The Accidental Instructional Designer, 2nd Edition:  Learning Design for the Digital Age

INTRODUCTION

Once Upon a Time

In this chapter …

•  How did I go from a little girl singing in the shower to a grown-up woman working as an instructional designer of technology-based learning solutions?

•  Do other people have similar stories?

•  Is your story all that different?

A Walking Accident

I am a walking accident. Generally a happy one, but an accident nonetheless. Most of my life feels like an accident—a series of unexpected events that have led to this particular moment in time. I look around and say, How did I get here surrounded by these people, living in this state, in this house? How did I end up doing what I am doing? This is not at all what I imagined. Or is it?

When I was a kid, I had visions of fame as a singer. While singing loudly in the shower, I hoped I’d be overheard by our neighbor, who I imagined was a record label producer.

I also aspired to be a writer. In 1979, my sixth-grade teacher, Mrs. Shimamoto, asked the class to write our personal predictions for the year 2000 (and, wow, was that a long way away). In my short story, I painted a picture of my future self as a work-from-home author with two children. They would eat a lot of Cheerios and I would write novels and magazine articles. Turns out this picture isn’t all that far off, although it took me a few extra years to get here, there’s an extra kid, and I have yet to write that novel. But I have written a book, and now I’m even writing a second edition!

At some point, I began to picture myself as a teacher. After majoring in English and German Studies at college, I even applied for a master’s in education; however, that was something I never got around to after discovering the joys of a regular paycheck.

But by no means did I imagine that one day I would be an instructional designer of self-paced, online e-learning programs. Never. This was a complete accident.

Of course, in 1979 I don’t think anyone had even said e-learning yet—at least not in my presence. And I had certainly never heard the words instructional design. It wasn’t until 1996, when I got a fancy business card to go with my new junior instructional designer title, that I even knew such a thing existed. And even then, it seemed sort of made up to me.

My Path to Instructional Design

So, how did I get here? I graduated from college in the middle of a recession, with a degree in English and German studies. I moved to Boston with friends to do the young adult, livin’ in the big city thing. I looked for work. I temped and taught swimming. I had idealistic notions of making the world a better place. Eventually, I landed a job at a company that helped employees of corporate America balance their work and family lives through referrals to childcare and elder-care services. I worked behind the scenes, running reports and helping employees figure out more efficient ways of working.

We did everything by paper in those days, but the computer had definitely arrived. When we started designing a new call center computer application for the company, I translated user requirements to the IT department. We designed screens and workflows. We decided what buttons should be called and did paper prototypes. Then, because I knew the system, I trained all the call center agents and counselors how to use it. And I was good at it! I led classroom training sessions, updated workbooks, and wrote newsletters and tip sheets.

And then I had one of those happy accidents. Through a friend of a friend, I found out about an emerging multimedia production company that created CD-ROM training programs to teach people how to use software and do other work-related skills. I would write scripts and produce video and, wow, it sounded glamorous. Plus, it came with that fancy job title—junior instructional designer. Voilà, an instructional designer was born!

So, that’s how it happened. And, most likely, it’s not that different from your own tale of accident and intrigue; that day you woke up to find yourself responsible for designing instruction. My guess is that you didn’t dream of this career when you were in sixth grade either. Am I wrong?

What I Did Next

There I was in this glamorous multimedia world—writing scripts and learning about learning objectives. We mostly created software training, following a pretty simple model: Instruct, demo, practice, assess. A talking head video on the left side of the screen acted as the host, explaining basic concepts as text bullets appeared, in time with the audio. That was really advanced back then, mind you. This was followed by a narrated animated software demonstration, a try-it-yourself exercise with guided instructions and feedback, and finally a test where you had to do it all by yourself.

This was in the days before e-learning authoring tools and standardized templates. Every screen was hand coded, and an hour of computer-based training (or CBT as we called it) ran for $40,000 as a standard pricing structure. (Adjusted for inflation, that ’90s price tag would translate to about $71,000 in 2022!) At the time, I developed a vague notion that people went to school to learn about educational technology, and a few of my co-workers even had master’s degrees in it. Fancy. But for the most part, we were just a bunch of smart people trying to do what seemed like cutting-edge stuff and make a living at the same time.

I worked there for about five years before the company evaporated in the dot-com burst in the early 2000s. Then I wandered off to massage therapy school and took anatomy classes and learned about the psoas muscle and how to give a really excellent therapeutic massage. I even ended up teaching massage for a few years (talk about hands-on training). All the while, I stayed connected to the learning technology world through freelance projects. It was a pretty cool life—I felt like I had figured out this magical balance between my more intellectual business side and my inner healer. Then I started having kids. When the reality of supporting a family hit home, I went back to full-time work and found a job as a senior instructional designer at a small e-learning company.

This was a watershed moment, really. At that point I realized that instructional design would likely be my professional focus for the rest of my life. I could sit back and just do my job or I could make a commitment to do it with intention and great passion. I chose the path of intention and it has made all the difference.

Thanks to the internet, I realized that instructional design wasn’t just a random term; it actually had a whole field behind it, complete with books, degree programs, professors, theories, and terminology. I bought books about e-learning including E-Learning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer and Michael Allen’s Guide to E-Learning. I discovered blogs about e-learning and instructional design and connected with the people who wrote them; in 2006, I started my own instructional design blog called Learning Visions. One of my first posts was about a company called Kineo, which shared guides and tips about e-learning and instructional design. (If you read my bio, you’ll see I ended up working for Kineo a few years later and am still with them many years later.) In 2007, I attended my first eLearning Guild conference and got to hear people like Clark Quinn and Will Thalheimer speak. My world was opening up in a big way.

I started debating with people online about whether one needed a degree to practice instructional design. You go to a medical doctor, they would argue. You hire a licensed architect to build your home. You should also entrust your instructional design to professionals who know what they’re doing.

To that I simply said, Pshaw. I had kids and a full-time job, and the truth was, I didn’t have time to go back to school. I figured—and have hopefully proven—that although I’m an instructional designer by accident, it doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing or that I can’t learn.

Thus—10 years into my career of designing CBTs and e-learning programs—I began my informal effort to teach myself a thing or two about instructional design and adult learning theory.

What About You?

What’s your story? Was your path to instructional design similar? Did you have your sights set on something quite different from what you’ve turned into, or is this exactly what you expected for yourself?

When I have this conversation with groups of instructional designers, there’s usually a lot of affirming head nods … and some very funny stories. For example:

•  I was working as a bank teller and I was good at what I did, so they asked me to help out with the training classes.

•  I had a knack for formatting PowerPoints, so when they needed someone to learn this new authoring tool, they asked me.

•  We were short-staffed and needed someone who could help out.

•  I inherited responsibility for training materials when someone went on maternity leave.

•  I’m a good writer and it seemed a natural fit.

We find our way here by accident, but that doesn’t mean it will turn into a complete disaster. Sometimes it will, but not always.

Accidental ID—My Epiphany

By Trina Rimmer, Director of Customer Advocacy and Product Evangelism, Articulate (and proud accidental instructional designer)

It was more than 20 years ago that I accidentally stumbled into my role as an instructional designer. At the time, I didn’t even realize that instructional design was a job that people could have—let alone one people would pay you for. Initially, my instructional design work entailed cajoling information out of busy subject matter experts, making the content look nicer in PowerPoint, and uploading it to a glorified website built for e-learning. While the PowerPoint slides I created looked pretty snazzy and I’d snagged myself a fancy job title and a pay raise, my job on paper bore very little resemblance to the work I was actually doing. I knew something wasn’t quite satisfying about my job, but I couldn’t put my finger on what was missing.

Eventually, I persuaded my boss to send me to a series of instructional design certificate programs. I left those workshops with a deeper understanding of instructional design theories and practices and a clue about what was missing: I hadn’t been designing instruction as much as I’d been designing to distract from the absence of it! Of course, that raised the question: What could I, an imposter instructional designer, do to fix it?

And then it happened. In 2007, I read a post on Tom Kuhlmann’s The Rapid eLearning Blog. It was about getting more from subject matter experts. His tips were gold. Soon I found myself subscribed to dozens of other instructional design blogs as well, including Cammy Bean’s. Cammy and others helped me learn practical strategies that supported me in applying the theories and practices I’d picked up in my certificate programs.

Finding my tribe was the first step in my career awakening, but my real epiphany came from realizing that, although landing my job had been accidental, becoming an instructional designer didn’t have to be. I could choose curiosity over compliance. I could choose creativity over cynicism. By staying unapologetically focused on the needs of learners, I could create experiences that helped people enjoy the learning process, and that’s a pretty awesome feeling. Through countless missteps and painful projects and difficult conversations, I have claimed this job title, for real. I’m no longer an accidental instructional designer. I’m just a boots-on-the-ground, wise-cracking everyday instructional designer—and you can be one, too.

From Classroom Trainer to E-Learning Instructional Designer

By Sean Putman, Instructional Design Manager, Motive

I started my career training users of a computer-aided design software. I spent the majority of my time in front of the class, teaching material generated by other people, so I never gave much thought to how it was created. Eventually my company asked me to help develop a course that had been written by an office in Germany. I followed the structure of the material that was already there and simply translated the material to English. While I wasn’t concerning myself with any instructional design, that project made me realize that I enjoyed creating classroom material.

After leaving that position, I signed on with a company that was developing material from scratch for the same software. Because I had a lot of experience with it from the previous company, I followed that model to create the content. I still wasn’t thinking about design principles; I was merely following past experiences.

Eventually, I was hired as the internal training developer for another company, which also used the same design software. Around the same time, I was asked to make an online course and thus discovered the world of e-learning.

At my new company, I always heard the same thing when being introduced to new people: This is Sean. He’s the guy who makes all the e-learning that no one watches. That singular description changed my entire career path. Those profound words made me realize that I needed to re-evaluate what effective instructional design looked like. It prompted me to take a step back, study the principles of instructional design, and determine how to effectively apply them to my projects.

So began my journey toward self-improvement. I refused to be the guy who creates e-learning content no one watches. My initial research focused on the science of instructional design, delving into books such as Design for How People Learn and Learning and the Science of Instruction. I also attended and spoke at various industry conferences, finding peer interaction to be a valuable resource to share and learn about practical approaches to learning solutions. While preparing for my own presentations, I learned new concepts and found examples of good design to use as inspiration. One of the more transformational concepts I discovered was the importance of scaffolding. Approaching solutions as building blocks broken up over multiple modules changed the way I designed for the better.

As I continued my personal journey to enlightenment, one nagging question was always present: How do we, as designers and developers, know that our learning initiatives are effective?

I found my answer at an event in 2012 when I was introduced to the Tin Can API (later renamed the Experience API, or xAPI), which promised new ways to measure learning experiences. I spent the next several years diving into the world of performance measurement, learning analytics, and xAPI. I was fortunate to work on several award-winning projects, including a self-evaluation tool that was tracked using xAPI. This period of time culminated with my co-authoring the book Investigating Performance.

Finding a Passion for E-Learning, by Accident!

By Tracy Parish, Education Technology Specialist at a Regional Healthcare Center

After leaving high school I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do or where I wanted to focus my studies, so I began pursuing subjects that were of most interest to me before post-secondary education. I focused on computer science, biology, and math, and eventually got a degree in accounting. After graduation I worked in accounting departments at several different companies, but the positions were always temporary or contract. However, once I finally landed a full-time accounting position, I realized I didn’t enjoy it.

When my brother, who has special needs, graduated from high school, we needed a plan for his care. I took the opportunity to leave the job I didn’t love to look after him for a while and decide what I wanted to pursue next. He and I still talk about what a great time we had that summer. When a position came up at the local hospital, I applied. Based on my previous experience, I thought I’d be a great candidate, but I did not get the job. However, I interviewed well so they offered me a position as a clerk in the ICU. When the position I had applied for opened up again later that year, I talked to the manager, who encouraged me to reapply. This time I was offered the administration position in the organization development department.

For a few years I worked as the admin support until my manager presented me with the opportunity to become a facilitator for a team-building and communication tool we were using. This motivated me further to get a better understanding of how my manager and co-workers did their jobs as the organization’s trainers, facilitators, and performance support consultants.

I began taking online courses to get certified in adult education and training. My passion for e-learning was firmly in place, and I wanted to explore more about how to create, design, develop, and deliver e-learning programs. I began pursuing course after course and certificate after certificate. If there was a free webinar I could tap into, I did. If there was a blog I could follow, I would sign up and add it to my reading list.

During this time the hospital also wanted to start using a central system to house our training records. We trialed a few different systems in the early 2000s, but it wasn’t until 2007 that we finally bought our first learning management system. Because I had the right background, I was charged with overseeing the full implementation and administration of the system. My training also gave me the opportunity to design and develop the system’s content.

And so I embarked on a whole new career path and journey that I never anticipated. I started going to e-learning and training conferences. I networked with others in the instructional design field, and those connections helped increase my passion for sharing what I had learned and was continuing to learn. I spoke at my first e-learning conference in 2009 and haven’t stopped since.

One of the things I love most about this job and this community is the open sharing and learning from one another. I’m not sure it exists quite so abundantly in any other workforce community. That reason alone is why I enjoy going to conferences so much because they give me an opportunity to give back to my community. I’ve been lucky enough to have partnered on projects with colleagues in other countries; I co-host the Toronto Storyline User Group, the webcast Nerdy Shop Talk, and the weekly Twitter chat #lrnchat; and I am a member of the committee that runs the Canadian eLearning Conference. Each of these opportunities has been a small stepping stone that has helped me build a career of which I’m proud.

The key to my career journey is that I never stopped learning, exploring, developing new skills, or expanding my network. My goal is to always develop and deliver the best content and solutions for my learners.

What I Do Today

My accidental path to instructional design led me to work as an integral part of a design and development team for almost 20 years. I’ve had a direct hand in hundreds of self-paced online training programs. Hundreds. From software training to soft skills training for banks, supermarkets, hair-care companies, insurance agencies, entertainment, global nonprofits, oil and gas, retail chains—you name it. Some of these programs have won awards, while others have been complete training wrecks (pun intended).

Most of the learning experiences I designed were self-paced online learning programs—people sitting down in front of a computer and going through them on their own, either in a matter of minutes or hours. I also worked on blended learning designs, which means looking beyond the self-paced experience to incorporate face-to-face classroom sessions, instructor-led online classrooms, mobile performance support and job aids, refresher trainings, and so on.

Since joining the field in 1996, I have always worked on the supplier side—for companies whose sole purpose is to create learning programs for other companies. This means that I can specialize and focus on what I do well. I worked with clients to understand needs and requirements. I designed the learning experience, wrote scripts, and worked with production teams who have expertise in technology and graphics. In the past I have acted as my own project manager, but at Kineo I had the luxury of having someone else with project management expertise do that task. My job title changed a little over those 20 years, including junior instructional designer, instructional designer, freelancer, and VP of learning design at Kineo.

And then something even more accidental and unexpected happened. After 20 years of doing direct instructional design work, I made a big change. I was ready to do something a little different—I had written enough scripts and quality assurance checked enough courses. It was time to evolve. And so, I became an accidental salesperson. I honestly never expected I’d end up in sales. Totally weird.

As a senior solutions consultant and now US head of customer solutions at Kineo, I work closely with prospects and clients to identify learning and performance needs, strategize and scope solutions, work through pricing and contracts, collaborate with our production team, nurture account relationships, serve as a brand ambassador, stay on top of industry trends and best practices, help with the execution of our global company strategy, and—most important—continue to deliver value and impact to our clients to help their organizations get better results. I love what I do, and it turns out I’m pretty good at it. I have loads of credibility as a practitioner, I speak the language, and I understand the challenges.

Moving into sales enabled me to broaden my expertise and strengthen two key pieces of the pie that I’d always been