As a current trainer, and future instructional designer, I believe
it is important to follow those leading the industry and seeking to make an
impact on methodology, and the business world as a whole. Part of ensuring that
I am keeping up with current best practices means constantly seeking new ideas
and information that relates to what I am currently doing, as well as what I
hope to be doing in the future. As I searched through the blogs posted for
research, as well as others, I came across three that I believe will be assets
to be moving forward in my journey. The first of these relates directly to my
role as a trainer. The second focuses primarily on the role of being an instructional
designer. And the third takes a look at creating a learner centric experience.
Each of these ties into the other as each piece is interwoven. Content can be
well designed and valuable but unless it is delivered in a way that is
accessible and meets the needs of the learner, it will not be adopted for long
term retention. As an instructional designer, it is critical for me to not only
keep the end result in mind, but also how the development of material
translates to presentation.
Brian Washburn shares tips, strategies, and out of the box
ideas for leading, presenting, and developing training activities. He was noted
as a “Top Young Trainer” by Training Magazine and seems to make it his mission
to really promote a quality experience in training. Often, training is seen as
boring, a necessity-but of little value. Slowly that viewpoint has turned
around as trainers, such as those sharing Brian’s mindset, have begun to enter
the scene. As a trainer in my current role, I am constantly looking for ways to
keep things fresh, interesting, and engaging during my webinar delivery-and in
preparation for live delivery as well. I spent a great deal of time looking
through and even adapting a couple of strategies for my own use. If you are
looking for fresh material to boost engagement and excitement around training,
this is a great place to start.
Jody Lumsden takes a look at the challenges, trends, and
reflections within the instructional design world. While the first blog I
mentioned focuses primarily on the delivery of material, Jody’s blog seeks to
enter into the realm of the development of material which is at the core of an
instructional designer’s role within a company. However, I believe the two need
to be in sync. This blog opened my eyes to many of the additional challenges,
strategies, and ideas currently at work in the instructional design world. In
addition, the information can function on many levels. There are some broad
overview explanations of current concepts and trends, as well as some posting
that seek to go deeper into particular aspects-such as gamification-that are
trending within the instructional design world. In all, this is an accessible
and valuable tool to increase my awareness of challenges and trends within
instructional design.
Shauna Vaughan
takes a learner centric focus to blogging about instructional systems design
and the development of learning situations for organizations. The primary focus
of her posts relate to being learner centric. Often in the world of creating
and delivering training, there is a focus on just pushing out the material. In
companies where talent and training are not valued, this results in training
that is less than amenable to even the most astute learner. In this blog,
Vaughan seeks to explore the ideas of making learning accessible across a
variety of industries, levels of understanding, prior knowledge, and-of
course-learning styles. As I am a firm believer in meeting people where they
are and taking them where they need to be-her writing resonates with me quite
strongly as a trainer. I enjoyed reading her thoughts and ideas around training
development and am excited to see what she will post next. When we seek to
begin the training process we must keep the end user, the learner, at the
forefront to ensure adoption of new methods, means, or strategy.
