eLearning Learning is a collection of blog posts and articles all around eLearning. It uses the Browse My Stuff technology to create this topic hub. Topic Hubs are sites that aggregate content from a variety of sources, organizes that content around keywords in the topic domain.
www.jarche.com – Harold Jarche’s blog is a great place to get introduced to ‘Informal Learning’.
www.c4lpt.co.uk/blog/ – Jane Hart provides news, resources, ideas and new thinking about social media for working and learning, from the Centre for Learning & Performance Technologies (C4LPT). She also aggregates postings from her other blogs: Jane’s Pick of the Day and Social Media for Working and Learning.
www.kaplaneduneering.com/kappnotes – Karl Kapp’s blog discusses issues concerning learning, e-learning and transferring knowledge from retiring baby boomers to incoming gamers. The goal is to share information and knowledge to create a better understanding of learning design.
www.elearningtech.blogspot.com – Tony Karrer’s blog is a great place to learn about emerging trends in eLearning technology.

A Wonderful New World

The internet is a treasure trove of learning resources. Keep exploring, and you never know what you’ll stumble upon.

Comments ( 10 comments )

Jack Pierce January 20, 2011 at 5:50 pm

You’re so nail on the head, Aneesh! In a weak moment I recently hired a really good writer to join our ID team. See those two opposing words (writer and ID)? It really was Greek and Latin for her. Luckily I caught on before things got too far and too frustrating. I was able to switch her to a marketing position, which is a much better fit.
Sometimes when we’ve been doing something so long–well, it seems a lot more simple than it is. But I think the strongest ID talents are somewhat self-taught, using resources like you suggest? Does that at least partially describe you and do you agree?
I also believe that ID can get to be overly academic, and at that point, can lose it’s focus on reaching the learner. In fact, I’ve even spoken at conferences where I covered this. If you don’t mind me adding to the knowledge here, I’d like to share a couple of blog posts, The Role of ID: http://bit.ly/arkmgY and What is natural learning? http://bit.ly/cJvVSO
Thanks for a good post!
Aneesh Bhat January 23, 2011 at 3:21 pm

Thanks Jack. I certainly believe that the best way to learn about Instructional Design is to keep looking for more information and teach myself. I also agree with your post on natural learning – Learning happens everyday!
Hitesh Saikar February 2, 2011 at 8:10 pm

Hi Aneesh, i can relate in a big way to what you are experiencing. In fact, i started my career in Instructional Design from Upside Learning. I learned a lot by observing and listening to the veterans in the team meetings. Upside also has good collection of books on ID. If you want to be an ID, you are at the right place.

I came across a list of books for IDs which can be accessed from http://community.articulate.com/forums/p/675/1644.aspx#1644. Hope it helps!
Kerry-Anne Constance February 15, 2011 at 4:00 pm

Good Day Aneesh

I am interested in becoming an eLearning instructional designer. In SA we have much catching up to do in terms of elearning design and development. the amount of resources outhere is overwhelming and i was wondering if i could look to you for help please. I need to know things such as: The best place to start? getting to know the basic, the design theories and methodologies etc.

Please advise if you would be willing and able to help me.

Kind Regards
K Constance
Aneesh Bhat February 16, 2011 at 6:12 pm

Hi Kerry-Anne,
You can start by browsing this website — http://ide.ed.psu.edu/idde/
It has some useful examples of the application of instructional tactics in various delivery systems (e.g., web-based courses, audio-conferencing, video-conferencing, computer-mediated conferencing, etc.)
You can also check out this blog-post — http://www.upsidelearning.com/blog/index.php/2011/02/10/instructional-design-for-beginners-what-motivates-people-to-learn/
Hope that helps.
Vinay April 9, 2012 at 10:47 am

Hi mam,
It was really helpful your guidance ..i m looking for career in instructional design..but scope in my contry(india) is very less.i have recently started instructional design ..becoz i donot know abt this field earlier. I have been completed for One year in Content developer at Bajajallianz company ,so i m wondering from where to start…Hope u can guide me.
Jimena May 23, 2012 at 9:23 pm

Hi Aneesh
I was trying to check the sites to recommended but they give me the same “page not found” message.. I’m an instructional designer as well and I’m trying to learn more on the web.
Aneesh Bhat May 24, 2012 at 12:35 pm

Hi Jimena.
Thank you for bringing the issue to our attention. The error has been rectified and the links should now work just fine.
Appreciate your feedback!
Aneesh
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Maya January 14, 2014 at 5:32 pm

Hi Aneesh, this is a really good post. Thanks. I can relate to finding instructional design by chance and have always been trying to build a career out of it. I think one of the challenges for those not having a full time ID job but wants to learn more and build the required skills is not knowing where to begin. The Internet is full of resources and updates which can be overwhelming at times. It will be helpful if you could also shed some light or provide tips on key steps towards realising a dream in this field. Thank you.

Beginner Instructional Designers – In Pursuit Of Awareness

Aneesh Bhat | January 20, 2011 | Instructional Design