Instructional Design Skills

This is post #3 in a series about how to become an instructional designer. Links to the rest of the series can be found at the end of this post.

In my experience, most instructional designers were originally teachers or trainers who changed careers (just like I did). Many of the skills overlap between these fields, so it can be a pretty easy transition. However, just like every other field, instructional design has its own set of jargon and specialized knowledge.

If you’re considering moving into instructional design, I think one of the best things to do is just to start reading about it. Fortunately, many free resources are available online.

• George Siemens wrote a short overview of instructional design in e-learning with a list of instructional design models. This is a good place to start.
• Don Clark has a great introduction to Instructional Systems Design (ISD) and ADDIE, the most common instructional design model. This is actually the site I used when I was first trying to move into instructional design.
• Over 1000 sites have been tagged “instructionaldesign” on del.icio.us.

Of course, blogs by instructional designers can be a big resource as well. This is something I have only really started to take advantage of myself in the past 6 months or so, but it does really help to hear what other people in the field are discussing. However, most of my feed subscriptions are from educators or trainers rather than actual instructional designers. Here’s a couple to get you started. Check out my blogroll and my Google Shared items (under “What I’m Reading”) for more related topics.

• Big Dog, Little Dog (Don Clark)
  Weekly collection of links with notes
• Design for Learning (Natalie Kilkenny)
  I am fortunate to work with Natalie. This is one of the few blogs I really read regularly that is actually written by an instructional designer.
• Designed to Inspire (Jennifer Maddrell)
  A “professional student” getting her masters in instructional design, also involved in the EdTechTalk webcasts. Besides, she’s a cheesehead from Wisconsin like me.
• eLearning Technology (Tony Karrer)
  Tony is not an instructional designer, but he writes about developing e-learning and does talk about instructional design.

After looking through my list of subscriptions, I realized that I don’t actually have that many purely instructional design blogs. If you have some suggestions, please add them in the comments!

Update 2/26/08: Since I wrote this, I’ve gotten to know several other instructional designers through their blogs. Here’s a few more suggestions:

• Learning Visions (Cammy Bean)
  Cammy’s an instructional design manager and reflective practitioner with a lot of great thoughts.
• In The Middle of the Curve (Wendy Wickham)
  Wendy does everything from the design to the face-to-face training, and I’ve learned a lot from reading her posts.
• Making Change (Cathy Moore)
  Cathy is a terrific writer with great ideas for making instructional design engaging.

Other Posts in this Series

1. What Does an Instructional Designer Do?
2. Getting Into Instructional Design
3. Instructional Design Skills (current post)
4. Technology Skills
5. Professional Organizations and Career Options
6. Is instructional design the right career?

Update: Read all my posts about Instructional Design Careers here.

Technorati Tags: instructionaldesign, e-learning

Free Subscription

If you enjoyed this post, consider a free subscription so you can receive automatic updates. Don’t worry, I hate spam as much as you do, so I’ll never share your email address with anyone.

Subscribe by RSS feed

Subscribe by Email

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Daily Bookmarks 01/30/2007
• Top 10 Posts of 2007 « Writers Gateway
• Performance Report till August 2007
• Not Bad……