On today’s episode, we are joined by Peter Shea, the Creator and Chief Admin of Instructional Designers in Education. This 14K member online learning community is an incredible place for learning about instructional design. Pete is going to take us through his origin story, where the idea came from, how the group has evolved, and lessons for you if you are interested in starting your own group.
Mentioned Links
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Want to take your higher education instructional design skills to the next level? Check out Instructional Design Institute.
Thinking about making your own online courses / creating your own business? Check out Kajabi.
Recording a podcast or conducting interviews online? Check out SquadCast.
Transcript:
Luke Hobson 00:00
Today's episode is brought to you by IDOL courses Academy. If you are looking to transition into the corporate instructional design space, you need the right guidance to do so. Dr. Sardo and her team have done an amazing job with focusing on what's important to be a corporate instructional designer like storyboarding ID models and theories, authoring tools, project management tactics and more. They even cover how to make your resume and portfolio stand out from the crowd and have an impressive completion rate with their students working at organizations like Google, Salesforce, GM, Uber, Walmart, and Amazon. Also, you won't be going through this journey alone, you will be studying alongside other aspiring instructional designers, as well as working with experienced mentors and coaches. And as an added bonus, you'll get a free copy of my ebook what I wish I knew before becoming an instructional designer. So check out the industry recognized program that's showing up on more job descriptions as preferred training and education by going to idle courses.com forward slash Academy. Next enrollment is from January 10 to January 21. So check out idle today. And now let's start the show. Hey, folks, and welcome on into your favorite learning nerd Podcast. I'm Dr. Luke Hobson, I senior instructional designer and program manager at MIT. I also produce quite a bit of content on the internet, with a blog, this podcast and a YouTube channel all about instructional design. And I also wrote a book called What I wish I knew before becoming an instructional designer. My passion is online learning and instructional design. And I consider it my purpose to be able to help you with these fields. Whether you were trying to transition from one field into another, or you already are an instructional designer, and you're looking to learn a little bit more about how to better your craft all are welcome into this podcast. And you can find all my information over at Dr. Luke hobson.com. On today's episode, we have a very special guest, Mr. Peter Shea. I've known Pete since the before times where we actually met in person and went to these strange things called conferences. It was an odd idea where people would actually gather and share ideas about what they're working on, you know, such a fascinating idea. And maybe we'll get back to there at some point in time. But anyways, you might recall if you've been listening to the show for a while, that I've talked about how I started this instructional design sharing journey by answering questions in a Facebook group. Every day, I would log in, I would see a kind of commonly asked question, and I would answer and share my experiences about what I've done at Northeastern University and at Southern New Hampshire University. After answering the same questions every single day, I decided to make a blog and put all my experiences into one place to make it a lot easier to be able to share all of these questions, though, if you're wondering where they came from, well, they came from Pete's Facebook group called instructional designers in education. All of the credits goes back to Pete, because he created this wonderful online learning community and learning environment for educators to share their knowledge and to help one another. It was Pete's encouragement that actually led to creating all of the content that you listen to and that you see today. Because you know what, that's the kind of person that Pete is. He's a wonderful human being who always encourages trying to be able to help the next up and coming wave of instructional designers. And I wanted to know more about the man who created the Facebook group in the first place. And just how does he maintain this positive online learning community of almost 14,000? People? Yes, that is 14,000. members, Pete is going to take us through his origin story, where the idea came from how the group has evolved and lessons for you if you are interested in starting your own group. So let's dive on in, shall we? Here is the one and only Peter Shay. Pete, welcome to the podcast.
Peter Shea 04:14
Thank you. Luke, it's good to be here.
Luke Hobson 04:16
It sure is, sir. It's great to have you here after your long awaited debut. You should have been on the podcast a lot sooner if I'm being honest. But you know what? We saved you coming out here pulling it strong for us in 2022. And you are going to lead us so you know what? No pressure, man. It's gonna be great.
Peter Shea 04:36
Okay, I caught my hair and everything. Oh, beautiful.
Luke Hobson 04:39
Yeah, that's fantastic. It's a good thing. But this is an audio production. So you know, what, is this going? Great. It's just fine. So Pete, I like I said, been really wanted to have you come on here. And all jokes aside, you're an absolutely awesome incredible person who very well is responsible for a part of this podcast because without your encouragement, I definitely would not be doing this as much as I would, you know, actually be doing it in real life. So this very much is your fault for why I'm talking on a microphone. So for that, I thank you.
Peter Shea 05:11
You're most welcome. I consider myself like a instructional design Johnny Appleseed. I like to spread the seeds, as many places and see where they bloom.
Luke Hobson 05:19
Well, it worked over here. So you know what things are going well so far. But for the folks at home who somehow don't know who you are, could you please just introduce yourself, tell us a little bit more about who you are and what it is that you do?
Peter Shea 05:33
Sure, I am Peter Shea, I am a buyer by training, I am an instructional designer. I am, I guess the older way of instructional designers, I'm past 50. So I came of age, when there were two ways you learned one was on the job, and then was through or perhaps through a certificate from a university or college that was trying to figure out what this instructional design stuff was, and did their very best to teach you what they thought was useful. And then you went and got a job. And you learned everything really useful on the job, as opposed to today, when we have much more sophisticated programs, which are often taught by by my generational peers, who learned the hard way what students should be learning and what they should not be learning. So my role these days, I moved from full time instructional design several years ago into the world of academic professional development. And from that position, I began to think seriously about the professional development of my fellow instructional designers, and, and realizing how relatively isolated they are, and how I social isolation can impact adversely professional development. So I set about to create a Facebook group, specifically for instructional designers working in education, because their domain is different from the one in the corporate world. And you know, I would have been happy if I got a couple of 100 people who had regular conversations. But as of today, five years later, we have over 13,000 members from around the world, in the group who have frequent lively conversations about topics related to instructional design. And I couldn't be happier about that.
Luke Hobson 07:15
Guys, it's nuts. I still am baffled to hear that number of people because I remember, when I joined, we were at, let it out 6000, maybe seven, you know, it was around there. And then now all of a sudden, a couple of years later, and it's just absolute madness, and awesomeness to see where the group has actually evolved. And I want to ask you all about that later on. But first one thing I want to ask you about, because I don't know, this is why I'm asking. I don't think I've ever heard your origin story before of how you became an instructional designer. So was this something that you fell into? Was this your intense all along? How did you come over into this field?
Peter Shea 07:58
Like so many people, I came through it sideways, I started out on the 90s as a classroom teacher, first in K through 12. And then in higher ed. And as part of my master's level work, I had a pronounced interest in educational technology. And my, my first my first work in projects were around presenting this weird thing called hypertext, where you electronically clicked on something within a digital document and took you somewhere else. And I remember being fascinated by it. And the possibilities. And I used to give presentations on it. And I said it's like, choose your own adventure. And I would show it to people. And I was like, wow, that's really weird and odd. It seems so strange. And then about a year later, the World Wide Web took off. And that really introduced people to hypertext and the possibilities of that kind of technology. And so my interest in technology continued in other ways. So I got a job eventually working in a college of medicine, as a coordinator of information technology. And that meant that I did a number of things. I ran their website, I ran their LMS site, which was a blackboard. I edited articles for them. But it gave me a lot of time to play with various technologies for learning because I wanted to help the doctors to the very best job of presenting their complex con to their students. And so, around that time, I began to see courses on elearning. Lisa to talk more about elearning and those days then we did instructional design. And I began to sense that given my past enthusiasms this is where I should probably start moving. So in 2004, I completed a graduate certificate in instructional designer technology from the University of South Florida. And thereafter I just began working in the field of instructional design, predominantly in higher education. I did a six months tour of duty at a start And then I returned to the educational world. And I've been there ever since. And again, I, you know, what robbed me in this was having those aha moments, there were a couple of moments when I really thought, This is great. And this is what I want to do. Um, for example, years ago, there was just a great interactive program called Frog guts. We did an interactive dissection. And I did it, you know, I had done it in school, the old fashioned way with formaldehyde frog, and I learned nothing. But I was able to do it in the simulation on frog gets over and over. And I really remembered all the information. And I was thrilled, I hadn't felt this much fun and learning since I learned how to ride a bike. And then I thought, wouldn't it be great a way something like this for all forms of learning, because then we actually begin to retain what we've learned where I then forget it within a week or so, which was certainly my experience with many of the things that I would formally studied. So that's when I really felt that this is where I could take my career paths. And where I felt I could make an interesting contribution.
Luke Hobson 10:57
That is interesting is frog guts.com. A thing.
Peter Shea 11:02
It used to be a check lately, but it was a it was built in flash, and it was fastened to science teachers had put it together, because they realized they saw the they saw the potential of some of the early web tools for for instructional media. And they realized the need particularly for something like dissection, which can be very, very messy, to many kids with knives, very expensive, because you have to constantly buy new frogs, new pigs and whatnot. And so it was a great, great early example of the potential of well designed elearning tools and how it could do something that you couldn't do in a face to face environment for that.
Luke Hobson 11:42
I was not expecting you to say, say a combination of those words where I was like, Where is he going with this, I hope it's talking about dissection of frog.
Peter Shea 11:51
yes, as frog, I can still I can still visualize in my head and the delight I took in, in the virtual dissection. And I just thought, it's the most must be the most awesome thing to build a tool like this. And it wouldn't be great, we have a library of things, I would have learned so much more in school, because I one of the things that I really look back on with regret, is because of the really the poor instructional design and so much of what I experienced in my schooling, a lot of what I studied or was requires that I forgot. And that seems to be a terrible waste. And we we take for granted that we lose four fifths of what we study in our school in our education. And I think that's, that's wrong, we now know that people can retain far more than what we do. But that's because of the methodology. It's kind of like the way in which the people at the beginning of the 20th century, accepted the fact that the average life expectancy was about 50 years. Today, that would shock us that would scare us, but didn't shock people or skippable, then because that was the way it had always been. And they assume that's the way it would always be. And I think something sooner that can happen with learning. We can learn more and retained far more than we ever did before, but only if we adopt the right tools and methodologies.
Luke Hobson 13:04
Of course, absolutely makes sense. When you were going through all of this with your your journey at the time. Were there other instructional designers that you talk to when you were forming a community around to learn from one another? Or is it more kind of like have a have a solo journey as you went through everything?
Peter Shea 13:22
Well, I was able to email a few people. And I certainly connected with people at my program. But I learned very quickly after I got out into the field, that you're often in a solitary position. Now if you're if you if you're over the age of 40, and you grew up the United States, you probably remember a commercial about a figure called the Maytag repairman. The Maytag repairman was the fellow who supposed to do to repair Maytag washers and dryers. And the conceit of the of the ad and was brilliant was that they were so well designed, there was never any need for the repairman. So he would sit by his desk, with all his expertise, never being used, and feeling quite useless and lonely. And you know, in my early days of instructional design, I often felt that way I learned all these wonderful things. But nobody was asking me about them. And I could I could build things, but nobody was asking me to build them. And and I was also solitary. So I didn't have time to to chat with other people in my field and therefore learn quickly as people do in other domains. And so that's always been in the back of my mind as I went forward. And certainly, when I got around to creating the Facebook group, that was part of what I wanted to alleviate.
Luke Hobson 14:32
Yeah, and is actually a perfect segue by the way, I actually know what that's from with the Maytag with the guy being bored and his fist is on his head because right right, I actually I do remember that. Yeah. So even though 33 Here I can follow along with you, man. So you you, you are
Peter Shea 14:49
have been you have been very much in the tag end of it. It was it was a decade's long commercial campaign in the United States. And I always try to contextualize it for people who didn't grew up at that at that time. In this country, but it always stuck in my mind as the model of what was wrong with instructional designers at that point, because we were solitary. And our expertise and our knowledge was was criminally underused. Oh, and I. So
Luke Hobson 15:15
yeah, I'm sure. And I'm really thankful that now we have gotten to this, this day and age where now the wisdom is actually being sought after, which is such a wonderful thing to actually be able to think about. Now, of course, this goes into your idea for creating this type of an online learning community is what I'm going to call it with the Facebook group called instructional designers in education. So you had the idea, I'm guessing early on, but then what was the actual moment where you pulled the trigger? And you're like, you know what, I'm gonna do this today, I'm gonna make a Facebook group, I'm gonna launch it. And I'm gonna see what happens. What was that actual spark?
Peter Shea 15:55
It was in 2017. And I had joined an existing instructional design Facebook group on and I been monitoring the conversations, and I quickly realized that it was overwhelmingly focused on corporate instructional design. And I thought to myself, well, the instructional design world for people in education is very different. And if this group is going to focus predominantly, on on corporate, then there might be a space available for someone who just wanted to focus more specifically on higher ed. And rather than, say, instructional design in higher education, I thought, you know, there may be come a time when ideas are hard in K through 12. So I'm just going to say education. So I actually posted a question Is there anyone in this group will be interested in joining an instructional design group for people education? And there were a number of people said, Yes, I would, yes, yes, yes. So I thought, okay, there, there are four or five people here who seem to be interested in having higher ed focused conversations about ID, so I'm just gonna go ahead and create a group. And then and I love to curate articles, I am a many ways I'm like a frustrated archivist. So when I find things of interest, I'd like to share them out. That's really my major activity on Facebook. Unlike other people, you probably no one would know anything about my personal life or hobbies, from Facebook, other than what I post in terms of articles that I read. So I just started posting, and I have a pretty good idea to find content. And conversations began to generate from the first days and again, I thought, Oh, if we grow a small pace, and there's a reasonably, you know, robust group of people here, then then I've just succeeded. And then I thought it you know, at some point, it's gonna, like taper off, and we're gonna, we're gonna cap it, you know, a couple 100 people and and hopefully, the, among those people, there'll be enough people who want to have ongoing conversation. But then this began, it continued to grow. And, you know, for the most part, that was never really a time when it really just kind of went silent in terms of new members. And then, you know, certainly in the past few years, it's really accelerated and, and the past year and a half, it's accelerated, I think, largely because of COVID. Because so many people have jumped into the online learning space. And I think particularly there are so many people in education, who are in the classroom, who don't want to leave education. But they don't wanna be in the classroom anymore. And they and they, and they want to try out this thing they called instructional design so that I think there are a lot of, I think there are a lot of refugees in the classroom, who are now joined the group who want to learn about instructional design. Instructional design used to be what a colleague of mine called a hidden treasure of a job. It was a really terrific job be quite fulfilling, but only a handful of people knew what it actually was. And I used to joke or half joke that I'd never managed to explain to my parents what it is I did. I they will say no, what what is it you do again, or I know you work at a college or something like that. But what do you do at the college? And I would say, Well, I'll see you help teachers. Yeah, that's what I help I help teachers, you know, so, and in many ways, it's kind of an extension of my earlier life, I was an AV kid, and in high school, and in college, I was the guy who bought the projector and around that so and since my path was probably determined in some strange way early on, through those activities. And so that's how I find myself in this position. Now I can it's really kind of a fusion of my earlier work in instructional design and an interesting interactive content and my interest in how people develop professionally in higher education. Because in higher education, you have so many people who often just stay put in one job or one organization, professional development becomes problematic because they're not. They're not always animated to learn something new because they think they're gonna be doing the same job for 10 or 15 or 20. In a years, whereas people in other professions will pursue professional development because they want new opportunities and new challenges. And so, you know, how do you how do you grow within that environment? And I think it's particularly important for instructional designers, because we are often the people who are the innovation whispers in higher education, we don't often have the power to make change. But we can whisper in the ear of people who do and say, Have you thought about this? And hopefully, that will bring about change. And certainly, obviously, COVID has had a major impact on that going in and going forward.
Luke Hobson 20:34
Oh, of course. And I think the major impacts everything is that I'm finding people now who, like you, you eventually evolved over into the role. And then for myself, I sought out to be an instructional designer early on, because I worked at a university, and I can network and I connected with other people all across the university. And I just so happened to become friends with a person who was called an instructional designer. And I was like, Wait, like, what do you do for work? And they're like, Oh, I designed all the online courses that you've been helping students go through? I was like, No way. Like, that's your job. Like, yeah, that's, that's my job is to build them because I always thought it was just the instructors who made them by themselves. Right? I no idea was like that. I don't know, I just assumed that every instructor designed their course. And this is back in 2013 2014. And then after talking with him, and networking with more people, I was like, oh, I want to do this. So now in 2022, it's really cool to see that not as many people are saying, like, I accidentally fell into it, they're like, no, like, this is what I want to do with my life. This is, this is what I'm passionate about. I love seeing that within the group.
Peter Shea 21:48
Right. And, you know, I used to say, I used to use the metaphor that instructional designers are like an immigrant community, we, you know, they started out in the business world, helping people design training things, that's, you know, they were they were for decades. And then in the 90s, with a need for a course design, they began to enter into higher education, for what seemed to be time limited products, helping people build online courses, and then they just kind of settled in to a higher education, but they're still treated, where they were used to be treated in a kind of Marginal Way, often, like immigrant communities, because they weren't seeing that, you know, their their practices. And what they did seemed strange, and not aligned with the traditional higher education model. And yet, they become, as immigrants often do, indispensable to the running of things. So that's always informed my my sociological perception of how IDs work in higher ed. And I hopefully, you know, I think that last two years have raised our profile. But I'm still cautiously concerned about you know, where things are going, because there's so many variables at play right now, that can affect how the career pathway evolves in higher education. So I'm, I know where I'd like to see things go, but I'm not sure where they will go. I'm still, you know, waiting?
Luke Hobson 23:13
Yeah, it's a good question. Because from my conversations with a few people, it sounds like the next steps are going to be that, you know, hey, we went into this emergency type of phase, we put together the bare bones, we know, as designers, it can be better. But our dean or whoever is in charge of the departments or the program is like, Nah, it's okay. And the instructional designers like, no, no, it's not, okay, it's sufficient, we can make it a lot better, we need to take the next step. So now is going to be using those human skills as far as we're convincing, and getting buy in to make people see not just the fact that it's essential, but then to take that one step further of like, No, we should explore this more to make it better. And to make this a part of the revenue stream of the college or the university, because, you know, guess what, if you don't do this, and everyone else is doing it, and they're doing it, well, well, we're going to be the ones to suffer and eventually close down the shop at some point in time. So that's my best guess of like, where it's going to keep on going is more about this then morphing into more of the leadership skills of the role itself, which is something that always just kind of frightens me that when people hear about instructional design, they only think of the tools. And I was like, Oh, the tools are just one tiny part of the equation. The people skills, the relationships, the project management, that communication, like that's where it is. That's the real magic and everything that is that we do. So
Peter Shea 24:48
well. That was that was actually my complaint about my own progress. When I went back to look back on my own preparation at the university level. I mean, I did have project management I did have tools But I think the the single greatest omission curricular wise was the people skills. And having learned to negotiate with subject matter expert, an instructor, I was very fortunate because I cut my teeth work of going to college of medicine. And when you're working with professors who are also medical doctors, you learn very quickly the art of effective communication versus ineffective communication. So it was a great boot camp for me. But I know that there were a lot of instructional designers who were never taught, it was never emphasized in their, in their formal training. And then when they went into the workforce, in the university, they fumbled because they couldn't build a relationship with the instructors, I actually came to my current college because the person who preceded me was let go, because she was not able to form productive relationships with the instructors. And yeah, that's a really that's a that's a major mission. And that's, I'm so glad why you have to like your course on working with sneeze because you know, you really have to have those skills. If you don't, if you don't have that matter, the ability to form the relationship, you're simply not going to be able to build anything productive. I mean, in the corporate world, you have a little bit more power, I think, because the subject matter expert isn't as invested in the online training course you're making, but in a university, or college, that's the whole that's core to the instructors identity. And they treat it with great care. And you have to be very careful about helping them get to where they need to be without feeling like you're impinging upon their their academic freedom or their vision. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I one colleague said it's like, it's like the relationship between a surgeon and a critical care nurse, you both have your expertise. The nurse obviously has to navigate the relationship with the doctor. But at the same time, the nurse has two critical moments assert his or her expertise when it comes to key decision making. So
Luke Hobson 26:58
Yeah, makes sense. And thank you for the for the mention about the the course I'm glad you have gone into it yourself. And you and you like it as well, because it's, it's really awesome to see. But to your point, though, too, when I first started, I started to work with engineers who were my subject matter experts. So communicating with an engineer is definitely something that you need to learn about, because not every engineer is the same way as well. So I'd have to, which, luckily helped with my communication skills very quickly, and learn about all those things. So that's that's where to put a bow on that. That is where I think we are going to go and what people are going to eventually start talking more about which they should because you know, we absolutely need to do that. And going back because I want to make sure that I don't lose track of things. But going back to the community, when you first started this, did you have a goal in mind? Like, did you want so many members or posts per day or recognition or something? Was there a goal at the end of the day,
Peter Shea 28:03
I really, I just thought, you know, we really need to talk to one another because so many of us are isolated unless you're at a university, you are the only instructional designer. And that's a major problem in terms of your ability to thrive in a profession. As well as your job satisfaction, we needed a community of practice. And I know there are a few organizations where you pay and you join and there occasionally discussions. But they weren't big enough. They weren't vigorous enough. And they were working with older models. And I hadn't seen anyone really use the social media platforms in a way that I found satisfactory, to really create the kind of communities now, you can create something like this in LinkedIn, and I do have a group there, but it's smaller, and people don't spend as much time in LinkedIn. LinkedIn is more like being at the office. I remember years ago reading a book called The third place, which is about the importance of a place in a person's life that's between home and work, like a bar or a cafe or whatnot. And I realized that what instructional designers needed was their own cafe where they dropped in and talk shop with one another in a non stressful environment and just shoot the breeze and compare notes and ask each other for advice and and get emotional support in terms of what you were doing and share knowledge and that's really i i just really what I wanted to do and I think you know by and large group has evolved to meet that that needs and I'm really pleased to see it but that was that was really my core impetus wrote right there. I just really saw the need.
Luke Hobson 29:40
Well, congratulations because you definitely hit the goal. I mean, by far above and beyond trying to do that and and it is so funny to about how some of the best conversations happen. When you go for a walk with your colleague or you go to your local watering hole or for a coffee shop or whatever it is and you just start chatting, shooting the breeze and all of a sudden Before you know it, you come up with some crazy, awesome idea. And you're like, and that's how I just solved my problem. It's exactly talking.
Peter Shea 30:08
That's talking and walking. And, you know, I remember, I'm a very, you know, years ago looking at a documentary about the growth of Silicon Valley and, and why, why the computer technology culture grew out there, as opposed to where it was supposed to develop, which was Boston, it was supposed to develop in the greater Boston area, around Harvard and MIT. And at least according to the documentary, it was that in Boston, you had these four funnel old line businesses, where they had a lot of restraints on what you've talked about outside of work, and agreements, and so forth. And so there was there was a lot of constraints on just chatting with your colleagues. Whereas in California, it was much more people get together and bar and say, Hey, I'm working on I'm going to start up, I'm working on this, or I'm working on that, or I have this project I'm working. And there was much more room and space and encouragement for that kind of general creative, sharing ideas, which then in turn led to the generation of so much of the technology that we've seen today. Like the whole the computer homebrew Club, which led to the first Apple Computer. Yeah,
Luke Hobson 31:13
I mean, makes plenty of sense to me. And I've certainly I've experienced that on both sides of a coin. So like I absolutely get it. And what's so impressive about the Facebook, online learning community that that you do have, as well as just that level of engagement. And everything inside of there. Like it just has a different vibe to it. Because like you have a bunch of a bunch of groups on Facebook man, LinkedIn, and, and you name it, I'm everywhere. And you can just tell that sometimes you're in a group, and there is literally no activity, or it's actually meant for one person just to share, and you're kind of following along in their journey and like, and that's fine and well and good that has its own place in time as well. But for yours, it is more of like, while you're there, and you're posting the articles, like you mentioned, and you're sharing new and relevant things in the world, you seem to kind of have more of like, taking a step back in a way and letting the kind of conversation happen organically, kind of in front of all of us is just my my perception and being part of the group for a few years now. But in your opinion, how have you kept the group thriving with so many posts a day and seeing this level of engagement unlike ever before.
Peter Shea 32:30
I think the secret? Well, I think a couple of things. First of all, I think I'm plugged into enough various resources to find good content, I early in the early days, I thought this is going to go on for a little bit, and then that's going to stop us one day, I'm just going to the wells gonna draw, I'm not going to find anything interesting, maybe once a week. And then this whole, this whole thing I'm doing will have run its course. And it never quite happened that way I keep at any given day, I think, well, I won't find and then three or four things will pop in front of me. And I think this is worth sharing. And I'll share it and then I'll step back in to see what people you know say about it. I'm not interested, I'm not really interested in leading a conversation, I just curious to see what people think about it. So it's just kind of I wanted to have a very light hand in terms of the facilitation and I occasionally there are some times when people will say, Well, why isn't the administrator stepping in and doing like, like, you know, what I I'm assuming everyone here is largely grownups, I, you know, the past years, I've had very few times when I've had to actually jump in offer my opinion. And at some point, the coop just took on a certain tone, where you know, that was needed less than less, even though it's grown size, because, you know, it was actually more combative in many ways in the early days. And I just got better at, you know, facilitation, and sometimes selection. And when people join today, I asked him, do you agree to abide by the group rules, and I've spelled it out very clearly, I get the post that's relevant. Instructional design. No promotions are spam. And obviously, you know, just be respectful to one another. And I've only had to deliver one message to the group saying, we need to get the tone back to where it's, you know, more collegial. That's one time in five years, which I think is is far, far less than other Facebook groups, which can easily degenerate into, you know, and partly because it's instructional design. It's not politics doesn't like that, you know, we can when we get fear, we get things, a theory of things like learning styles. And even when we disagree, I think it's a good thing because in any other mature profession, people are going to disagree about things and that's the way it should be. That's how new ideas are generated. But no, I think this is a pretty respectful group. They're not combative, but they also have very strong opinions. And that's, I think, the sweet spot you want to have people have opinions, but they're not gonna, you know, they're not gonna hit other people over the head with their opinions occasionally. Very rarely you'll get someone with a trollish personality. And in that case, I've had to kick somebody out. But I've, I've had to do that and very few occasions, fortunately, and that, which is great, because that's at least half a part of being an online administrator. Of course, and but you know, and I've probably made a few mistakes here and there, but I've learned over time, what tone to take, when to remain silent and when to step in. And so I've gotten, I've got to study your hand at it now. And I want to make it look as seamless as possible. So I, I prefer to be as invisible as I can be, and just let the content speak for itself. And kind of like the guy like at the cafe, the guy running the press that just wants to serve drinks, and step back. And when people talk. And at some point, if they're doing their job, you become almost invisible. The atmosphere takes care of itself.
Luke Hobson 35:48
Yeah, it's it's so impressive, because like you were saying, it's such a respectful group. Very rarely have I same thing in the three, four years, whatever. It's been seven the group, very rarely have I ever seen anything that was disrespectful or people going nutty. And and I think learning styles, topics. Usually it's like the random like polarizing thing on like any given day, if someone would talk about it to a general population of people, people will be like, who cares? Why are you talking about this? But you mentioned learning styles of instructional designers and educators and all of a sudden there's an uproar and flames and chaos, and it's like, Oh, all right, guess we're doing this and about it. So
36:31
last thing, the last thing I said, sent out that was provocative was the critique of universal design of learning. And when I posted it, my my co admin Heather DODDS sent me a message saying, Oh, you just lob a grenade into the moon to step back did you know I said, I was interesting point of view, I just thought was worth sharing. And it's gonna get and it get strong a bit. But it was a extended post, in terms of responses, but they were and people had opinions. But if the whole conversation was respectful, people didn't agree for they didn't go after one another. And that was really, I thought that was a great model of what we try to do in that group.
Luke Hobson 37:07
And by doing that, too, I guarantee that while no one will ever say this to you, I am sure that as soon as you you did that, and you stepped away and the conversation happened. I bet a bunch of people went as far as we're looking into and researching best practices of UDL, then they probably had never heard about it before. And I've no idea what it is. And all of a sudden now you're making a bunch of folks go out and research and try to be able to think more critically about this. So you did indeed lead to more conversations about this, I'm sure.
Peter Shea 37:37
Yeah. And that's the idea. I mean, you just want to have people a conversation space. And when I was years ago, I was part of my work. I was visiting a college in New Hampshire. And I was walking through the hallways between the classrooms and they had carved out I think was a Keene State College. Little these C shaped curves with a little bench in the middle and it was called conversation coves. And I thought that was the cleverest thing. I think it's a place for people to stop and just talk to one another rather than just a bench it was designed to they actually face one another and just chat. Rather than just sit in a chair resting between classes. And I thought that's clever. I like that I like I like good design I read See, the thing I like about this field is I really do appreciate the impact of effective design choices and the difference that can make.
Luke Hobson 38:23
Absolutely, absolutely. So when everything happened with the pandemic and you went from having 6000 to 7000 to almost 14,000 I think I think you're just under 14,000. Now,
Peter Shea 38:36
just under 14,000.
Luke Hobson 38:37
Now, insane. What were you thinking,
Peter Shea 38:39
I was thinking, I'm really glad this is here right now, because this is really needed. It's almost like a public service. Because these people really need to be talking to one another right now more than ever, because this is exactly the problem that I foresaw, which is that I mean, I didn't see first foresee a pandemic. But when you have people who become first responders, they need support from their colleagues, they need to share ideas quickly and effectively. And there was no such medium that I was aware of. I'm on online. For instructional designers. There was no emergency channel so to speak, where they can communicate with one another. And I was really pleased and proud about the conversations and the sharing of resources and ideas. And I really think that was the time when the group had its most impact. I'll be it invisibly on higher education is because there's as backchannel were instructional designers who are now the most crucial employees at their colleges, were able to talk one another because again, think of all those people at the college who they were the only person on staff with the expertise to do this because it was called just that it was more cost effective to have only one instructional designer and me and now and I didn't have a support team and I thought that was really when the the group really came into it. zone and showed how important it could be. You know,
Luke Hobson 40:03
it's absolutely fascinating, by the way, and this happened to me the other day. And I just thought about it, too, is that at MIT, obviously, there are a lot of instructional designers all throughout different parts of the institute. And when I'm able to actually connect with somebody, it's not from being able to go walk around campus and meet somebody in person. It's not from LinkedIn. It's primarily from your Facebook group, that somebody will see me post and they're like, you work at MIT. I work at MIT. Can we chat sometime? And I'm like, Yes, I would love to chat. But there's no other point in time where I would somehow stumble upon their office and then say, like, oh, there's an instructional designer hidden in here somewhere, like, Yeah, let's, let's actually talk more about things. And that's so fascinating of finding your people within a larger group of people. And all of a sudden, these new connections begin to form,
Peter Shea 40:59
right. And everything I'm really pleased about is the opportunity to make you aware of job opportunities. Because I, in the early days, it was hard to find good job opportunities. I mean, in the earliest part of my career in the early 90s, we were still using newspapers to find jobs. And so it was impossible to find a good job unless you knew somebody. And then the web became a means of sharing information about jobs. And in fact, when I was in graduate school, one of the ways in which I, I vitae revitalized the listserv we had for instructional design students was to simply start posting jobs I found on the web. And that's when the list became that listserv became active because all of a sudden, people realized it was a place where they could see jobs being posted. And so whenever I see a job opening somewhere, I think this is a great opportunity, because the other thing that can really stymie instructional designers development, and this is very true for higher education is that people get stuck in one place in one job. And their skill set stagnates because they're not being asked to do anything interesting, or in a new environment. And so, I like to become aware that, you know, there, there are a lot of jobs emerging in this field in higher education. And they should, they should move around and see the opportunities and compare salaries and compare and ask for what have you worked here? What's it like, because the more movement there is, the more expertise will grow. And the more activities will lead to more interesting forms of instructional design. Whereas if we stay in one place for too long, we won't grow. And that's always been my own concern, I, I look at envy at some of our colleagues, who have been able to work in a variety of places, and on a variety of products that I say, I really would have liked to have been able to do that myself. But instead, I went from basic instructional design into a kind of managerial role. But I've always yearned to just do pure instructional design all the time. But at this point, my career, that's probably not going to happen. So I try to encourage younger instructional designers to take advantage of as many opportunities for growth and development as they can and opportunities that I I did not have. And I used to say that if I ever started a professional development, consulting firm, I would call it Marley's, after Marley's ghost in the Christmas Carol, where Marley comes back to Scrooge and says, It's too late for me, but I can give you information that will make it better for you. And so that's one of the things I could do is try to help people have more interesting and varied careers than the one that I was able to have. Because I think the potential is tremendous there. Particularly in in large urban areas where there are a number of colleges, and where people are still at a point where they feel comfortable moving around, and trying new roles that they do that there'll be, I think there'll be more satisfied. And like I said before, they'll have an opportunity to develop greater forms of expertise, of course,
Luke Hobson 43:59
and the group and everything that you mentioned about the job postings to one of the things that's so special about that compared to trying to use a job searching platform, like indeed, or zip recruiter or whatever, there's a whole bunch of them out there is the fact that usually the person who is posting the job, it's on their team, you can message them, and talk with them and ask like, what's it like, tell me about the culture? How was leadership? What is it like for you having your say within the group, and what are you actually working on? Are you excited about it, and all these different questions, and that is so rare, it's so rare to be able to have that unless you go and intentionally find the person on LinkedIn, or you're connected already. But other than that, it's like the person is literally in the group. And I've seen it happen many, many, many times that you'll post the job posting, and then somebody who works there will comments on it. And they'll say the same thing. Like we're totally open able to answer any questions that you might have. Feel free to message me for any details. answer when I get
Peter Shea 45:01
out right here, right? Because that's the that is the the classic admission of any job posting, as you never know what's behind the scenes. I mean, they all look really nice and it sounds really cool. And but you don't know what the reality is organizational wise. And we've all known people who've made a jump into a job and discover that it was not the place I thought it was. And it's not as easy to jump out again. And so, you know, it's always I always feel my comfort myself to ask, you know, what's the culture like? And I've gotten back some wonderfully candid answers where there's a little this is the good part. That's the bad part. Yes, you know, and if you know that, then you're much more comfortable putting your name in. And, and thing too is when people you know, because obviously, there, there are so many people who feel people apply for a job that they're qualified for. They don't get it and they feel bad and say, Well, did I do anything better? And like, no, no, you did well, but if you want to, you know, stand out here, if you want to keep in mind. So it's encouraging for people to because again, the secret's out of the bag, there was a time when their instructional design was relatively a mystery. And so there was less competition, and now there's much more competition. So how do you stand out? So that's me, that's one of the more interesting conversations about how do you stand out these days as instructional designer, particularly when the people who are doing the instructional design hiring themselves do not understand what makes an exceptional instructional designer? Um, so you know, I mean, if you Yeah, go ahead,
Luke Hobson 46:26
is that a fascinating part about the field, by the way, is that it's trying to be able to make sure that people are calm, cool and collected, if they do get a denial, or, you know, they, unfortunately, hear negative feedback right away. And then it's just like, well, the first thing is, first is that the person doing the phone screening, by the way, isn't the hiring manager, it's a recruiter who was given a piece of paper to say, here's what you're looking for, these are the keywords, these are their qualifications, if they meet these, and they seem like a good human being, let's pass them on to the next round. And unfortunately, some people are like, Oh, my gosh, I talked about this and this and this, but they didn't seem to acknowledge it, or whatever it is, it's like, yeah, but they're not the ones you want to be able to impress and dazzle with all of your awesomeness. Like they're, they're there for the gatekeeping. But you need to work through evidence, eventually you talk to more of the people who have a better sense about instructional design, but even then, even then, the person who could be hiring for the position on the team could be somebody who needs an instructional designer, but they themselves had never done instructional design. Right? So then it becomes a whole. Yeah. So that's why going back to your point, getting that insider information is just so crucial. Because that way you're going to know and you're going to learn and you can reflect upon that feedback and try to do better than next time and to keep on going. So no, so it makes a lot of sense. And, and like we were saying we keep seeing these postings, and so many postings are happening like every single day, I'm realizing that if I'm in the Facebook group, and I look at something, if I refresh, just like 30 seconds later, a new posting will happen. Like it's it's that rapid fire of engagement at some times and some days, and it's just crazy. Did it ever occur to you that this could become your full time job, if you let it?
Peter Shea 48:25
Well, there are days when it does fill in, like my full time job. But it's not like I like other forms of social media. It doesn't lend itself easily to becoming a revenue generating model, like a YouTube video. And in fact, you know, a friend of mine said to me, you know, you got this huge grip, do you do to get paid to do I said, No, I don't, I don't. And so we consulted his son, you know, generation, he said, Well, what should he do? He says, Well, does the guy create any original content? That's how people monetize there? I said, No, I just curate, I just curate. And I and I monitor events is not an easy way to, I don't do anything on YouTube or anything like that. I'm either I'm, I'm too lazy, or I don't have enough time. But, you know, I, you know, I would love to be able to do something like this full time, but the fact that I can do it part of the time, I find gratifying, because there are times when I really want to feel like I'm making a contribution somewhere, do something and when I post something, and people respond to it, or, Hey, we're looking for that, that that can be quite gratifying. Um, and, you know, again, it's, it's one of those things that, you know, you know, if I had more business sense, I probably would have found a way to make a living doing it. But if I had more business sense, I probably wouldn't have pursued a career in higher education. So, you know, you take it as it is, if there's a if there would be a way to do that. That'd be great. Not on, I'll still continue doing it because I liked it. I like the social value that it creates and the community that it creates. And I think this is a super important field. You know, anyone who knows me will know that I will at the drop of a dime and go on a tear about how poorly we design learning experiences, in spite of all that we now know about what works and what doesn't work. So I think learning design is incredibly crucial and underappreciated field. And I think going forward, that organizations that begin to utilize its insights wisely, will create learning experiences that are superior to the ones that are being offered by the more conventional learning organizations in colleges and schools. And sooner or later, people will begin to migrate to them. And, you know, the more traditional institutions will begin to feel the pinch, which they should, because they've been operating from the same, essentially medieval model for a very long time we, we confuse information sharing with learning. And, you know, we, we know that we can do a much better job. I mean, if you've ever had an instructional design experience that was really impactful. You know, what the good stuff looks like. It's like people who, you know, spent their whole lives drinking, you know, instant coffee, and all of a sudden, they walked into a Starbucks, and they had a strong cup of coffee. And for the first time, they realized what this what coffee is supposed to taste like. I think the same thing is with instructional experiences. And I think the one thing that worries me is is going back to what I said about this stagnation is that there's a lot of talented people in the field of instructional design, who are not being given projects that really optimize their creative ability. And that's worries me, and I certainly found in my own experiences that I wound up doing independent projects, largely to help satiate my creative side, because my day jobs, were not asking me to do anything that really drew fully upon my abilities. And so that's one thing I try to encourage people to do is think about rather than wait for the, for the Dream product to occur, build something, if nothing else, it will help you keep your sanity and keep your skills fresh. Because again, you don't want to be instructional designer, caught in a dead end job, the job you want really comes along. But you can't make the jump because your current job has not pushed you enough. We can't wait for the institutions to do that because they're very conservative, pedagogically, so we had to figure out creative ways to keep our portfolios and our skills fresh. So that one, that job that really fulfills us comes along. We're ready for it.
Luke Hobson 52:46
I love it. You're preaching the truth, man, because this is why I'm, you know, talking to you on a podcast and sharing blogs and other things. Because I'm with you. Yeah, 100%, all aboard that life. And I've known some people too, that they only wanted to be in the Instructional Design type of role. And, and that's what they wanted. And they were happy with that. And they did that for for 2030 years. And it's like, okay, you have meaning in this work, you are happy. Life is good. But I know a lot of people where they're like, Well, what's next, like that they're already thinking about the next move. It's only been, you know, three years in the field or five, or you know, even just like one year, and they're like, Okay, so what am I doing now? How do I get better? How can I become more engaged? What can I really do, and trying to be able to think about that for those next steps and planning ahead, and just getting better professionally and not being bored? You know, just the that that nine to five grind will eat away at you. If you don't have something that you find exciting at the end of the day like you, you need it? You do you do? And clearly, you know, this is your passion project. This is everything that you've been doing. And you've been spreading the good word about instructional design for so long. So I know that that we can't thank you enough. If there was somebody out there who's listening right now. And let's say that they want to start their own type of online learning community, but they want it to be like yours with gauging and posts and conversations and everything else. Even if it's not in instructional design, it's just entirely in a different field. What advice would you give them for trying to be able to replicate your steps and your success?
Peter Shea 54:23
I would just say, um, you know, for him, number one is something you really care about, and you will be yourself consistently interested in it. Number two, is there is there an absence of good avenues of conversation in your field? Um, it because if at all, if there is a community that already exists, it's going to be hard to attract people away from it. In this case, there wasn't a community there was really no competition for that. Anything is find a way to to routinely locate or create good content to keep people interested because most of the people in the community are going to be lurkers, they're not going to contribute to the conversation all the time. And they're not going to post things, but they're going to stick around because they're curious to see what you have to offer. So you have to have some sort of routine output strategy for having a content output. And in my case, it was curation. And so those were the factors that I think led to my success. And again, if you know if you are passionate about something, and you think there aren't existing avenues to for people to explore it conversationally wise, then then I said, give it a try. Certainly give it a try.
Luke Hobson 55:34
Absolutely. And I hope people listen to your words and follow through on that. Because as we've been talking about all along the the group is unlike anything else I've ever experienced before, I've been a part of many, many different Facebook groups and LinkedIn groups, and not just for instructional design, you name it, anything for fitness, to cooking to podcasting to, you know, whatever, and you have something special, like you really, really have something special in here. What do you think is next for the group? By the way, if you can wave a magic wand or taking a take out your crystal ball and try think about the future? What do you think is next,
Peter Shea 56:08
I think I'd like you know, I'm hoping to do, I've been encouraged to do more live presentations in the group the way other people do on Facebook groups, and encourage people to come in. And I'm certainly toying with that idea. Now, um, but I want to do something that's distinctive, as well, um, is that there are certain things that I'd like to nudge for instructional design, certain ideas I want to get across, I, I've always liked the idea that if the right tool came around, instructional designers could begin to create a library of artifacts, open, openly shared artifacts that were which they could contribute to, and which would feed their creativity and enable them to really show the world what our interestingly designed learning artifact is, you know, you and I were talking earlier about Authorware, which is a tool they used back in the 90s, to create interactive learning experiences that you could do so without having an advanced programming skills. And I, I've always wished that we had some sort of equivalent tool that people could wildly use to create interesting artifacts, because, again, we have a lot of books on how to draw, but we don't have enough interesting paintings. And that's what we really need, we need to get people, you know, the instructional design equivalent of painting and sharing their work with one another because that's where the field can go next. But it won't go there, unless certain conditions can occur. And so I'm thinking, if we can get people to start shape, creating more interesting work and sharing it out, I thought it'd be great. Because I really think whenever I come across a really interesting learning artifact that that really grips me, I really want to share it with you and say, Isn't this awesome? Isn't this great? It wouldn't be great to have something like this for all these other topics. And then that animates people to go and build them.
Luke Hobson 57:56
I love it. I love it. Let's go out on that node. PETA people want to go to be able to connect with you and to find you. I mean, obviously they can find you on Facebook group. But is there anywhere else that they should go to connect with you online?
Peter Shea 58:11
I'm on LinkedIn, like me and a million other Peter Shay's. In fact, there's another. There's a there's a Dr. Peter Shea in educational technology out of the University of Albany, where people have occasionally confused me with him. I always say I'm his evil twin. But no, I'm I can be found on LinkedIn. And I've, you know, I've shared it out with people who are curious to connect with me, and I'm always open as long as you're not trying to sell me anything. I I'm usually open to connecting with people via LinkedIn and, and chatting with them. So you know,
Luke Hobson 58:44
fantastic. Well, I'll be sure to link that into the show notes. So everybody can go and find you and connect with you on both Facebook and LinkedIn. But Pete once again, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Really appreciate your time. Thanks, Luke. It's always fun to chat. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you liked today's show and learned a bit about online learning communities. If you like the dynamics and the chemistry between Peter and I, we do have a YouTube presentation that we did together on 10 futuristic ideas for online learning that we did over for edge to flow. And you can actually find a link to this video in the show notes or if you just simply go onto YouTube and search Peter Shea and Luke Hobson. It's the first video that actually pops up. And we're currently thinking about this kind of like a new idea, a sneak peek at what we're trying to come up with together about actually making a course on these types of 10 futuristic ideas and trying to put together for you real actionable steps for you to take to make these new types of online learning ideas come to life for the present day. That's kind of like the bit about everything with the top 10 presentation of the online futuristic ideas is that many of these ideas are really here today and people are doing it right here. Right now, but they're not getting as much publicity as you think. So we are trying to shine a light on many different types of new ideas and innovations that are currently in place, but they're not mainstream yet. So we're thinking about making a course to put those all together in order to help you along your instructional design journey. If you haven't yet already, you should obviously join Pete's Facebook group instructional designers and education. I'll put the link to the show notes down below as well. And obviously, you can go into Facebook and search for the group type in the name that's going to pop right up. But that ladies and gentlemen, that is all I have for you today, hope you liked this podcast episode, give it a five star rating wherever you are listening and most importantly, stay nerdy out there. Now I'll talk to you next time.