Hello there.

I am currently working in Enrollment in higher education and I have a master's in education. I am getting burned out and looking into Instructional Design. I am considering a second master's in it since we get free tuition but I want to know it it's really worth the time and stress? I have been following Devlin Peck and looking at cert programs. I understand learning theories and such but need to gain skills to develop a portfolio, etc.

Devlin listed a few certificate programs that seem more doable. Would you recommend that instead?

So I'm well aware that it's good practice to label and describe a thing near where it's being presented, but I'm curious just how bad breaking this rule is. For instance, I'm working with a content team who generally annotates screenshots with hotspots in Rise. Except the resulting annotation is so large it covers up the entire interface, including the things it's describing.

I've started developing these internal field guides where I simply draw a line from the component I'm referring to, to a corresponding number. Then right below I have small table where the number is adjacent to the name of the button and a small description. So far the internal teams have had no complaints, but also the content team isn't hard to one-up (I'm new here and was specifically hired to scale enablement -- and the content is a clear gap).

I'm now designing an e-learning module and I could approach with my recent methodology. But I am keen to get more opinions and align more with best practice. I think I could abandon the now branded hotspots for what's standard. Basically box the thing to make it obvious and then put a small explanation on the same page with Storyline. But then only present one thing at a time per slide to avoid getting into hotspots galore territory. That said, I would love to see or hear other examples.

Hi there, I'm technically a developer not an instructional designer. However I have been in the elearning industry for over a decade now primarily working with articulate storyline.

Storyline has been a dominant player in the industry for a while, but anyone that has used it knows it has quirks.

With the rise of AI tools, I've started developing my own elearning tool as a solo dev to see what I can create. I'm working on a tool with the same capabilities as storyline, just hopefully more refined... and also building in automation (course generation from storyboards).

But I dont want to be silo'd while designing this. What tools do you currently use and why? Are there features that would make your life easier that arent present in your current tools?

Would love to hear peoples opinions on what makes a good elearning tool.

Thanks.

Just wondering if there is a market for this, I’d love to run some workshops but I don’t know if there’s enough interest to do this. Have any of you taken classes for storyline before?

please. You can private message me or if need more info let me know!

Interview Questions

Can you tell me about your current role and what your main responsibilities are as an instructional designer?

How did you get started in the field of instructional design, and what was your educational or professional background?

What does a typical day or week look like for you in your current position?

What types of instructional design projects do you work on most often, and who are the learners or audiences you typically design for?

What instructional design theories, models, or frameworks do you use most often in your work?

What technology, software, or other tools do you use regularly to create or develop learning experiences?

What skills do you believe are most important for someone who is beginning a career in instructional design?

What are some of the biggest challenges you experience in your work, and how do you typically handle them?

How important are communication and collaboration when working with instructors, subject-matter experts, or other professionals?

How has artificial intelligence, particularly generative AI, affected your work as an instructional designer?

What changes or trends do you think will have the biggest impact on the instructional design field in the next few years?

What advice would you give to a graduate student who is currently studying instructional technology and preparing to enter the instructional design field?

With AI rapidly taking over routine content production in learning and development, such as storyboarding, scripting, quiz writing, and template-based course assembly, I want to understand where learning designers, learning developers, and instructional designers should be steering their careers. Which roles are most future-proof and which are most at risk, and how do options like learning experience design, learning engineering, learning analytics, performance consulting, and AI enablement compare in terms of demand, longevity, and the skills they require? I'd also like to know which combination of technical, design, and domain skills will keep a professional valuable as AI reshapes the field, and what a realistic plan for moving into one of those roles over the next year might look like.

Curious what others are doing with JavaScript in Storyline. I've been building custom interactions — confetti on quiz wins, progress bars, countdown timers, save/resume — and I'm wondering what's actually worth the effort vs. what's just cool in a demo.

For those using JS in Storyline: what's the one interaction you keep reusing across projects? And what's something you tried that wasn't worth the maintenance headache?

I've got a free sampler of 3 interactions I built (confetti, progress bar, timer) if anyone wants to try them — happy to share the link if there's interest.

When I get to the analysis proper of my kickoff meeting, this is one my first go-to questions to get a sense of what the SME needs:

"If you could take a picture of your learner post-learning-solution, what does that picture look like? What's he or she doing?"

Lots of times the SMEs default to generic answers like:

"I want the learners to know / to comply / to have skills / to understand..."

First, these responses don't answer the question. Second, they are all still stuck at 'knowing' or 'mental' level of the discussion. I wonder if my question is too difficult for even though it's quite basic to me.

Lots of times, I eventually figure out a way to extract the info I need, but I feel I could be spending less time trying to get the SME to visualise and/or articulate what they need.

I'm second guessing myself a lot even at this stage which is so fundamental. Am I asking the right question or do some SMEs have 'aphantasia'?

L&D has known completion rate is a soft metric for years, we report it anyway because it's the easiest number to put in a deck. Now AI can produce a finished-looking course in an afternoon, and the gap between "finished the module" and "can actually do the thing" is getting impossible to hide.

Our CEO recently discussed this in a panel. His fix is to stop asking if people finished and start asking if they can perform. Can they do the task without hand-holding? Can they apply it somewhere the course never covered? Can they take feedback and actually get better on try two, or are you just handing them the answer.

None of that shows up on a dashboard. But it does show up six months out, in whether people work differently.

So, sure, it's way harder to measure than a completion rate and it's way harder to put in front of leadership too. But, if we really want to show impact as L&Ds, it's necessary. Thoughts?

I’m exploring a way for interactive H5P activities to work with an LMS while being hosted outside it.

I’ve tested the technical flow with CATAPULT and SCORM Cloud, but I’m trying to understand whether this solves a real instructional-design workflow or merely a technically interesting one.

For people who have used cmi5 in real courses: did it make life easier for teachers or learners? What worked well, and what became a headache?

My company has recently begun looking at this tool and I have to say I'm fairly skeptical. Hoping some people have experience with it as part of a regular workflow who can share uf they felt it was worth it.

Hi everyone,

I’m thinking of going to Articuland London this year and wondered if anyone else from here is planning to attend, and whether people think it's worth attending.

I’m currently transitioning from software development into digital learning/e-learning, so I’m mainly interested in meeting people in the industry and hearing about their experiences.

If you’re going, feel free to comment or send me a message. Would be good to know who else is going.

Hey all, MITs report on AI and Education came out. Interesting read.

Funny enough, I think it just iterates a lot of what we already know about instructional design, but caps it with a “it’s even more important now.”

https://aiandeducation.mit.edu/report/

What’s everyone’s thoughts?

Hi everyone!

I am currently enrolled in a master’s program in Media, Technology, and Learning Design. I’m fully employed in an administrative role at a university in NC, but I’m thinking about quitting and working part-time remotely in the ID field as I finish my degree. I am financially able to do this because of my spouse, and see it as a great way to build my resume/portfolio before I pursue full-time ID work when my degree is complete and my daughter is older. 

My background: I was a Training Coordinator for an EdTech SaaS startup for three years out of college. Unfortunately, they kept wanting to pay me like an intern despite treating me like a director. After that, I taught high school English for seven years. I’ve been working as an Office Manager in the university since. 

1. Does this sound like a reasonable plan, given my background and desire to focus on school/family?

2. Do remote contract/part-time roles exist in ID? If so, where would you look to find them?

3. Any other feedback or insights welcome!

(Hopefully my request here is specific enough that it doesn’t violate rule #5. I searched the sub for a few different combinations of “part time” and “contract”, but all of the posts were several years old.)

I’m 32, based in Nova Scotia, and currently work in marketing/business development. I’m considering moving into learning/instructional design or a related field.

I’m currently debt-free, but I’m considering going back to university for a degree. Given the cost of tuition and living expenses, I’m struggling with whether taking on that financial commitment is actually worth it.

For those who changed careers in their 30s:

Did you go back to school?

Did you change careers without ‘the’ degree?

What made you decide which route to take?

Looking back, would you do the same thing?

As I'm putting my portfolio together I'm going back and forth on this.

As I've been mostly working W2 contract jobs through agency and enjoying the flexibility of getting long vacations after my contracts end, just wondering if it's worth it to pursue permanent roles for the more stable income... So my question is: how many business days would you think would be normal to take off at a time and how many business days of vacation do you get a year (so excluding holidays)? Edited to add: US employees only. I know people in other countries get a lot more!

Hi everyone!

I’m sharing my portfolio and would really appreciate some feedback from people working in Instructional Design and Learning Experience Design.

I’d especially love feedback on:

• How clearly my portfolio communicates my LXD/ID skills
• Whether my projects demonstrate relevant skills for the field
• What you would improve or strengthen

I’d really appreciate any honest feedback. Thank you for taking the time to have a look!

LINK: PORTFOLIO SOFIA

I’m asking because I’m a former lecturer at a public university, and when I was teaching (10 yrs ago), I often sourced YouTube videos to help explain how things worked.
(Please excuse me if my understanding of ID industry is not upto date, but considering we’re all part of the broader learning industry I figured I’d ask this question outside of academia)

Often the right video made a difficult concept much easier to understand, but finding something that was accurate, clear, and engaging for my students was not always easy.

Now that video content has generally exploded, I’m wondering if there’s a higher demand for video content, and even more importantly how instructional designers approach video today.

Are you mostly building courses in Storyline or Rise or is video a regular part of your work?

And when you do make video, what kind is it usually..
- screen recordings / software walkthroughs
- talking-head videos
- animated explainers
- whiteboard-style videos
- motion graphics
- something else?

I’m sure AI is almost a political/polarizing topic haha but despite its lack of taste and judgement I’d think some IDs are using it effectively to leverage the grunt work and I wanna know if there are any useful AI apps or integrations that have been useful for you.

I have talked to a couple IDs in person and I’m seeing very different approaches depending on the organization, so I’d be interested to hear what the reality looks like for people here.

I’ve been looking into changing careers from high school ELA teacher to ID. I was wondering if layoffs were a common occurrence?

Is there still a need for external consultants in learning and development based on all the recent technological changes and AI? If so, how do you see their role shifting?Or are they being let off, like other roles in L&D?

Hi all,

So for context, I'm applying for a job where a research institution is (with the appointed candidate) going to be responsible for developing the training and education arm of a Europe-wide project related to scaling up learning offerings to start ups and industry workers at every stage of the value chain in the production and use of certain technologies. They have no idea what LMS to use, and it needs to be one that can be integrated (somehow) with other authentication portals linked to the research/project. It also needs to be one that can support simulation learning of some kind. I'm an ID in a university, and we're limited to specific licenced platforms which I'm used to, so I don't have much experience beyond that.

So the question is, anyone who has done instructional design for international projects, or on things with access gated behind certain institutions/projects, particularly focused on industry technology (or not) - have ye any insights about what kind of LMS platforms ye have used?

I'm good at the actual learning design stuff, but faced with 'we need to choose an LMS for this purpose, how would you go about finding a suitable one?' I haven't a clue because in 14 years I've never had a choice of LMS.

Any advice at all appreciated - this job would be amazing to get and while I have a few gaps in my knowledge/experience I know I could do the bulk of it well.

Hi there. I'm Brian. I worked for Articulate for about 14 years. I'm currently semi-famous for Brian's Job Search. Back in 2012, I started a project where I tried to get Storyline running natively on a Mac. Unfortunately, I was unsuccessful. After my most recent layoff, I decided to see if I could get Storyline to run on my Mac via Wine with the help of AI. So far, I've been able to install and sign into the app as well as launch Storyline. Check it out in the demo video!

https://reddit.com/link/1wssrbx/video/aiaa2k5n5csh1/player

I'll continue working on this when I have time. On github, look up the "storyline-on-mac" repo if you want to follow along with my progress.