EP-92: Recapping 2023
Can you believe 2024 is just around the corner? Let's take some time to reflect back on 2023.
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Transcript
00;00;00;03 - 00;00;29;29
Luke
Why? Hello, learning nerds. Before we begin today's show, I want to thank our awesome sponsors with first giving a shout out to Idol Courses Academy. Idol Academy is the first and only authorized vocational school for instructional design and online learning. It includes a comprehensive hands on curriculum with certifications, credentials, expert coaches, mentors, a community of practice, paid experience opportunities, industry, preferred software access, live events, an ongoing updates.
00;00;29;29 - 00;00;55;21
Luke
Your entire instructional design career is neatly packaged behind a single log in for just $88 a month. Check out all the details that idolcourses.com/academy and you can use my code to Luke for $88 off the yearly membership. Okay, now let's start the show. Hello, learning nerds and a welcome on in to the nerdiest podcast you're going to hear today.
00;00;55;21 - 00;01;37;03
Luke
And welcome on in to the last learning nerd podcast in 2023. As we usher in 2024, I hope you all had a wonderful and safe holiday, even as far as for with this upcoming new year. Safe travels and best wishes as well. Thinking back around with everything from the last year, it feels like a blur. A part of me still feels like we're living in 2020, and maybe that's because of the fact that I'm still working remotely as I'm talking to you inside of my home office right now and trying to be able to think that 2024 is just around the corner, well, it really doesn't make that much sense.
00;01;37;09 - 00;01;56;26
Luke
But the other thing, too, if you were anything like me, is that this has been one of the busiest years I have ever had, busy for all the right reasons. But truly there has been so much going on and it never really stopped since kicking off 2023 with a bang. And then now we're already here and we're crossing that finish line.
00;01;57;03 - 00;02;23;06
Luke
Now is the time when people are thinking about their goals of 2024 and what are they trying to be able to do? And if you're like me, I currently don't know what day it is, and I am full of so much cheese and trying to get to the gym to make myself feel somewhat better. But anyway, as for thinking about for this year, I also wanted to stop and pause and reflect upon 2023 and just exactly what did we do?
00;02;23;07 - 00;02;47;21
Luke
What did we accomplish? What happened from a content perspective, from all of the things that I've been sharing with you, with the podcast, blog, YouTube and everything else, but also to thinking about our industry, what has changed? What were the impacts? And of course, looking at history to be able to now think about the future and perhaps where we're going to be going with a couple of different things.
00;02;47;21 - 00;03;20;14
Luke
As I was thinking about this, five things really came to mind. And in this episode, I want to break those down, unpack each one, and to explore them a little bit more before we dove on in 2024. So where to begin with all of this? Well, in order to help me with the timeline, I went back and I looked through my LinkedIn timeline to be able to pull some of these dates and trying to be able to see some of these things, all of a sudden, all the memories came back of like, Oh, yeah, don't you remember this?
00;03;20;14 - 00;03;49;00
Luke
And don't you remember when this happened? It's like, Oh, yeah, that's right. That did happen in 2023. Feels like long ago, but really it was in the last year. So the first thing that happened inside of our space was actually the release of the audio book of What I Wish I Knew before becoming an instructional designer. This was something that if you have read this book by now and if you have been listening to this show, you have heard me mention about how I did not want to make this audio book.
00;03;49;06 - 00;04;11;07
Luke
I knew it was going to be extremely challenging. I already had the physical book, I had the e-book but had an audible version like, is this something that I really want to be able to do? But from speaking with my wife, who kept on, encouraged me and saying, But you already have the podcast, you have the voice, why don't you just, you know, put it together and offer this?
00;04;11;16 - 00;04;42;02
Luke
And of course, from a UDL perspective, I want to be able to provide every form of alternative for you to enjoy this content. So why not? Let's make an audio book. Let's figure this out and see exactly how this goes. Now, I should have realized about how hard this was going to be. I knew that since I was purposefully delaying the project because I kept on trying and I realize how much time it was going to take when I kept on trying to carve out more time.
00;04;42;06 - 00;05;11;17
Luke
And if you've ever tried this yourself to make an audio book, you know what I'm talking about. It is not easy to do, but here I went inside of my closet and I recorded 25 different files. Essentially within a couple of days of just reading and reading and reading. And eventually this book, it came out to like four and a half hours of me reading to you about instructional design tips and strategies and tricks around the field and everything else.
00;05;11;27 - 00;05;39;26
Luke
And it was done well, kind of. It was kind of done. And what I mean by this is that I encountered every single issue humanly possible, and I had no idea how to get around them. Eventually, I reached out to an audio engineer to be able to say, Can you help me? I cannot figure this out. Even though I've been podcasting for years, I'm a musician, I use GarageBand on a daily basis.
00;05;40;05 - 00;06;07;21
Luke
I don't get it. I'm doing something wrong. And this taught me the important lesson about knowing when to ask for help and not being embarrassed or afraid to be able to do so. Because if someone has the answers and you can pay them $100 to be able to help you, it's worth it at the end of the day and certainly trying to be able to do this finally did something different and something unique from that perspective.
00;06;07;27 - 00;06;31;02
Luke
And what I'm proud of is that I have not seen a single instructional design book have an audible version besides this one, which I'm starting to think it's because of the fact, but it's extremely hard to be able to do so. Maybe my fellow colleagues and peers are on to something by saying no. Why would I want to be able to do that?
00;06;31;10 - 00;06;59;28
Luke
But the way that I wrote the book was more conversational in style and tone, and I knew it was going to be enjoyable if I did read it. And to be able to give you this opportunity to listen to it wherever you are, whatever you're doing, just look at the podcast trying to be able to do that. And that was the very first thing that I did in 2023 and let me just say, if you were ever thinking about creating your own audible version of a book or creating your own audio book, please tell me.
00;07;00;02 - 00;07;21;20
Luke
Let me know. I am more than happy to share any and all tips and tricks that I learned from this process. And if I can help you out and it can save you any of those agonizing hours or trying to be able to figure out what you were doing wrong, I am an open book, no pun intended, in order to be able to help you out with this project, the next massive project in 2023.
00;07;21;28 - 00;07;48;08
Luke
But I tried to be able to do which luckily it did work out was rebranding and relaunching Instructional Design Institute. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you've heard me talk about Instructional Design Institute from years ago at the height of the pandemic. I was constantly working on this idea of ideas and trying to figure out how best to serve you with what you were looking for.
00;07;48;08 - 00;08;19;28
Luke
When it comes to learning more about designing online, learning experiences. And the thing is, is that I had this idea in mind and at the time I was absolutely focused and driven around this idea of a membership. And if you don't know what a membership is, think about it as a type of a monthly subscription based model where you are paying X amount of dollars per month in order to be able to have access to different forms of courses, guidance, community and everything of sorts.
00;08;20;07 - 00;08;39;16
Luke
And why are we so obsessed with this idea was because I found for me I was the type of a target audience person who was joining these different forms of memberships. I had them all throughout in various different types of ways and different types of communities, and I thought that that was going to be the best way to help out with everybody else.
00;08;39;25 - 00;08;59;24
Luke
Now, here is what I learned from being able to do that. It's really hard to be able to do that and to sustain a membership as far as for trying to be able to do things from having weekly office hours to making sure that the platform is running correctly, to make sure that the content is going to be new and updated all the time.
00;09;00;02 - 00;09;29;13
Luke
Essentially, I wanted to create an instructional design version of LinkedIn Learning, but to make it better and to have much more of an emphasis on support and community and an instructor of type of a facing role. As for with myself, with being able to help you with everything as well, and I launched this back around 2020 or so and it did okay, but I realize I was not doing the best job possible in order to help with supporting you.
00;09;29;21 - 00;09;57;03
Luke
And what I found is from other different types of endeavors with teaching online at the University of Miami, teaching at Southern New Hampshire University with more and more workshops and webinars and presentations that I was delivering, I was realizing that I was like, You know, this isn't necessarily the best way to help out people. It is fine, but I could do a better job as far as really trying to be able to educate the masses when it comes to instructional design.
00;09;57;09 - 00;10;17;11
Luke
What if I made it into a cohort? What if I updated every piece of content? What if I made it modern? What if I really threw into this essentially my heart and soul with being able to really talk about designing, learning experiences, giving people hands on practical skills and applications in order for them to properly be able to do this.
00;10;17;11 - 00;10;34;20
Luke
What would this look like? So that's what I did, and I had to take a page out of that book that was talking about being able to kill your own darlings. And that's that's what I did. So I tore it all down. I got rid of the learning platform that I was using. I moved on over to a different learning platform.
00;10;34;25 - 00;11;09;15
Luke
I updated every video, I changed every assignment. I just completely redid the whole thing. And then all of a sudden it was there, it was live. And I had you folks who were attending, taking the courses and working with me on a weekly cadence throughout this type of a seven week long learning experience. And it was amazing. It still is by far the most fun I have ever had in recent memory that I can think about and seeing the transformations and also seeing to who is actually taking this course, which is one thing that you folks have asked me about on LinkedIn are like, who is this for?
00;11;09;23 - 00;11;33;10
Luke
And I was saying about, well, I had an intended type of target audience in mind, but clearly you folks have kind of proven me wrong as far as for who is going to be taking it from aspiring instructional designers to professors all the way to deans and directors of online learning departments at some pretty major universities, they're like, Well, that's obvious.
00;11;33;10 - 00;11;54;27
Luke
This is going to be really fun. And of course it was because having that cohort element, that community element, and bringing people together, sharing different perspectives from those who are just learning about instructional design and they have a fresh set of eyes as far as for they have not become jaded with a few different types of things that we know so well within this space.
00;11;55;03 - 00;12;30;03
Luke
Do those of years of experience who have all of these different types of ideas in mind of knowing about what has worked well and maybe not so much, and having these types of open conversations week after week from Andragogy, backward design, Universal Design for Learning, AI, Evaluation Methods, Analysis Methods. It was just so interesting and has become so much fun and by far it was a highlight of the 2023 with all the cohorts that have gone through this so far, third cohort and with the next cohort starting up in early March for the fourth cohort.
00;12;30;03 - 00;12;58;20
Luke
And absolutely that was a huge part of this last year. Now, not everything in 2023 was sunshine and rainbows. There was one major event that I was thinking about of what made an impact in our space that certainly we have to talk about. And this was the acquisition of Eduflow for many of you. We actually met because of edu flow as specifically within edu flow academy.
00;12;58;27 - 00;13;19;20
Luke
And if you don't know, edu flow is a learning management system that really went over the top. We're trying to be able to think about what types of learning experiences would really be impactful and meaningful inside of an LMS. What would it look like? How would it actually become a modern tool for people to be able to use?
00;13;19;28 - 00;13;55;16
Luke
And truly, in my opinion, edu flow did everything right. They were able to collect a ton of feedback. They were able to create this type of an amazing learning management system that hands down is better than 99% of LMS is on the market today. But one day, like all of you, you found out that there was going to be an announcement that, hey, Eduflow was actually acquired by a company called Multiverse, and this is now going to essentially become a private LMS, only to be used by multiverse.
00;13;55;24 - 00;14;14;15
Luke
Now, when I first heard this news, of course, I was like, Oh, all my courses are inside of edu flow. I really don't know what to do. But also I have to say to from putting on my realistic hat for a second because of course this is the real world. There are business transactions and things of that nature.
00;14;14;20 - 00;14;39;20
Luke
I had to be very perfectly clear, but I am so happy for David and William and Terra and the entire team because my goodness, if anyone deserves it, as far as they're being able to take that next step with everything, it's all of them. I have so much love for the entire team at Edu Flow and really it sounds like a win win from everything that they were going to be going through, which is fantastic.
00;14;39;20 - 00;15;08;01
Luke
And once again, I am so happy for all of them. But of course that realization of oh no edu flow is going away, what's going to happen. But the other major part about that, that really was the thing that I was wondering about was edu flow academy. What was going to happen to that? Because what they were able to do with edu flow academy as far as for making a ton, I don't know how many courses are currently up there on the website.
00;15;08;01 - 00;15;30;19
Luke
I believe there is always like 25 different types of courses ranging from literally anything you want to know within instructional design, learning and development or any form of an adjacent field. And it was amazing. And truly the one course that I kept on thinking about was the the OG course essentially of making this music that was called instructional design principles for course creators.
00;15;30;23 - 00;15;57;22
Luke
And inside of here it was a three week long endeavor where trying to be able to have this type of a cohort, this weekly cadence, and really put and to capture this magic in this essence. And I don't use the term magic lightly, but this really did feel like it was something magical of hundreds of people going through a learning experience at the same time, supporting each other, guiding one another, and being able to help out one another and share resources.
00;15;57;22 - 00;16;23;06
Luke
And it just became something different. I have never seen anything like it to this day as far as they're bringing together all of the learning nerds and trying to have one space for us to be able to gather, to share and to learn from one another. And I still remember the first time that I did a presentation around backward design for the first cohort of this program, and there was something like 500 people inside of a Zoom call.
00;16;23;12 - 00;17;00;06
Luke
And I asked one question to start off the webinar, and this immediately the Zoom chat explodes with comments and it was like this, this is going to be different. This is truly going to be amazing to be able to see and of course, this then transpired inside of a course as well as the live events. But then also on LinkedIn, the amount of you who are tagging me when you completed the course and sharing your certificate and the highlights and how much you enjoyed everything and that you made new friends, it was awesome to be able to do and that was like, where is that going to go?
00;17;00;06 - 00;17;21;22
Luke
Because that is so amazing. And for that, I don't have an answer and I'm not exactly sure about where that is going to go or what is going to become the next type of thing to capture this magic and community and support and everything of history. But I will say that once again, I'm just so thankful we were a part of that because it was so unique.
00;17;21;22 - 00;17;41;02
Luke
I've never experienced something like that before in my life and I connected with so many of you because of that opportunity to be able to work with the entire team at EduFlow. So I'm super thankful for it. I'm really happy we were able to do that together and I'm hopeful that there will become something new in the future for us to be able to work on.
00;17;41;02 - 00;18;00;04
Luke
I'm still in touch with all the folks over at Eduflow, by the way, so maybe there will be something in the future to be able to do, but we'll see. As far as for that goes, if you're also wondering too about where my content migrated off of because of course edu flow was my learning management system for all of my different types of courses.
00;18;00;11 - 00;18;19;24
Luke
Luckily for me, I was able to connect with some of the folks over at D2L and they helped me of putting all my learning experiences over on Brightspace, so I have to give a shout out to all of them because they worked like crazy to be able to get everything up and running and to help me with all of my silly and ridiculous questions.
00;18;19;28 - 00;18;43;00
Luke
And now Instructional Design Institute is over there. Same thing with the collaborating and building relationships with SMEs course, and eventually I'm going to have more things over there as well too. So stay tuned because that will be coming in 2024. As far as are being able to try to capture some of that magic and to expand upon it and to do a little bit more of everything.
00;18;43;09 - 00;19;14;17
Luke
But so far that's when I've been able to do now without a doubt, I had to mention about this next topic, which all of you are familiar with by now, and that is the boom of AI. I didn't really think that I was going to become something that this was all but I was going to be talking about in 2023 and somehow, someway, I found myself inside of this space sharing about AI and its impact on instructional design.
00;19;15;00 - 00;19;43;05
Luke
So let me take you back for a second. In 2019, I worked on a program at M.I.T. around AI and and designing around AI, and the professor at the time mentioned about GPT and I didn't think anything of it. It was just another word. It went right over my head and I was like, Yeah, that sounds interesting. And I kind of went along with my day not thinking that I was going to interact with my world specifically.
00;19;43;12 - 00;20;01;28
Luke
And then one of the instructional designers on my team mentioned it later on where she's just like, Don't you remember that he did talk about this? I was like, Oh my gosh, you're right. Now I can I can go back and I can watch that video he did talk about 80 years ago. And now seeing where it's at is is truly crazy.
00;20;02;05 - 00;20;29;00
Luke
I also had to give a shout out to my colleague, friend and colleague Peter Shea. And Pete kept on reaching out to me, basically saying, Why have you not try this out yet? It is going to be different. It is really going to change things up. And as an educator, I have this type of this red flag radar that whenever somebody says is something is going to revolutionize education and change everything, I'm like, Yeah, okay, sure it's going to do that.
00;20;29;01 - 00;20;48;17
Luke
Because that was supposed to be done already. It was supposed to be that competency based education or flip classroom model or with Microlearning or with virtual reality or whatever other different form of technique. This is going to be the thing that's going to just shake up education from K through 12 and higher ed and everything else of the sort.
00;20;48;27 - 00;21;18;28
Luke
And it never really seems to pan out. Now, don't get me wrong, all of those things have their place in time. They all have their benefits, and I'm not dismissing any of them, but to be able to say that once again, here comes and everything that's going to revolutionize education. Oh, like, yeah, sure it will. But Pete kept on messaging me, kept on encouraging me, and finally he convinced me when he mentioned about how it can draft learning objectives, I was like, Wait, you're telling me that you can draft learning objectives?
00;21;18;28 - 00;21;41;00
Luke
He's like, Yeah, like, all right, well, now I got to try it. Let's see how this goes. Sure enough, go in it. You ask it to create some learning objectives for one of my courses. It didn't do the best of jobs, to be honest with you. It used some of the terminology that we typically say that we never use when drafting learning objectives like with understand, know and learn.
00;21;41;00 - 00;22;07;26
Luke
Those are not measurable, therefore not really useful. And of course it included some of those words. But then I asked it to revise those and not to specifically use those three words even. Sure enough, it made better learning objectives. It's like, that's interesting. Okay, what else can this do? And eventually I started to dabble more and more listening and trying to be able to read from other people what they were doing.
00;22;08;04 - 00;22;34;13
Luke
And then sure enough, it was able to help me with creating different forms of scenarios, revising syllabi, even drafting letters of recommendations and other things like, well, huh, maybe, maybe this could actually do something that really shake things up a bit. So hence with my experimenting, I record it. I threw it up on YouTube for 50 ways to use Chat GPT for educators.
00;22;34;21 - 00;22;53;22
Luke
And sure enough that got quite a bit of buzz going at the time because I had the right place, right time mentality when it came to sharing about that information. And many of you mentioned about how incredible it was and seeing all these different types of effects. And there was also plenty of people who had a healthy amount of skepticism.
00;22;53;28 - 00;23;32;28
Luke
And I don't blame them one bit as far as were thinking that way. And now here we are a year later and now seeing with GPT four, with Google, Bard, with Claude, with DALL-E, with any of the different forms of LLMs and what they're able to do. And it's insane truly, it's insane. And if you're sick of talking about AI or hearing about AI, I do not blame you in any way, shape or form when thinking about everything that higher education is also currently going through, or does anything for else in this matter with us, inside of us and space, we have all of these other problems to be able to consider that we still
00;23;32;28 - 00;23;55;23
Luke
haven't figured out the fundamentals of so many things. And now on top of this, everyone wants to talk about the shiny new flashy thing. So I understand why folks are saying, No, I don't want to talk about AI, I want to stick to this and try to be able to make this side of the house better for whatever you're going to be talking about within the learning experience.
00;23;56;03 - 00;24;17;03
Luke
And I totally get that. But from a for perspective, the technology just keeps on advancing every single time. And I'm just curious to see where this is going to go. Being able to download my own simulation and then to upload that into a platform that was mind blowing because simulations cost a lot of money, they take a lot of time to be able to do.
00;24;17;09 - 00;24;39;22
Luke
And what you're saying to me is that for a few hours I can try to be able to draft something up and have it be what I'm looking for. Well, yeah, that that's game changing if we're talking about what's going to be revolutionary to create my own simulation, to create my own artwork, to help me out with streamlining processes on a daily basis, then yeah, I would say that's impactful.
00;24;40;01 - 00;25;08;01
Luke
So I'm pretty curious of as far as for where this is going to go, I'm sure there's going to be other negative aspects that are going to be coming about, like with the original we're talking about from plagiarism issues to thinking about the fake citation problems like those are always going to be there. I'm sure it's something new is going to pop up in regards to data and privacy and sensitivity, and I'm sure we're going to have another big aha kind of moment of like, Oh, now what do we do?
00;25;08;01 - 00;25;28;00
Luke
Kind of a thing? But at least I am hopeful that for humanity we can figure it out as far as for getting around that problem, solving that problem, and then moving on and trying to be able to keep in mind that AI is a tool. It is a Kickstarter for ideas. It's not going to replace you. It's not smart enough.
00;25;28;00 - 00;25;47;10
Luke
It's not trying to be able to go in that direction. And and for many of the decision makers out there for organizations, do you really think that they are trying to be able to use AI to replace something when they have a hard time with adapting and using different forms of technology? And now we're trying to teach them about prompt engineering.
00;25;47;10 - 00;26;08;21
Luke
I mean, like, no, it's not it's not that realistic to be able to think about. So I'm not nervous and not scared about anything like this. But we should, as educators, as instructional designers, we should be aware about technology and what is coming down the pike. And in 2024, maybe there will be something new from Google. Amazon uh, I don’t know
00;26;08;21 - 00;26;36;01
Luke
No, I know what's going to be the next big thing, but I am very curious to see where this is going to go in the last event of 2023. I'm going to try to call it an event, I guess is one. One of the ways of being able to describe it was the publication of a massive amount of new books and literature around designing, learning experiences and instructional design as a whole.
00;26;36;11 - 00;27;02;12
Luke
There are a number of books that if you were to go into Google Instructional Design books right now, you're going to see the usual top books from Julie Dirksen, from Cammy Bean, and from a number of other different forms of authors. And then all of a sudden we were blessed with the fact that all of this new publication and all these new pieces of literature came about and I don't have enough time to read all these things.
00;27;02;12 - 00;27;20;15
Luke
I'm kind of kind of struggling here. I have a massive reading list right now, all the new books, and it feels like there's a new one that's coming out every single month. But I want to be able to get my hands on it, to read more, to learn more. And this is something that I just think is so wonderful to be able to see for our field and to advance from a number of different ways.
00;27;20;24 - 00;27;45;27
Luke
So let's think about this for a second. What were some of the books? Well, I mentioned about Kami being the accidental instructional designer, a version to just came out not too long ago from Julie Dirksen, who literally wrote the Bible of Instructional Design, created a new book called Talk to the Elephant Design Learning for Behavioral Change that already has a number of a ton of positive reviews and ratings online.
00;27;46;05 - 00;28;05;19
Luke
And it also wasn't just within the instructional design space, also within the learning science side of the house as well. One of the most popular books out there, but I can think of is called How Learning Works. In a new edition of that just came out to Back In Has I Say Just came out? No, it was like March of 2023.
00;28;05;25 - 00;28;41;14
Luke
Nevertheless, still within 2023 and of course the thing that I just wrapped up was my new e-book. It is specifically an e-book that was called So You Want to Become an instructional designer. And now that thing is finally out there as well. To all the other books I mentioned about way better than that book that I just wrote, but trying to be able to put that all together to help you out every step along the way about how to actually become an instructional designer with every single embedded type of resource that I could provide for you, as well as talking about from theory and practical tips and Steps as well, is now inside of that
00;28;41;14 - 00;29;04;11
Luke
e-book, and I'll put a link inside of a show notes as well to be able to find all of these books. But it was a huge year of publishing more information and trying to be able to spread the good word about instructional design. And that, folks, those were the top five moments that I could think about as far as you're making an impact within the instructional design space, I hope that didn't sound too egotistical now, but I'm thinking about that.
00;29;04;11 - 00;29;41;26
Luke
I've shared a lot about me. But anyway, I'm an open book I want to be able to share more with you about this journey and what everything has really come through and gone through as far as from a content perspective, a content creation or perspective. And obviously all the things that you've have been either experiencing with me from going through of all these different forms or products or services, or just hanging out with me here inside of the podcast space or on YouTube or whatever else, it has once again just been so awesome to be able to collaborate and to share and to learn from all of you from 2023 and soon to be 2024.
00;29;41;29 - 00;30;00;09
Luke
But folks, that is really all I have for you. You can find anything on over inside of the show notes that I talked about today or head on over to Dr. Luke Hobson dot com and of course subscribe if you haven't already to this show to the YouTube channel and to everything else that I have going on as well.
00;30;00;18 - 00;30;19;09
Luke
But hey, I'll see you in 2024. I still can't believe I'm saying that soon to be. See you inside at 2024. And of course, as always, stay nerdy out there and I'll talk to you next time.
