On today's podcast, I break down my biggest mistakes and how they helped me to grow as an instructional designer.
Transcript
00:00
Hey folks, before we begin today's show, I want to give a quick shout out to idol courses Academy. If you're looking to transition into the corporate instructional design space, you need the right guidance to do so. Dr. Sargent, her team have done an incredible job of focusing on what's important to be a corporate instructional designer like storyboarding it 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 learning journey alone, you'll 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 in job descriptions as preferred training and education by going to IDOL courses.com/Academy. Use a promo code Luke to save you $88 off your enrollments. And now let's start the show.
01:15
Hello, everybody, and welcome on in to your favorite learning nerd podcast. My name is Dr. Luke Hobson. I'm a senior instructional designer, a program manager at MIT. I'm also an author, I wrote the book called What I wish I knew before becoming an instructional designer. And of course, I have a blog, a podcast and a YouTube channel. And my passion. My purpose is to help you make the online learning experience as meaningful and as awesome as humanly as possible. And for those of you who are transitioning over into this field right now, I am also here to help out you folks as well, too. We're talking about what exactly you need in order to make this switch. Basically, everyone who listens to this podcast all are welcome here. As long as you love learning, then welcome home. And of course, you can always find all my information over at DrLukehobson.com. Now, I don't know about you, folks. But right now, my spring is madness, absolute, utter madness, as I am just constantly running around and trying to put everything all together, not just in my day job, but also on all the other things that I also do. But for this week, in particular, things were crazy. On Monday, I had not one, not two, but three new courses launched on Monday, along with everything else you can think of for making sure for quality and assurance purposes and testing and feedback and blah, blah, blah million things are currently happening. And for whatever reason, this is how my brain works to give you a sneak peek of kind of like how my creative processes this kind of so strange, but this is how the, you know, the podcasts and all the other things have come to be is that I am so super busy that my brain is like so Hey, notice really not being creative right now. What What can you do on the side of things, just have it that way, you have some form of creative outlet, that you can start working on something. And for whatever reason, I finally was like, You know what, I still have not perfected my YouTube setup. I'm gonna figure this out. So here I go. And I'm playing with my camera. I'm trying to do everything with After Effects in my microphone. And I was like, You know what, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna record a YouTube video right now on my five biggest mistakes as an instructional designer. And hey, let's see what happens. So even though I was super busy, even though I definitely did not have the time to make this YouTube video, I went, I sat down, I busted this thing out within about an hour or so. And all of a sudden, I then had the best produced highest quality YouTube video that I have ever made, and was like, Wow, this looks awesome. But But something has got to give like so if I'm spending all my time doing this, well, then what's going to happen? And then I really didn't even think about it. But I was like, Wait a minute. This was going to be the podcast topic for this week. So originally, I intended to have this exact thing be like a blog and a podcast and do the traditional thing that I do on the solo type of episodes. And instead, this one is going to be a bit different because it is exactly the YouTube video through the power of technology. I was able to take all the audio from the YouTube video, and it still sounds great. So I'm going to make that be the podcast episode this time. But if you didn't want to watch the video and check out exactly all the new different types of animations and lighting and everything else I put into the video, you can absolutely go in and check it out either by going to the show notes down below. Or if you just go on
05:00
YouTube and search Dr. Luke Hobson should be the first video that's going to pop up. So that was a long way of saying that this podcast episode is going to go and dive on in, and really just be transparent with you, we're talking about all my mistakes, my blunders, what I really screwed up, I'm going to be talking about it in a little bit. So I don't want to go into much detail. But I really didn't think instructional design was for me when I first started off, because I screwed up everything, constantly, I didn't have any confidence or self esteem, because I just kept on making mistakes. And I didn't think I was gonna get the hang of it. And I know that for many of you out there who are either entry level instructional designers, or you're just starting off, or perhaps you're someone who wants to become a senior instructional designer someday, just know that we all make mistakes. And I have made plenty in my career. And this entire episode is this to highlight a lot of the things that I messed up, but of course, what I learned from them and how they helped me to grow. And that's what I want you to be able to listen to. So I am not going to take up any more time. And I'm just going to let this episode start right off. And this is gonna kick right off immediately. So sit back and enjoy, and I'll talk to you soon. On today's video, we're going to talk about my biggest mistakes and how they helped me to grow as an instructional designer. Let's get started.
06:35
Hello, my learning nerds and welcome on in to the nerdiest video that you're going to see today. I want to let you in on a bit of a secret in that I almost quits on instructional design altogether. Now I find it's kind of funny, because I have a book, a blog, a podcast, that YouTube channel oh, about instructional design, because I really do love what it is that I do. But at the beginning of my instructional design journey, I made so many mistakes. So so many mistakes. And I wasn't really sure I was like, is this right for me, because I'm not getting it. And I just felt really bad. I was trying to find instructional design mistakes online years ago. And I really didn't see too much out there. So of course, it made me think of like, oh, it's, it's just gotta be me. So I don't want that to happen to you. If you see a lot of us in instructional design land right now and doing these awesome, really cool things. Well, I just want to be transparent, and let you know that we're also human. And as human beings, we make mistakes, and I have made plenty of them. So this video is to highlight all of my fabulous blunders. So hopefully you learn from my mistakes, and don't do the same things that I actually did. So in no particular order, here are my top mistakes. Mistake number one is not showing the value of instructional design. When I first started off, I was told to introduce myself as the learning expert. Now, this does make sense for a lot of people in instructional design land, but it did not work for me. And let me tell you why it was because all of my subject matter experts who I worked with, they were professors, and there were faculty members, I've always worked in higher education. So imagine a 20 something year old, starting off a brand new project working with a seasoned professor who has been teaching for like 3040 50 years. And all of a sudden this kid is this like, Oh, I'm on this project, because I'm the learning expert. And yeah, they kind of like looked at me. And they're like, Yeah, me too. So what is it that you exactly do again? And I was like, oh, yeah, that's not the best way of introducing myself was like, How do I get around this hurdle when talking about instructional design. Now for me, what I found that actually worked really well was that I was trying to think of what unique skills can I bring to the table that these people don't have, and for being in a higher education setting, a lot of these professors and these faculty members, they have never made a effective online learning experience before. So when I started to introduce myself on projects, I actually talked about how I know how people learn online. And then I can partner with you just take what I know about learning sciences and learning techniques, and put it together with a subject matter experience and expertise is inside of your head. And then that way we can then make a meaningful learning experience together that's going to be clear and transparent for our students to see and to see their growth. And when I started to introduce myself, like that's, like, oh, okay, like he's like the online learning expert guy, and I'm like, Yeah, that's why I'm here and other things, but at least it was a start.
10:00
or it stopped to help me feel defeated and crushed. And instead of kind of being looked down upon from these very seasoned faculty members, I started to have more of an equal, say, and an equal voice in this type of partnership. So I had a seat at the table finally. So when I wanted to be able to make a suggestion or a recommendation, it was not met with so much resistance, unlike before, where I'm like, Oh, I'm the learning expert. And they're like, yeah, good try kid is come back again later. So that is definitely by far. My first mistake. Mistake number two was not providing feedback. As you can tell from most of those stories I mentioned about before I was met with a lot of resistance, they kind of crushed me at first. And eventually, I stopped providing feedback, because I'm like, Well, you're the expert in teaching and learning as well. So you must be all set. And I'll just kind of be here, if you need me, was the attitude that I took early on. And then finally, I had a subject matter expert one time, and we were filming for his new course. And as we were going into the studio, we already had everything outlined and talked about all of the bullet points that he wants to mention what he wants to do, where he wanted to go, what was the vision for everything with the course and the recording and whatnot. So then we go into the multimedia studio, and we start to record. And I notice that he has complete and total stage fright, if you will, as soon as you start to see the red light on the camera. He froze up, he began fumbling his words, he began to kind of not really be himself. And it was actually really weird. But the person who I knew, talking with him face to face was not at all the same person that was coming across on the camera. And I felt really bad about that. Because of course, the students weren't going to get the same experience that they would have if they had them in a face to face classroom because he was just so nervous of everything. And unfortunately for me, after every single video, he turned to me and said, Hey, look, how was that? And I was like, Oh, you're you're doing good, doing great. Keep on going. And after the third or fourth video he wants he looked at me and he was just like, so how was that? And I did my traditional thumbs up was like, Oh, it was good. He's like, Luke, that wasn't good. No, I was like, oh, no, what do you mean? He's just like, I could do way better. He's like, if you think that's good, he's like, I have so much more potential, I could do so much better. And then that's when I started to open up because I saw an opportunity to fix my mistake and say, Well, yeah, actually, you know, in this video, you completely missed on this point that you said beforehand, but you really want to hit home, and you fumbled over this word, you meant to say this word, and instead, this other word came out, and all these different suggestions started to come out of my mouth. And before I know it, I was talking for five minutes about what I would do differently. I was like, Oh, I hope that wasn't too much information. Then he looked at me and he was just like, Finally, that is what I've been wanting you to do this entire time. If I'm doing something right, then please tell me so I can do it more. If I'm doing something wrong, that also please correct me. So I can improve during the next time around. And I will say thank God for this professor, because he was who I needed at that moment of time to really be able to build up my self esteem and my momentum. And to keep on going. And after that we had a fabulous working relationship where we basically did a gentlemen's agreement to always make sure that we were telling the truth that we are being straight shooters and that we aren't going to fluff anything. If we can do something better, we can do it better. And that goes obviously not just for the recordings, but of course, how we actually designed the learning experience as well. And everything else that came along with it, too. And that was something that I still really did serve me even to this day is that now I am not afraid to give feedback. And I will absolutely voice my opinion. If I see an area for us to be able to grow together as a team. My next mistake was overthinking literally everything when I say overthink literally everything. I mean it's I constantly was overthinking early on when I became an instructional designer, and so much so that I would literally fret over every single word choice that I made on a rubric. And I still remember this that I actually had a conversation one day with my supervisor, and she was asking me why was taking so long to create a rubric for an assignment. She was like this really should be taking you only like 30 minutes, like what are you doing? And I really had this weird type of mind battle about trying to choose between two different words of identify and define. And I constantly went back and forth on them with the rubric of trying to figure out what is the most appropriate word to use. It's going to match up for exactly how folks are actually being assessed when it came to the assignment itself. And this is how my brain
15:00
and actually worked is that if I was going to be able to pick and choose the word identify and actually mean to choose the word defined, well, then what's going to happen is that students are actually going to be upset with everything, they're going to be so upset that they're going to fail by failing, they're, they're gonna have to talk to their professor and their professor is then going to come back to my department and say, What did you do? Luke messed up this rubric, he needs to be fired to let go and all of a sudden gonna be out of a job.
15:20
Yeah. So that is how my brain worked. When I first became a designer, and not so much anymore. I realized after talking with my supervisor, she was like, no one is going to make this much of a big deal out of it as just you and I guess we, as instructional designers care, we're trying to choose the right word, but our students really going to call the professor in demand, but you get fired for making the wrong rubric. Like, no, like, oh, well, that's good, because I don't know. Maybe they went, I don't have a clue. So luckily, we were able to overcome my overthinking. And afterwards, I realized that there was a time and a place to really dedicate a lot of my mental effort in trying to be able to improve and to create and to design. And other times, it's okay to let things go and to understand, but simply I don't understand. And this is what led me so early on of being able to accept criticism and feedback from students. Because I went through all of these different types of experiences, I recognize the fact that I am not the target audience for every single course and program and training workshop. And whatever else I'm designing, I am always not going to be the target audience, which is going to mean that I can make my best educated assumption and guess about something. But until I really hear it from the students, and from a subject matter experts and from other people won't collecting feedback from, I'm really not going to know. And that's what finally led me to being able to create pilot programs, and actually crave student and learner feedback. I was like, I want to know if I can make it better, please tell me my feelings aren't going to be hurt, because the next time around is is going to get better and better and better. And every single time they implement a new feedback into the design, it always got better ratings and rankings for every single time. So finally, my overthinking kind of actually became a superpower by putting it into a much better format for being able to sync and to use everything effectively. In the fourth mistake is not believing in the power of I'll figure it out. For little words, that means so much as an instructional designer, you will see but the best designers all have the same mentality of I have no idea how to solve this problem. But I'm going to figure it out. I didn't realize this at first, and I heavily relied on my first supervisor, because I just simply didn't know I didn't have the answers for things. But eventually, I developed this really bad habit of going to her for everything. There should have been plenty of times where if I had just done a quick Google search or on YouTube or anything else, I would have found the answer. But instead, I immediately went to her as soon as any form of problem or question came about and my didn't have the answer. And then one day, she took a two week vacation. And all of a sudden, I'm like, oh, no, what am I gonna do? Like I don't have my go to person anymore. And this forced me to actually start to network with other people. It forced me to look into other different types of resources and research papers and books and YouTube and Google and blogs and everything else. And all of a sudden, I stopped being so reliant on one person, because I realized that I could find the answer and then go and check in with other team members or my team leader, whoever just to make sure that I was on the right track, but I was able to be able to figure things out a lot more for myself, instead of just constantly relying on everybody. And funny enough, what I remember about this to have this moment of time is that back then we use Blackboard for a learning management system for an LMS and I have a graphic design background so I was designing the banners for all of the courses and I made this really awesome banner it looked fantastic and I was like oh like this is going to be amazing but students are gonna go into this course and be like, this is a different online course I can't wait to take this. So here I go my upload and my banners and then what the banners do they broke the course 100% broke everything's things started to shift left and right the text didn't make sense anymore. The font was all out of whack. I was like no like why no one's around me no one knows how to fix this. I'm like, Oh no, like this. The I just literally destroyed this course. And sure enough, I was able to go find some tutorials and was able to go back into Photoshop, change the files, put in correct size dimensions, change a whole bunch of other stuff. And then before I know it, put it
20:00
back into the course and everything looked just fine. So believing in the power of figure it out, don't doubt your abilities, you can do research, you know what to do you already do it so much. Now we're just doing it more in a professional sense of in instructional design land. But hey, just believe in yourself just a little bit more. And then my fifth blunder is assuming. Now I'm just going to simply leave it at that I made a lot of assumptions when I was starting off as an instructional designer, but it's always still a good reminder, even to this day. And to give you a story about this from my super fun assumptions is that I took over one course in instructional designer, they gave their two week notice they pieced out we had a call, though beforehand, just to make sure that I was on the same page with everything. But I knew what was going on. What were the deliverables? What were the deadlines was the overall final project timeline for everything just so that I was aware, and they informed me that everything should be good to go as long as the SMI turns in everything on time, because we actually had a bit of a tight deadline at the time, but things were okay. But they could not miss anything. Or else we're going to be facing some repercussions. So I went and I talked with the subject matter expert, we had our first kind of call together things seemed fine. I said I will follow back up with them. And then I realized that I didn't hear from them again, was like, oh, no, like what what was happening and all sudden, we missed one deadline, and then another, then another. So here I am like okay, well, I am gonna go full fledged, I need to get us back on track. So I'm emailing, I'm texting, I'm calling I basically did everything besides using like a carrier pigeon and sending a message just to try to finally get this person to respond back to me to say like, what is going on? Like, like, what is there a problem? Like what's currently happening? Are you okay, you know, I had no idea. And then we finally, were able to have a meeting one day, and they started off and they were like, look like what what is the rush? Like, what's the problem? I'm looking at them. And I was like, No, my my question is really write that same back thing to you. Oh, what? What is the problem? Like, you've missed all of these deadlines, the course is launching in like three months like we are we are not in a good spot here. They looked at me.
22:22
And they're like three months? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, it's actually going to be in six months. And potentially, we have a bit of wiggle room for another month or so.
22:34
Like, no, so I take out the project timeline that I was given from the other instructional designer. And I showed it to them. And I was like, This is my timeline. And they're like, well, that's really weird. Because I have a different timeline. It's like, No, you don't, you can't possibly have an insurer. And then they're like, Nope, this is the date that I was given, like, Oh, great. So I assumed that we were on the same page from a project management standpoint, that the deadlines were set in stone, and that the two parties mutually agreed to abide by these different types of deadlines. And in fact, I was wrong. The designer had one set of deadlines, the Smee had a different set of deadlines. I still don't know how this happened. Usually you share the same doc and you just work off of that one. So clearly, one person had version one and the other person had version 2.0. And yeah, things weren't on the same page. However, going back to me, I made the assumption that they were on the same page the entire time, which was wrong. When I took over the project, I actually should have started off more like an exploratory kind of phase, just to be able to say like, tell me more about how everything has gone so far, what has worked well for you, what perhaps we could improve upon? Is there anything that I should be aware of that can help you a bit more of everything from this type of management standpoint? And I bet I would have gotten so much more helpful information along the way, compared to just going into the project and saying like, what are we doing? We're missing all these deadlines when really, they weren't technically because they had their own project timeline. So yeah, that was all on me. Well, my friends, that is all I have for you today, I hoped you learned a thing or two and that hopefully you know what to do next time or perhaps what not to do, depending upon what story that I was sharing. If you are a seasoned instructional designer and you are watching this video, go down below in the comment section and actually tell me about something that you perhaps made a mistake on early on and that way other people can learn not to do the same thing as well. If you are new into the instructional design world first and foremost, welcome along. We have a fantastic learning community. But also go ahead and share this video with another friend of yours who's trying to become an instructional designer. I
25:00
know what there are many, many, many people have questions about this field. And I hope that by being able to share this kind of video, other people are going to make videos as well, just being transparent and talking about the things that we learned along the way and just kind of making fun of ourselves too, because it's all in good fun. I hope you've learned a thing or two today, but that's all I have for you folks. Like, comment, subscribe, and all whatever typical YouTube stuff, but most importantly, stay nerdy out there. And I'll talk to you next time.