Background

When I was growing up, I wanted to be... well... everything! Police officer, fireman, doctor, writer, artist, teacher - you name it, I wanted to do it. In college, I was studying computers, math, and physics, but I was also writing short stories and poems. I shifted over to organizational development, and then migrated into training. By the mid 1980's, I'd never even heard of the job "instructional designer," but found myself working as one.

The Planets Align

My company won a project programming interactive videodisc - we had the brand new Matrox equipment and a pressed disc; we just had to program it. "Anyone know how to program a videodisc?" I took the manual home and came in early the next morning and started programming. Writing... programming... graphics... training... it had all come together in an epiphany. By following each of my independent interests, I had stumbled into a field where they all came together.

Twenty Something Years Later

Now it's twenty-something years later and I still love this field. I don't see myself doing anything else for quite some time.

Cognitive

Taking a big pile of crazy rambling content and bringing order from the chaos is my idea of a good time. Converting pages of prose into a few images, tables, and bulleted lists is fun for me (I love Information Mapping™!). Structuring content in alignment with a target schema is strongly in alignment with the cognitivist school of learning, and I have strong ties to this school.

Constructivism

I believe the best way to teach a job that requires problem solving or physical tasks is to provide hands-on activities (simulations, on-the-job training, problem-based learning, project-based learning, case study, etc.). I love designing activities that scaffold and build over time to match real world situations the learner will later encounter. This constructivist approach resonates with my understanding of how people learn.

Cognitive Constructivist

So I combine the two schools to create "cognitive constructivism." I design my learning to guide the learner through the construction of their schema through engaging and active learning. I leverage simulations and social, problem-based learning strategies to help this constructivist process. All my materials provided as classroom and on-the-job support (e.g., Knowledge Management assets, job aids, learner guides) are selected, organized, and structured according to the cognitivist approach.

Art

Good instruction should look like it's good instruction. From the learner's first encounter with the material, there should be a connection... an engagement. This is art. But art alone will result in great looking materials that don't teach.

Science

Good instruction should be built on sound instructional principles and learning theory. They should also be based on solid root cause and needs analyses. This is science. But science alone will result in well thought out materials the learner never engages with, ultimately leading to failure.

Where Art & Science Meet

I've seen well-versed designers melt down trying to build a course that applied multiple overlapping and conflicting theories. Simply putting together a simple objectives page could send a literalist over the edge (three component? four component? informal text? should I even state my objectives?). Combining art with science, the designer can understand the rules and know when, why, and how to break them.

The First Time Around...

After completing my B.A., I stayed on at University of Maryland to work on a Masters in Organizational Development & Training. Through a series of events, I never did graduate - that has haunted me ever since. I recognize the value of that course of study, but also realize how outdated the information from that program now is (e.g., I did a presentation on leveraging computers in the classroom to track learner performance, deliver randomized questions from a set of question pools, and generate printed transparencies for overhead projectors - that was cutting edge back in the 1980s).

Learnings in the New Program

Since joining the Information and Learning Technologies program at University of Colorado - Denver, I've learned how several new technologies are being leveraged in learning. These have included Web 2.0 tools, social strategies, rapid video development, open educational resources, and different course management strategies & tools.

Danger, Young Will Robinson - DANGER!

"The tool is not the strategy." Software and hardware platforms come and go, but good design will always be good design - keep your focus on solving performance problems and creating engaging & effective training, and the rest will fall into place.

Flash Will Eventually Die

The majority of today's interactive online instruction includes Flash elements - Flash is currently king. Mainstream tools like Captivate and Articulate rely entirely on Flash for all their online interactivity. So why would I say Flash will die? Because, as Apple points out, Flash is low-performance, insecure, and drains battery life of mobile devices. Flash is not enabled on Apple's iPhone or iPad platform, and that's two nails in the coffin for Adobe's Flash tool. What can replace it? A combination of HTML5 (supporting direct video playback and limited interactivity through the browser without requiring plug-ins) and tools such as Silverlight and Java will replace the majority of what Flash can do today without incurring the security risks.

Beyond Web 2.0

Beyond the social networking of Web 2.0, the next round (Web 3.0 - surprise!) will include more learning and pattern recognition - your devices will learn your interests based on your frequented locations, search histories, and email behaviors. More relevant content will be pushed to you (e.g., "oh, I noticed you're interested in open educational resources - well, here's a link to Wikiversity!" or "You placed a bid on an antique map of Colorado in eBay last week - did you know you're only a block away from a used book dealer who also sells antique maps?"), and your mobile devices will become hand-held virtual universities.

Mobile, Mobile, Mobile

iPhone, Droid, iPad, Kindle... seriously, need I say more?

Corporate Challenge - How Ya Gonna Keep 'em Down on the Farm...

We were once warned that "Gen-Xers" wouldn't respond to our primitive computer-based training - they were playing Doom and Myst at home, and wouldn't have the attention span to remain engaged in hour-long text and graphic online lessons. Well, Generation Z (a.k.a., the Internet Generation or Digital Natives) will present even greater challenges to corporations, who will have to find ways to engage the texting multitaskers on a standard development budget and relatively slow and congested corporate networks (many corporate IT departments actually forbid streaming audio and video over the network as it impacts "production" systems).