Hi! I’m Learning Experience Design, but you can call me LxD for short. A lot of people ask me where I’m from because I’m kind of the new kid on the block. Some people even have the nerve to ask if I’m just a teacher dressed in sheep’s clothing. To which I say: yes! I’m a teacher, a graphic designer, an information architect, a data analyst, an interface ninja, and more! That’s just the upper fold of my Tinder profile.

But anyway, I get it. There are so many acronyms floating around LinkedIn nowadays that it’s starting to look a lot like alphabet soup. So, I guess the best way to tell you about who I am - or in other words, “what LxD is” - is to tell you the story of how my parents met.

My mom (ID) grew up in a family of proud third-generation instructional designers. All were summa cum laude graduates of the IDOL courses Academy. My mom was raised on a steady diet of educational pedagogy, neuroscience, and...

When I first came across the title “Instructional Designer” while looking for alternative career options, I was just as confused as anybody would be hearing about our job for the first time. I remember asking questions like: What does an Instructional Designer do? Why is it called Instructional Design? Wouldn’t a title such as Learning Experience Designer or Training Content Developer suit them better? How are their skill sets different from curriculum developers like teachers’? etc.

Then, the more I learnt about the different roles of Instructional Designers, and the more job interviews I had, ironically, the less clarity I had over the companies’ expectations of us. 

The truth is that the role of an Instructional Designer varies from company to company. What a person hired with the title “Instructional Designer” ends up doing depends on a range of factors such as the company’s training portfolio, the profile...

Two months later, I didn’t only fill that gaping hole about HTML, but I was copying CSS and Javascript codes to modify things on my website and add special functions to my Storyboard course. 

In two short, but very busy months, I built two websites with Google Sites, created videos with Powtoon, Camtasia, Biteable, and Vyond and I developed interactive courses with Genial.ly, Rise, and Storyline. None of which I had known much about before. I had not even heard of Canva, Visme, or Snagit either, yet I was now effortlessly designing images for my assets.

I am not here to boast. My point is that if I could do that, anyone can and I am happy to share some tips.

FIND SOME TIME

I think the best way to learn any tech is to find...

This was me. And this could be you. But you’ll get there!

Making a career change can be overwhelming. Thinking about all the new things you will need to learn in order to get a job can produce a lot of anxiety and imposter syndrome. 

When I first decided to change careers from a special education teacher to an Instructional Designer, I was excited to learn more. Then it hit me. The more I learned, the more I got overwhelmed with all of the tools, theories, and practices I needed to know to be successful and confident. I learned several things along the way to help calm down that overwhelm to focus on my goals and learning. Here are my tips:

1. Analyze job descriptions - There are so many tools out there, and when I first joined the IDOL courses Academy and...

Virtual Instructor-led Training

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend a Digital Encounter from the Central Florida ATD Chapter with special guest Jo Cook and Mike Cook.  Jo and Mike are a brother and sister team from the United Kingdom who are experts in the virtual classroom and webinar facilitation.

 Jo was a dynamic speaker who showed in practice how to facilitate...

The Show is the preceding event to The Learning Conference, which is happening online from August 3^rd to 5^th 2020.  They have got a fantastic lineup of speakers. If you have the time, you should join in the...

1. Get familiar with the major theories of how people learn.

Before you can apply a theory, you need to understand it. In most learning design graduate programs you’ll get to deep dive into learning theories like behaviorism, cognitivism, constructivism and others, but you don’t have to join a graduate program to do this. IDOL courses Academy includes bite-sized modules on the major theories you’ll need to know as a learning designer. A good test for whether you’re familiar with a learning theory is whether you can describe it simply, with the kind of language you might use when chatting with a...