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Our Response to COVID-19

covid Apr 09, 2020

In these unpredictable and rapidly changing times, we at IDOL courses are reaching out to let you know that we are open for business.  

 

How we are handling COVID-19 with our clients

We understand right now that people may need to shift from sales to services and adapt to new ways of thinking outside the box.  Your needs as a company and your training methods may need to be revamped in order to keep up with the new climate we find ourselves currently in. Whether your team needs to be trained on new remote procedures, taking on new roles as the focus of your company changes, or implementing new communication standards to your customers, IDOL courses is here and ready to help you. We are still working to make sure we can optimize your training and help you to grow during this time.
 

What we are doing for our staff during COVID-19

Early on, we shifted all of our teams to a virtual space, ensuring the safety of our team members.  Continued...
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Back Pocket Instructional Design & Online Learning Experience You Can Count On!

You have made a choice and  have done all the research for your next career move.

Instructional Design, Yes it is; So, Instructional design is your next dream career.

You have the transferable skills, creativity, passion, all that it would take to become an amazing Instructional Designer, and then, you stumble on this question - Do you have any Instructional Design experience?

What you thought was a cakewalk for you, now turns out to be a frustrating situation.

How would you handle this situation, how would you let your passion not die because of this one question?

Of course you can start volunteering for – e-learning for kids, Designers for learning, Learn appeal, etc. But what else can you do?

The answer is planning and following a step-by-step approach.

Without further ado, let’s see the steps that will help you bring closer to your dream career-

  1.   Understand the job responsibilities of an Instructional Designer

As per an infographic posted on the ATD ...

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Staying Connected and Positive During Shelter-In-Place Orders

Staying Connected and Positive During Shelter-In-Place Orders

All of us at IDOL Courses, like many of you across the learning and development world, have seen the things we tackle daily become part of the national and international dialogue around the many shifts taking place in response to COVID19 - shifting learning from in-person to online, figuring out and implementing technology quickly, wearing many hats (from designer, to developer, to deployment support, and everything in between). And as shelter-in-place orders are more common than not across North America and Europe, in major cities in Asia and Africa, it feels like the whole world is attempting to practice social distancing (or at least they should be). If you are fortunate and privileged enough to not be on the front lines of this unprecedented crisis or directly impacted by the over 940,000 cases that have been identified at the time this was written, if you have some space to breathe and or feel like you have extra...

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Become an IDOL 19: ADDIE vs HPT vs Agile with Alexander Salas


 

Published: March 27, 2020

Episode: 19

Guest: Alexander SalasDigital Learning Consultant

In this episode, I’ll be chatting with Alexander Salas. Alex is an eLearning freelancer and the owner of eLearning Launch. He shares the differences and history of ADDIE, HPT, and Agile. He also gives recommendations for which methodology to use and when.

 

If you are a new listener to Become an IDOL, we would love to hear from you.  Please visit our Contact Page and let us know how we can help you today!

In this episode we discuss:

  • ADDIE
  • Human Performance Technology
  • Agile

 

Subscribe & Review in iTunes

Are you subscribed to my podcast? If you’re not, I want to encourage you to do that today. I don’t want you to miss an episode. I'll be publishing a new episode every two weeks and if you’re not subscribed there’s a good chance you’ll miss out on those. Click here to subscribe in iTunes!

Now if you’re...

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The Brave New World of Going Remote

Let’s face it. The world we were living in four weeks ago has changed. The COVID-19 virus is wreaking havoc not only on the health care systems of the world and has altered our day-to-day interactions. Schools are suddenly closed, and jobs that may have been resisting the idea of remote work have gone full-court press transitioning all employers remote because the show must go on. Schools are transitioning to online education not to have children fall behind. Now a new challenge is transitioning to remote work and having your children home with the expectation of physical/social distancing. 

I wear several hats. I am a practicing respiratory therapist who is an essential employee like always (more so even now), an online educator, and an instructional designer. I doubt many in the world will look at this situation the same as I do just because of my mashup of professional roles and educational degrees.

 Telehealth has been a hot topic in health care for a while...

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Changing Perspectives: Creative Detours

 I’m tired. I crawl home from my 8 to 5 hour day, eat a brief dinner, and then open my laptop to work on my portfolio, LinkedIn profile, or resume for the final hours of the evening. The constant revision and construction of a sample with an optimistic hope that it would satisfy a recruiter or potential employer. Weeks go by with the occasional interest that leads nowhere. Eventually, the tiredness leads to exhaustion before the creativity runs dry leaving a blank screen and the looming question: “Should I tap out?”

While I am sure and hope I am not the only one who feels this way, I also know persistence is needed for success. However, I feel that I have hit a roadblock. Initially, I felt roadblocks were negative and something I needed to overcome. Then, I shifted my perspective: Roadblocks force us to detour and lead us down a new path. When finding a solution in the corporate world, these detours lead to innovation. But, where does one find inspiration...

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How I learned to love feedback and how you can, too.

 I used to hate getting feedback. Performance reviews, observations, and peer work sessions in professional learning communities all made my stomach turn. I’m not perfect and I’m aware of it; being told about my imperfections felt just awful. But then I learned to look at feedback differently - I learned what feedback is and isn’t, I learned when it has value and when it doesn’t, and I learned how to use feedback to my advantage, to propel myself forward towards my goals; I learned to love getting feedback. I’ve had a lot of mentors in my many professional lives and I’ve had even more supervisors and managers, but the majority of those who gave me important feedback throughout my professional endeavors didn’t even consider how I felt about their feedback and if it was helpful. So, once I figured that out for myself, I have become a bit of a feedback evangelist. The following is my guide for learning to love feedback.

The first step...

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I Landed My First Corporate Instructional Designer Role! Now What?

 For months, I’ve been preparing to be a Corporate Instructional Designer. I signed up for the IDOL Academy so I would be able to fill in the gaps and to receive an inside scoop on what it truly takes to be an Instructional Designer.

After a few phone interviews with recruiters, I finally received an invitation to have an in-person interview. Immediately, I went from excitement to shock. Well, my thoughts were, “How am I going to convince the interview panel that my previous teaching experience is transferable? How do I NOT talk about my teaching experience? Will my instructional design experience in the school district even matter? I placed my fears aside and sent Dr. Robin Sargent an email, informing her that I had an upcoming interview. She reminded me to use the resources in the IDOL Academy and provided me with a few interview questions to ask.

During the interview, I was able to speak confidently about how my teaching experience, graduate and specialist...

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Learn from my WordPress Mistake

Growing up, I was raised with the premise a mistake is only a mistake if you do not learn something from it. Oh boy, did I learn a lesson when it came to starting my WordPress website for my business. <<Poof>> $300 gone because I didn’t realize the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org (more on that in a bit).

Whether you are starting a business or building your first portfolio there are many options out there where it comes to website and hosting services. You can choose a plug and play website builder such as Wix, Weebly, or take your pick of the countless options. When I was in my Master’s program at Full Sail University, I created an Adobe Portfolio as part of my program because it is included in the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Still, I choose not to use this in the long run.  It really is about personal preference and your goals.

Here are some reasons I recommend WordPress over a website builder, but this in no way saying using a...

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Get Your Story Straight with Storyboarding

 GET YOUR STORY STRAIGHT with storyboarding. No matter which instructional design model you choose almost all of them have some version of storyboarding as part of the design phase. This article will address 4 common questions that have arisen during discussions with others in the Instructional Design (ID) field about storyboarding:
  1. What is storyboarding?
  2. Is storyboarding really that important?
  3. Is it OK to skip this step?
  4. What needs to be included in my storyboard?

After you have conducted a thorough analysis of “all the things,” you can begin to brainstorm how to present the material to the learners in the best possible way. Once you have decided on the best modality for instruction and how you want the training to go, you need to present your ideas to your stakeholders, clients, and boss. That is where storyboarding comes into play. 

  • WHAT IS STORYBOARDING? Storyboarding is a way to organize your thoughts and ideas for delivering instruction. You will...
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