As a massive thank you for hitting 500 subscribers, this video is a Q&A extravaganza! All of the questions here about instructional design and online learning came from you wonderful people on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and email.
What I covered today:
Knowing When a Course is Good Enough to Launch
Changing the "Old School" Traditional Mentality Around Online Learning
How Long it Takes to Develop Courses
Future Podcast Episode on Diversity and Inclusion
My #1 Book Recommendation for Instructional Designers
Best Scenario-Based Learning Software and Tips
Future of Online Learning (Opportunities and Challenges)
Learning How to Bake
Life Experience or Education for IDs
Mentioned Links:
Try Instructional Design Institute for Free
E-Learning Scenario Design with Anna Sabramowicz
Do you want to become a corporate instructional designer? Check out IDOL Courses Academy!
Recording a podcast or conducting interviews online? Check out SquadCast.
Transcript
Luke Hobson
00:03
Hey folks and welcome on into another episode. My name is Dr. Luke Hobson. I'm an instructional designer from MIT, the creator of instructional design Institute, and your host of this podcast, you can find all my learning nerd content over at Dr. Luke hobson.com. My purpose is to help you make the online learning experience awesome for you and for your students. Today's episode is a q&a episode, but comes right out of the vault from our YouTube channel. And make sure to subscribe to that if you haven't already. If you have already listened to the YouTube video, and you're like, Huh, why is he making this into a podcast episode now? Well, the reason is because I create content just like how I design courses. All of you have different preferences when it comes to learning and consuming content. Some of you love reading the blog, some of you love the loud voice that comes from the badass player. And some of you love watching me speak on YouTube. So whatever preference you have, when it comes to learning, I'll meet you where you are. That's the responsibility of instructional designer after all, so speaking of you, let's talk about why you're awesome. Somehow, our YouTube channel hit over 500 subscribers and 8000 views over the last few months. I released this YouTube video on April 20. And since then, we are already almost at 600 subscribers. So almost 100 subscribers since the launch of this video, and now converting it into a podcast, which is just absolutely insane. So a massive and huge thank you to all of you who take the time out of your busy day to listen to me babble on about instructional design and online learning as a thank you. This is our first ever q&a episode, all of the questions came from you folks wherever they were from if there was instructional design Institute community, the Facebook page, or if it was from the mailing list from Dr. Luke Hobson calm or just simply from Twitter or LinkedIn, there were some fantastic and incredibly difficult questions that were sent in. And I'm going to describe a ton of resources, tools, websites, software. So to make things less confusing, I'm going to include all of the information down below in the show notes for you to follow along. Also, I want to keep all of you in the loop when it comes to the madness of my life, which is Hey, I'm writing a book about instructional design. I know that some of you already know this, but it's not what you might be thinking about. It's different. And as much as I want to tell you more about it, I just want to keep on building the suspense until it actually comes out. But as an update 60 pages are done talking to a couple of really awesome people who are going to be helping me with this. And really, I am just excited for you to actually be able to read it. So more to come on that one. But just stay tuned, because I have something going on. And it's going to be pretty cool once it's actually ready for everyone to see. Okay, I am not going to take any more time. Here are your questions and my answers. Let's get started. And our first question comes from Ben. And Ben asks, When a project has a tight due date, which is pretty much all projects, we have to make hard decisions on quality. And what's good enough? How would you determine what a baseline good enough learning experience should be? And when might you hold back or delay the delivery? If quality is falling below your baseline? Then absolutely great question. And for this, I have three answers. First, let me tell you about the right thing to say, which is that no matter what the student learning experience should be the top priority. It should be number one, and nothing should impact that in a negative way. Now, let me give you the second answer, which is human beings are not perfect, and things are going to happen. So then it's all about trying to pivot and figure out what to do if something does occur. And this kind of goes into my third answer, which is combining everything. So what is something that could potentially happen that could delay the project? Well, perhaps a Smee is missing their deadlines or not being responsive. Perhaps there's somebody on a team who's absolutely valuable and then they they quit, they give you an unexpected leave of absence or something happens to them, or perhaps someone on the team falls ill they're dealing with an emergency. And now you're trying to quickly backfill what they used to bring to the table and try to make sure that the project isn't going to fall apart. Those things can happen, then it's up to you as the instructional designer to think about that learning experience. And what could you necessarily adapt and change in order to make something still be absolutely incredible. For the students. So to give you an example, think about if a Smee is going to be developing 10 videos, let's say for a module. Now they don't deliver, they tell you, hey, something came up, I was only able to actually give you five, I know we have a super tight deadline is the very best I can do. Okay, realistic type of a situation here. So then as the instructional designer, you can say, Alright, there is a chunk of time and information that now we need to backfill with something different. What can we do if we don't have, say, 30 minutes of video content that we could take into a 30 minute exercise or activity? And this is something that's actually can be kind of fun? because now you're like, Alright, how can I make this more engaging? How can I make this so that the student isn't going to be doing something that's a bit more passive as like another reading another video, but perhaps something that's really going to make them dive in and be like, wow, like, what is this? What am I learning about? So from a sense, it's also trying to think about it from a different mental mindset, I guess, of think about this more as an opportunity, what can you do to try to make something even better than Originally, it was actually planned for now, what I would also recommend that you do, if possible, I know not everyone can do this. But I will always highly, highly encourage it, if at all, whenever possible. I run pilot programs for every single course, no matter what, I run a pilot program. Why? Well, it's because the fact that I am not the students, I don't understand fully the learning experience that they are going to be going through. So perhaps to me, this is the very best I can possibly make it. And then I find out from talking to these students and from listening to them that no, I could do something that perhaps is more relevant to what they're doing in their careers of their jobs, perhaps I could take something for an activity and change it up a little bit. So that that way, it's going to be more of an estimated time that I thought they were going to be completing it in. Perhaps I said, this should only take you an hour to do and then all of a sudden, they're like, Oh, my gosh, just took me 10 hours, like oops, clearly didn't get that one, right. So it's trying to figure out from these pilot programs from both surveys and interviews, I would recommend doing both that you can then gather as much information as possible in order to make that learning experience better. Now, on the flip side of that, too, to go back to your question is that a pilot program is going to give you a bit more wiggle room, it's going to give you a bit of a buffer. Why? Well, it's because students know that this is a pilot program, this is not perfect, it's not complete. So if something seems a little bit off to them, they're going to obviously tell you, but at least you know, but this isn't negatively impacting their learning, which is a course once again, the top priority. So hey, Ben, hope that helps you with your question. Next question comes from Jason actually, the next two questions come from Jason because they're both great. So I want to make sure to include both of them in this video. And Jason asks, you're talking to an Institute of Higher Education that wants to start this whole instructional design thing. But that Institute is full of people who don't get it, they don't want it the whole I've been teaching for 35 years, my way or the highway. You can't teach this online. So it's like this old school mentality is what Jason's really referring to? How would you convince them of the viability of online education? Jason, absolutely fantastic question. And I know that many people in this instructional design world who perhaps that they're being employed for the very first time in an organization that has never done instructional design, so this is all very new to them. So there's going to clearly be this barrier that you need to remove right from the get go, you're talking about essentially, someone who has a negative perception about just online learning in general. And perhaps they're thinking that this is not going to be as valuable compared to face to face learning. So that certainly comes from having an open dialogue and listening to these potential faculty members, or whoever hired you in the first place to come Board of just listen as to why why do they think and why do they feel this way? Most of them are actually going to give you a reason perhaps they had a negative experience with designing an online course before and it didn't go so well. Perhaps they just have no idea. And they just been reading in the news about how remote learning is literally ruining everything with societies. And now they're like, Oh, my gosh, and, of course, everything that happened with our country and around the world. That was more of emergency learning. That was not real, viable online learning, which is of course, very different. So that's where I would start off with and then from there, what I would then do would be to collect information and then data from other different universities and institutions and colleges and figure out what they did in order to make their online learning program successful. How did they make their instructors I To this whole new way of thinking that perhaps they never once thought about. And I know for me working at MIT, I've had some conversations of folks who, you know, they never before thought about online learning, but really, they didn't realize the capacity of what you can do with online learning, the amount of learning science, the amount of learning analytics, learning strategies, what you can really bring to the table. Sometimes they're like, Whoa, you can do what exactly? It's like, yeah, yeah, this whole thing of just taking something face to face, and then moving it into online, literally the exact same way and replicating that same experience, that's not going to work, you need to change it up. And to make it better not necessarily change the course contents. But we need to change up that delivery, that style. And that's what's really going to hit home for students. Now, of course, the everything you could mention about too, is that, hey, if we don't change and go into this online type of direction, well, we have case studies from around the world, what schools couldn't do that in time, or they didn't do it well enough. And then unfortunately, they had to close down because of course, the students didn't enjoy it, the faculty didn't enjoy it, no one was having a good time. And because of that, the enrollment stopped, the revenue stops, and then therefore, they had to shut down. So now like, I want to scare people, and say, like, Oh, my gosh, look at what's happening within our entire world. But we also need to talk Realistically speaking for 2021. And the future, think about what's happened, we need to avoid going into that same pitfall that a couple of other people have, unfortunately, gone through. Next question also comes from Jason. And then Jason says, How long does it take you to design a course from start to finish? This one is the least a much easier question. So the answer is question, it definitely depends upon time, energy resources, who's on the team, how many sneeze suffers a couple of different factors, that obviously goes into everything. But I would say across the board, about three to six months is generally how long it takes me to design a course from start to finish. And within that, I'm also including the pilot program to once again, I do a pilot program for every single course. So if something is going to take me a little bit extra time, well, then I need to think about that. And to buffer that into everything. Now for some of the courses, they're only a couple weeks in length, and other times you're building out a course that potentially is 12 weeks or longer. So once again, a ton of different variables, a ton of different factors, but short and sweet, three to six months. Alright, our next question comes from Scott and Scott says, here's my question for one of your future podcasts when developing training or courses with faculty? How do you introduce the topic of diversity and inclusion into the conversation when discussing representation of marginalized groups, whether they be racial, ethnic, LGBTQ plus, etc, and curriculum activities and assessments? Scott, I know I mentioned this to you offline. But I want to say this to all of our listeners and watchers over here to on YouTube, is that this is such an important question. I cannot do it justice, which is giving a three to five minute answer here on this q&a video. And as I told Scott, and I'm going to be telling all of you to this is all these topics extremely important to me and important to our world right now as a society. So this is going to take a little bit more time. And I want to be able to dedicate a ton of time to this in a future podcast episode, covering all the ins and outs of everything. So in the future, I'm going to be going into all of this and really doing this question justice with all the necessary and important details. Our next question comes from Kim, what is the one a book every instructional designer should have? And why I am trying to build my resources? So I am especially curious, Kim, fantastic question, extremely difficult question. As I have a million book recommendations I would love to give you and depending upon when this video comes out, there could be another new book that comes out that keep on coming out again, again, again, which is great for our field. But if I had to pick one, I would tell you about the book that I first read as an instructional designer, which is this one, which is called UDL in the cloud. And this is by Tom tibideaux. And by Dr. Katie Novak. Now, why this book in particular, when I was first getting into this field, I luckily read this book beforehand. And this made me take a different type of mindset of how I was developing my resources at the time. And this makes me think about how do I design for everybody? How do I provide flexibility? How do I remove barriers, all things I really didn't necessarily think about because back then as I was designing some of these resources for the Writing Center, the peer tutoring center and the Online Learning Communities I thinking more about just the content, I wasn't really thinking about the student perspective, the learners perspective. And this, this book in particular, really changed my mind about how I construct everything. Now, to give you an example of how I still use what I learned about this book, I still use this information to this day. So to give you an example is that I was creating leadership courses for MIT. And it came up where some of the students were talking about in the exit interview. So in this pilot program, and I do, and they were talking about how they want to be more engaged in the course content, they didn't know how this was fascinating, because they didn't have an answer to the problem. They were just telling you their problem. No, I was like, Okay, do you want more readings? Like, no, like, Okay, what if you have more videos? Like No? Okay, if I made you more practice questions, reflections, applications and problems, would you want to do those? They're like, no. So then I said, Well, why what's what's the problem? And they said, Well, our problem is time. I don't have a time to do this. So then I asked them think about their day. And I said, When do you have time in your day to do more with the course? And they said, well, it's impossible. But if I had to map it out, I have about 40 to 45 minutes in my commute, going to work. And if you could somehow put something in the course in that time frame, well, then I would would do it. So Mike, so what you're saying is that if I make a podcast for your commute, you would actually listen to it? And they all said yes. So then here I go, like, all right, well, let's make a podcast for these courses. I don't know how this is going to go never done this before. And it really became a humungous success. The podcasts themselves have like 2000 downloads right now with, you know, no promotions, no nothing. It's just embedded within the courses themselves. But then tying this all back into UDL, I was thinking about ways to create content that could then be usable in a different way. But then I didn't just give it to the students who asked for it. I gave it to everybody. Because of course, that is the whole point of trying to think about designing something in a universal fashion. How do you design for everybody, and that is something that I still take with me to this day, I still use in all the courses that I design, and what I still try to do when I practice everything I learned about from this framework. Next question comes from Maria Maria asks, what are some best practices in designing interactive scenario based elearning that require software simulations? Any recommendations on applications? Maria, I have like four answers to this question. And I was trying to think about this before recording the video of what do I give first, or what do I so here is a brain dump of all things that I want to just give and then share with you. But the first thing though, is that you mentioned specifically about required elearning and software simulation for scenario based learning. And I'm not sure if that's because that is your preference, or perhaps that's the organization's way of doing things. But I did want to at least mentioned and preface everything, before I go into all this is that you don't need software, or simulations or anything else. When it comes to scenario based learning. I have designed a ton of different types of sbl problems, where it's just having a prompt, and then a open response assessment type of item. And that's it. And I can still tie everything back into the real world, I can still show clarity and transparency for what skills students are really learning about. And then of course, how they're going to take this knowledge and then go out and use it in the real world. So you don't need software. But from the way that you were did your question, I think that you do and you are looking for recommendations. So the first thing I would say is that rise is definitely a great platform. If you haven't used that one before, I would highly recommend you to check that out. Because it's so easy, and user friendly to build inside of. But they've also made an update. And I don't know, when this update came out. It's a update, but it's new to me, where they did make their own scenario based, branching and ways for you to go about with doing that. So I don't know if that's a new feature, but at least for I know some of you listening, you're gonna be like, oh, wow, I didn't know that was the thing. So that is definitely one recommendation. If you did want to go ahead and use a type of software, no, never recommendation I want to say is that for some of my courses, I have used Harvard Business publishing education. They make a ton of different amazing simulations for just about anything from accounting to leadership strategies, marketing, economics, they have a ton that you can use. And these are really engaging, they're interactive. They're just different. Not the typical run of the mill type of a simulation that you might think about. So the courses that I used before we use one that's called a change management simulation. And what this does is that it puts the students inside the shoes of somebody of an organization that is trying to lead a change initiative throughout this entire org. And then on the back end, within the scenario, you can actually pick and choose what level of responsibility they have, are they coming in from like the CEO like the top down? Or are they coming in from somebody just starting off in the organization and it becomes a much tougher sell a tougher climb, as they are then trying to tell the people about this idea. Now within the simulation itself, which is really nice, is that you can actually then see how the relationships are forming, as you slowly begin to take action. And you have to decide to what action item you're going to take. Are you going to be hosting a town hall meeting? Are you going to be sending out an email? Are you going to walk the talk? Are you going to be conducting a training? What are you really going to do to make somebody buy into your new idea, you can see in real time to that some people are going to love the idea. They think it's great. And other times people are like, no, not so much. I don't believe you, I don't get why you're trying to make me do this. And just like in the real world, you can accidentally step on people's toes, and then actually having a bit of a an interest in what you were going to say for going forward. So you can kind of rub them the wrong way. So it's it's really fascinating, because this all comes from real research to within organizations, and how change was a successful thing. So I would certainly recommend to check out Harvard Business publishing education, see what simulations they have just from the past testimonies from students, they will go in and they will play some of these simulations, again, and again and again. And again, like to them it's a real game. It's not something you're forcing them to do. They really want to be able to compete with their fellow colleagues and share what they were able to do and a period of time how many points they got things of that nature. So is this really neat, because you also asked about elearning specifically and for simulations, I'm not sure if you knew, but there is actually a podcast that is all about e learning and scenario based learning. And this was made by Anna Abramowitz. And this is a really interesting podcast because for some of the podcasts on instructional design, people will cover all different different types of topics. But for Anna in particular, she really just like keeps on diving into sbo. And it's really cool. So I would highly recommend to check out her podcast. I know she has a few things too, on LinkedIn, and YouTube. So I would definitely recommend to check out her material. Now if you're looking to learn more about SPO. Without using more of the the software approach within instructional design Institute, there is actually an entire course on scenario based learning. I tried to cover it more from the learning experience design side of things. So talking about the purpose, talking about conducting the research, the follow through how to really build things successfully. So there's an entire course where I will walk you through how to go ahead and to do all of those things. And then finally, my last answer for you is that I am hosting a workshop all about scenario based learning soon. And this is from Dr. Barbie honey cuts, lecture breakers podcast. She has a virtual conference that she is hosting in June. So on June 8 to June 10, there's going to be a slew of amazing guests talking about everything you could possibly think about from the online learning perspectives. And on June 9, around noon is when my session is going to begin. So if you're really want to go and dive into the learning nerd weeds with me about scenario based learning, that's a perfect opportunity to do so. Alright, now that I've just given you like 57 answers to that question. So sigh Maria, I really hope your heads not spinning after I just gave you a million different things. But I wanted to make sure to cover everything. Our next question comes from Jen. And Jen asks a great question. And she says the pandemic brought a lot of colleges and universities into the online learning world. And this is a change that's going to have a lasting impact. What do you think is the biggest opportunity but this shift has presented in higher education, as well as the biggest challenge or threat? So Jen, let me start first by talking about the threat. And the threat is that our mentality around face to face and with online learning? The threat is really that things can just go back to normal, and that everyone is this going to carry on with their lives. Simply it's just not true. Anyone who has taken a face to face course will tell you that it's not perfect. And of course is online learning perfect. No. But is there a way to combine the two and to get the best of both worlds? Absolutely. And what I want people to know about is to accept that there is not a one size fits all model when it comes to instruction when it comes to education when it comes to teaching. And that's what I really hope that people are taking away from this is is trying to think about all those golden nuggets, those pieces of wisdom and advice of what we have been reading about and learning of how remote learning and online learning can be a successful and a viable option to do. So let me tell you a story about how I think the future is going to go. And this story comes from actually talking with Tom tibideaux, a couple of months ago, the same author of UDL on the cloud. And he's like, Look, let me ask you a question. All right, Tom, what's up? And he said, Imagine you are hosting a dinner party, you have all of these guests coming over soon. What is the best dish to serve them? It's not about it. And I'm like, thinking of quantity thinking of what's not that expensive? Like? I'm not sure, Tom, he's like, well, well, let me give you some more information to help you make a decision. Imagine that all these guests who are coming over, they all have different types of food preferences. Some are dairy free, gluten free soy free. Some are lactose intolerance. Some are vegan or vegetarian. I'm sitting there being like, I don't know, Tom, based off of that information that only makes it harder. What's the best dish to serve them? And he says, the answer is a buffet, allow your dinner guests to pick and choose what foods they want to eat. Now, in turn, what we should be doing as course designers is that we should be allowing our students to pick and choose how they want to learn. And when he said that it was just like quick mind explosion or like, Oh, my gosh, Tom, what an incredible way to think about trying to design our courses for the future. And that's what I want people to be able to think about, listen to student voices, collect this feedback and figure out what went well, there's a lot of things that we talked about within higher education and remote learning and online learning and everything else too. That didn't go well understand that. But let's put that to the side for a second. Not everything was a catastrophe. There were plenty of amazing and successful stories that are out there, where students actually did enjoy online learning more, and they were never exposed to it. So take those elements, collect that student feedback, listen to student voice, and figure out what we can do to then take all this information. And then to apply this into our own design process. And this is what I'm seeing as the biggest opportunity. Imagine a world where students are able to essentially design their own learning experience. So think about it from the best way to describe it is in my mind, I think about hybrid courses. But I know that that terminology has changed, we're now the correct wording to actually say is more of a blended learning approach. So you're taking some from face to face, you're taking some from online learning, and you're capitalizing on all their strengths, and putting them together. And if I had to think about the next steps in education, how we can actually move forwards, I think about a world where instructors are hosting both in person office hours, as well as virtual office hours, perhaps some of them would go to the virtual more because they're not as embarrassed to do so instead of going up to somebody after class and talking to them, perhaps not going to have as much anxiety about going into a Zoom Room because that's not what they're used to. And it's what they are accustomed to. I imagine a world where students can pick and choose about, do they want to have their lessons within the virtual space, or they want to have the lessons in person. And I think about trying to just like host different types of group projects. Do you want to host in person? Sure. But if you want to use something like gather town or on Hangouts, I mean that you have all of these possibilities, there are all these different forms of tools that we can use in order to become successful. And what's this says mentioned, gather town, let me harp on that one for a second. The other day, I was attending a conference at MIT, and I had never used anything like havertown before. And this thing just blew my mind. I have a virtual character as attending this conference. The virtual character then had to move towards the room to find the keynote speaker and just like analyze some type of video game, the keynote speaker was on the stage, I had to go and find my seat and sit down and then but allow me to start listening to him speak. And then afterwards, the hosts of the conference came into the room and said, Hey, we're going to now have our types of poster sessions. Feel free to leave this virtual room and then to go into the next one. So just like how if I was leaving a conference, I'm in a meeting hall and then I leave and I go out into the hallway. I then saw the poster sessions. I then saw people gathering around and Talking. Now what happened is my little character moved into the conversation with other characters. And slowly, I started to hear more from other people speaking just as if I was slowly approaching a crowd. And I could start to hear the conversation. And then all the windows popped up. And I was literally in the conversation, it was almost like taking an embedded video conferencing software and placing it inside of there. And then of course, if I wanted to leave the conversation, just like how I normally would, I would walk away, and then the audio slowly started to fade away. So you could do is with group conversations of individual, you could have private conversations where you would just Of course, like anything else, go and find a couple of chairs or couches to go and sit and talk to somebody off to the side, you can do all of those things. But this is what I'm imagining, I'm imagining students, allowing them to do their group working to do exercises and activities together in this whole different type of sense that we never thought was possible. But there are many tools out there. And I just use gather town, there are a ton of other different examples too. But I had no idea existed. And that's the long story. I'm trying to say here, we have all the tools, we have all the technology, we have all the innovations, it's now time to capitalize on that, to think about this, to listen to the students voices, and then to apply that into how we design courses. And that is what's going to make us advance as a society. That's what's going to make us move forwards. Now there is a new book that's coming out in May. But I do want you to be on the lookout for I was really fortunate enough to be able to read it ahead of time and it was awesome and how encourage you to do the same. His book is all about blended learning. It's from Dr. Novak. And from Dr. Tucker, they took the concepts of UDL, blended learning, put them all together, and it's just awesome. So be on the lookout for that book. At the time of this recording is titled UDL and blended learning, thriving and flexible learning landscapes. It's forward thinking written by smart people by the book. Our next question comes from Heidi and Heidi says, How did you get into baking? Thank you, Heidi, for the fun question. I appreciate that. And thank you for not letting me have to try to think about how to answer some of these complex questions. So for this during the pandemic, apparently there's been a movement of like pandemic bakers, I had no idea that this is a thing until a friend of mine the other day mentioned it, I didn't realize that I was not alone in this whole journey. I've been watching more and more YouTube videos. And one of the channels I really like and enjoys the series are called the Try Guys. And we try guys are four dudes who does try things and see how it goes. It's like an experimental channel. Sometimes they're successful. And they're amazing. Over time, they learned some important lessons along the way. And then they go and take back all this information with them. And then they try to revisit some of these things again, and again and again. And one other series that has been really interesting to me is something that is called without a recipe. Now it's exactly what you think about these four poor people trying to think about how to do baking without any form of recipe on hand. And they're literally just winging it. And actually the poor people are really the judges who are having to go and eat some of these monstrosities. And sometimes were amazing and other times not so hot. So I was inspired by that. And I was like, you know, I really still wanted to try baking and like give it a shot. So I attempted to experiment a little bit and you know, definitely did not not do so great the first couple of times. And then my wife actually got me a couple of different things for Christmas. She got me a book that is called delish by joanna salts, I think is her name. And that book is awesome. So it gave me a little bit more instructions. And she also got me a couple of accessories to that I needed. So then I also talked to a couple of other Baker's is to get some like very basic basic tips. And then I was able to take that, apply that into what I have been doing. And now I am pretty dangerous when it comes to baked goods. So the other day I made something that I'm calling a peanut butter cup explosion cookie, it was a chocolate cookie. And then in the middle, I ended up stuffing, peanut butter, and then a peanut butter cup and then Reese's Pieces. And I was like throw it all together into the middle and oh my gosh, insanely good. I don't know how many calories it has. But I can absolutely tell you that we have had to start working out harder in this family because I was definitely going to make everyone in this household gain a lot of weight. So I've been trying to give some of my baked goods to my neighbors and other people nearby saying please take these because if not, We're all doomed. So yeah, that's one of the one of the hobbies I picked up during this timeframe. Next question comes from Nadezhda. And she asks, Does certification matter in instructional design equal more or less than experience? I very often see this requirement job announcements. But then following different people of his field, I often hear about the importance of experience without any formal education or certification in ID. So I was wondering whether it's a more organizational hiring thing, or it's common everywhere. Thanks. Now, this is a great question. And unfortunately, there isn't a straight answer. So I'm going to do my best to give you all the information you could possibly need in order to try to make your next decision. So a little background here. Why is this so confusing? We're talking about life experience talking about credentialing, you know, why is there this conversation in the first place? Well, the reason is, because instructional designers come from all different walks of life, you're gonna have some folks who they never went to school to become instructional designers. And now somehow, they found themselves in this position, and they're like, Okay, this is what I did. And they're sharing their stories with other people. And that's the thing is that if you talk to like five instructional designers, right now, you're gonna hear about some people who, yes, they went back to school, and they got their masters, or perhaps they were already in a type of a training roles. So it just made sense to transition over from training into instructional design, maybe they were a former teacher. So we know about education, and how people learn. And they just use that knowledge in order to become an instructional designer. Maybe it was somebody who was in something like myself, where I was in more of the design fields, my background was in graphic design. And then from graphic design, I became a academic advisor over time, so I took my knowledge of design with my knowledge of the student learning experience, and combine that together, and that really did work out for me in the end. So depending upon who you ask, you're gonna get all these different answers. Now, the folks who have the life experience, they certainly have an advantage, they're going to be able, if you ask them a question, they can actually tell you. So for instance, if you say, Tell me about your course design process, tell me about how you revise courses. Tell me about how you work with difficult means and how you handle them. We're able to tell you about all these things, and give you a straightforward answer that is logical, and is easy to follow. And most likely, over time, since they've been doing this with a number of years of experience, they have naturally accrued as have a portfolio or something else that demonstrates their work. So that's like the life experience side of this answer for you. Now, let's talk more about the credentialing side. So let's say that we have people going back to school for their master's in instructional design, which has now become a very common thing. It's really now now where the higher education industry is taking instructional design towards that maybe they didn't go back to school for a Master's, maybe they decided to get a certificate in instructional design, a lot of universities and institutions are offering those now. Or perhaps you're doing some other form of upskilling, but still in a type of a credentialed way. So because we're talking about higher education in this sense, they are certainly looking for credentialing. And of course, this is going to be a little bit different from something like just taking courses on LinkedIn learning or some other form of a upskilling platform. Now, if you're looking to get into the corporate world, but still has some form of credentialing, I would highly recommend to look into idol courses Academy. Dr. Sargeant has really built out a fantastic way for folks to learn about everything from the needs of a corporate instructional design institution, what they're really looking for, and allowing you to be able to really develop the necessary trainings and skills and tools and everything else you could possibly need in order to advance into the corporate ID world. So there are ways to do this. And both from the higher ed perspective and for doing this from the corporate perspective. But at the end of the day, what it all comes down to is your knowledge on instructional design, on education on how people learn. If you can talk about some of these processes, and how everything all comes together from the learning experience side of things, that's really going to be beneficial for you. In the end, you need to be able to clearly and articulately describe and to demonstrate about all of these complex topics, and how to really make it simplified and to explain it to somebody. Now of course I understand that you need someone to take a chance on you. That's definitely like the biggest thing whatever you do wherever you're trying to become an instructional designer, you need someone to give you the opportunity to show but you can knock this out of the park. I totally get that. And I know that some of these opportunities are far and few between Yes, instructional design is growing it now more than ever. Everyone is hiring for instructional designer. It's absolutely crazy. Great to see that but absolutely What I want to say to you is to be prepared to capitalize on that opportunity. When it comes, don't let it slip by be absolutely ready to answer any question, practice your answers out loud. So that that way, you know, when you have your interview, it's not just words inside of your head, you can actually articulate everything, say it out loud, and everything of the sort. You're really trying to show that you're confident in your ability, and you know how to do everything when it comes to design. I'm so sorry, because that is such a long answer for you. But I did my best. It's a very tough question to answer because of different employers, different organizations for what they're looking for. But different industries to it absolutely matters what industry you want to go in, that would change up that answer for you. So I hope some of my perspective helps out even just a little bit to help guide you in the right direction. Well, folks, those are all other questions. So thank you once again for sending those in. And thank you for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed this episode, share it with a friend, a colleague or your network folks out there have so many questions about instructional design, and I hope these answers help to some degree, subscribe to the podcast and the YouTube channel if you haven't already and leave that awesome five star review. Wherever you are listening. I appreciate all those so very, very, very much. That's what really helps to drive the show to make it grow. And of course without you, you know the show is nothing. So really appreciate all of your support. If you are looking to upskill your instructional design abilities, check out instructional design Institute over at Dr. Luke hobson.com. Well, that's all I have for you, my friends, stay nerdy out there. I'll talk to you next time.