Show Up for Yourself: Quiet Quitting and Career Transition
I already identified as a quiet quitter. When I took a break from IDOL, was I also quitting on myself?
When I started the IDOL journey, I thought “I’ve got so many transferable skills. I’m already qualified for many of these jobs!” I dutifully created a website, crafted an ID resume, and refreshed my LinkedIn profile. I knew I faced hard work to upskill and learn about the ID field, but I had time to invest and a big IDOL goal that seemed reasonable to me. But five months later, no job offers. Not even a single interview! “What gives?” I wondered. I already identified as a quiet quitter from my day job - that’s why I became an IDOL! Was I now also quitting on my career transition?
Sometime in 2019, my long-time enthusiasm for teaching began wearing thin. Twenty years of teaching freshman composition will do that to you, I reasoned. So I jumped into innovative teaching practices in an effort to continue learning and challenge...
Career Changers: Showcase Projects on Your Resume
As a career changer, it can be difficult to showcase your instructional design (ID) skills when you haven’t had a chance to use them full-time. Standard resume advice is to write accomplishment statements for your work history. There is value in including transferable skills alongside accomplishments when they relate to your desired role. If you have a strong employment section but are not getting traction in your job search, strengthen your resume by adding a project section.
As a career coach for technical boot camps, I became familiar with project sections. I encouraged my students to showcase their best projects near the top of their resumes, even though they included the same information in their portfolios and GitHub pages. Students who showcased two to three of their best projects throughout their materials would gain traction in their job search. When they made it to the first recruiter call, we knew their resume was working.
When it came time for...
The Need for Trauma-informed Instructional Design
Shouldn’t it be the adult learners’ responsibility to handle their mental health needs so they can access learning? Why should an ID even take mental health into consideration? Alumni, Mandy Brown, shares her answer.
The Need for Trauma-informed Instructional Design
When you design for learners, how often do you consider burnout? How often do you consider trauma? What about your learners’ survival responses? These are all questions I had to consider on a daily basis when I worked for a restorative justice center.
I tend to use “trauma,” “burnout,” and the “survival response” interchangeably when I speak with mentees at IDOL courses Academy. And while there is a Venn diagram of the three, some quick definitions might help.
The survival response (also called the stress response) is that deeply rooted instinct when one responds to danger, the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses. We...
An Idea Generation Activity for Portfolio Topics
If you’re like some of my mentees, you can’t seem to get out of the teacher's perspective. And I get it. When you’re teaching and creating portfolio items, the desire to kill two birds with one stone is strong.
But you don’t have to throw out your academic expertise to build something for your portfolio. You just have to shift your perspective a little. After all, a science teacher has a lab safety lesson every year. I’m willing to bet a corporate lab has safety compliance training with similar content.
Three Questions to Ask
Remember, instructional design solves problems with learning. So whatever topic you choose, make sure you can provide specific...
Lessons about Visual Design that I Neglected to Follow
As a freelance artist who has studied and produced art for years, I thought visual design would come naturally to me and yet it was the one thing I neglected in instructional design. In fact, when it came to visual design in the courses I created, I failed, miserably. The reason is simple. I didn’t pay attention to it. I was solely focused on instructional design principles, content, and assessments. I am embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even realize that I was neglecting something so important until someone pointed it out to me. I mean who neglects CRAP (contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity) and doesn’t even know it?! Surely not me… I joke.
I decided that I was going to have to go back to my roots. As an artist, when I got stuck, I turned to the works of artists I admired such as Andy Warhol, David Hockney, Francisco Clemente and Elizabeth Murray. Their work inspired me and gave me new ideas. This time, I turned to magazines and...
Taking ADDIE to the Church the Business Side
“Wait, Churches use Instructional Design? But how?”
I remember when I 1st begin to volunteer with the church, I walked in thinking the office staff would be at their desk with Bibles open talking theology and praying for people when they called. I remember thinking the pastor and board members would be in a room voting on new leadership and responsibilities. Boy was I wrong! So here is a little breakdown of how the local church uses the ADDIE process to accomplish its “business” goals?
ANALYSIS
In my 1st week, the staff was meeting about the 1st community job fair the church was hosting. Because of the magnitude of the project, it was important to have all our ducks in a row, from the participants to the employees, to the volunteers…everyone needed to know what their responsibilities were. So in a planning room, with a whiteboard of information about who is in the community (leaner analysis), and the goal of the event as it...
Resumes: Defining and Refining with Feedback
I have hundreds of resumes that I’ve written, overhauled, and tailored over the years. So, revising my resume for a career shift isn’t entirely new to me. However, this time I’ve been able to do it with the support of a community. That has been a game-changer.
I’m a scrappy person (“resourceful,” as Dr. Robin exclaimed) who’s used to sifting through the internet in order to gather reputable sources of information and strong exemplars to emulate and use as inspiration. Thankfully, the learning and development community is full of people like me, and many of them embrace a cooperative, give-and-receive ethos. So, I didn’t have to rely solely on my scrappiness for my latest resume overhaul.
First, I went through the lessons and resume-related resources within the IDOL courses Academy. Then I took that draft to my peers in the Academy. Having founded an accountability group, consistently contributed to it, and built...
Start now! 3 Ways to Overcome Perfectionism
Starting something new is scary. When I start something new, I’m afraid I’ll fail. Worse, I’m afraid people will know I failed. So why bother? Some don’t. Some let their fear take control and prevent them from taking action. But for those of us who persist, we have to let go of perfectionism to take the first step.
There’s a misconception that recovering perfectionists like myself have, that the first draft we create must come out perfectly. Of course we know that’s not the case. My favorite Simpsons writer, John Swartzwelder, said he wrote “crap jokes” for his quick first drafts, all 59 of them! Every finished project started somewhere messy: TV, movies, books, apps, and yes, elearning courses.
The IDOL courses Academy Do It Messy challenge is built on taking action: Create an asset, receive feedback, implement feedback, and repeat the cycle until there’s a polished result. This was exactly what I...
Reading the Last Page of the Book First
IDOL courses Academy has a nonlinear curriculum, which means that the steps and speed of learning are up to the learner. The nonlinear curriculum works well with adult learners who usually take responsibility for their learning and like to be involved in their learning process. It also goes deeper than just that. If adults own their own learning, their learning will be more effective.
Learning from a nonlinear curriculum can be scary for those of us used to learning from a linear one. In a linear curriculum, there are strict steps and timing for each of the learning phases. You can’t skip steps without losing content. You could try, but the chances are high you’d have to go back and complete the missing part...
