Introduction
Hello!
I'm creating this blog to document some of the things I learn and encounter as I navigate the professional Instructional Design world. "Technical Writing" and "Instructional Design" are sometimes almost the same job, but over the course of the last eight years I've found that these job titles sometimes mean entirely different things between various workplaces. For example, I'd say that working as an instructional designer for an online university had almost nothing in common with working as an instructional designer for a manufacturer of airplane parts.
I've been keeping a running notebook for a while with tips and tricks for all of my most oft-used design tools, and that notebook is almost out of space. I've already experienced so much, I decided I need a more "official" space to document some of the stuff I've encountered; whether it's new skills, advice for using authoring or design tools, or maybe just some stories about complete failures. I'll try to refrain from ever outwardly complaining about co-workers, though. That's what I would have done on my OLD blog, the long-defunct "What I Learned Today."
I do love to rant and rave about people's puzzling behavior, and my excuse for this is that I am a social scientist at heart. Behavior comes from feelings, and feelings come from our brain. Knowing this, I will never NOT be fascinated by the weird things that people do, the logic people employ that drives their decisions to act in certain ways. My primary interest, the heart of my undergraduate studies, was really in behavioral sciences. This was eventually filtered down into learning sciences. On that note, I'm often chagrined to find out how little some instructional designers seem to know about how people actually learn. That's one important place where I'll try to suppress mean-spirited co-worker rants, and do my best to channel my frustrations into lengthy blogposts that will probably be read by...nobody.
Here's a sample rant: Instructional Designers have to wear a lot of hats, and sometimes I resent some of those hats. It's especially galling when Subject Matter Experts and Project Managers don't really understand what the role of the Instructional Designer really is, and expect the ID to have become a SME after just a few collaborations and deliverables. I know that other IDs will be able to universally relate to these frustrations, however for the sake of professionalism, these are rants I'll try to at least soften, if not suppress altogether.
I chose to give my blog a German name because I'm re-learning German right now, in anticipation of a trip to Europe in a few months. This means that sometimes, I find myself thinking in German. I learned a tiny bit of German as a child, but most of it I learned later. Six or seven years ago, I was a tech writer with a pretty long work commute. To make the commute less tedious, I got a set of the Pimsleur Method German CD's. I picked the language up so quickly, I got curious about the origins of the Pimsleur method, and a good part of my fascination with learning sciences was piqued. Now I have a master's degree in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences. I wouldn't go so far as to assign Pimsleur the full responsibility for my decision to pursue that field, but it definitely played a role.
Lastly, I hate gamification, and I hate open offices. I can't decide which I hate more, and maybe I'll write about those topics in the future. But honestly, I'm kind of getting resigned to the reality that they might be here to stay.
I'm creating this blog to document some of the things I learn and encounter as I navigate the professional Instructional Design world. "Technical Writing" and "Instructional Design" are sometimes almost the same job, but over the course of the last eight years I've found that these job titles sometimes mean entirely different things between various workplaces. For example, I'd say that working as an instructional designer for an online university had almost nothing in common with working as an instructional designer for a manufacturer of airplane parts.
I've been keeping a running notebook for a while with tips and tricks for all of my most oft-used design tools, and that notebook is almost out of space. I've already experienced so much, I decided I need a more "official" space to document some of the stuff I've encountered; whether it's new skills, advice for using authoring or design tools, or maybe just some stories about complete failures. I'll try to refrain from ever outwardly complaining about co-workers, though. That's what I would have done on my OLD blog, the long-defunct "What I Learned Today."
I do love to rant and rave about people's puzzling behavior, and my excuse for this is that I am a social scientist at heart. Behavior comes from feelings, and feelings come from our brain. Knowing this, I will never NOT be fascinated by the weird things that people do, the logic people employ that drives their decisions to act in certain ways. My primary interest, the heart of my undergraduate studies, was really in behavioral sciences. This was eventually filtered down into learning sciences. On that note, I'm often chagrined to find out how little some instructional designers seem to know about how people actually learn. That's one important place where I'll try to suppress mean-spirited co-worker rants, and do my best to channel my frustrations into lengthy blogposts that will probably be read by...nobody.
Here's a sample rant: Instructional Designers have to wear a lot of hats, and sometimes I resent some of those hats. It's especially galling when Subject Matter Experts and Project Managers don't really understand what the role of the Instructional Designer really is, and expect the ID to have become a SME after just a few collaborations and deliverables. I know that other IDs will be able to universally relate to these frustrations, however for the sake of professionalism, these are rants I'll try to at least soften, if not suppress altogether.
I chose to give my blog a German name because I'm re-learning German right now, in anticipation of a trip to Europe in a few months. This means that sometimes, I find myself thinking in German. I learned a tiny bit of German as a child, but most of it I learned later. Six or seven years ago, I was a tech writer with a pretty long work commute. To make the commute less tedious, I got a set of the Pimsleur Method German CD's. I picked the language up so quickly, I got curious about the origins of the Pimsleur method, and a good part of my fascination with learning sciences was piqued. Now I have a master's degree in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences. I wouldn't go so far as to assign Pimsleur the full responsibility for my decision to pursue that field, but it definitely played a role.
Lastly, I hate gamification, and I hate open offices. I can't decide which I hate more, and maybe I'll write about those topics in the future. But honestly, I'm kind of getting resigned to the reality that they might be here to stay.
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