@Amanda What is your role Amanda? How you support them will largely depend on where you are at in your larger organization. Is this higher ed?
@autumm393 Yes, higher ed. I’m the Open Education Librarian at Penn State University. We have a lot of instructional designers here, and recently there’s been an uptick in requests for me to come and talk to the different learning design shops at my institution.
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Another one on my mind, given we’re working closely with people making content: If you could wave a magic wand and guarantee that all creators did just one thing differently when they were creating content, what would it be?
@aakins It might be worthwhile getting to know and networking with some IDs. Check out twitter and tags such as #DigPed and #InstructionalDesign. Maybe create a twitter list and when you come across ID’s put them on the list. A great grassroots community of IDs is Pedago.me - check them out. For background and history a google search should get you started and the Wikipedia article does a pretty good job of laying things out.
Hey Autumm so glad to see you here! My q for you is this: it seems to me that one of the goals of good educational design is that it provides the learner with flexibility within appropriate constraints. What are some of your practices to ensure you strike the right balance between designing a learning experience and leaving enough room for improvisation, creativity, freedom?
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@zoe Structure their content from the beginning to be accessible.
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@autumm393 said in I'm an instructional designer. Ask me anything (7 March. 2019, 2 pm-3:30 pm EST / 11 am-12:30 pm PST):
I can remember being a little girl and the phone book has this whole automated system that you could call into to get information about city services. I would call in and go through the whole tree entering all these different codes to figure out how it all worked. It would give you information about how to deal with a down wire or when garbage day was - but it was not the content that I was interested in so much as the structure of the information and what I needed to do to get to it. I did the same thing using a CB radio but that was much more messy as there were communities on the CB (hobbyists and truckers etc…) and the systems were more social.
I LOVE this story! Some kids take radios apart, some listen in and analyse the systems & communities they facilitate…
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@Amanda YES! 1000% :raised_hands_tone2:
@Amanda That is awesome! I think that Librarians and IDs can be amazing partners. Some of my best friends are librarians. Librarians have a long history of seeking out and organizing information. I’ve partnered with librarians for faculty development around book discussions, copyright workshops, and course design. If you are being asked to partner with IDs for a specific reason that you’d like me to address I can do that too - just let me know.
@steelwagstaff Steel!!! So great to “see” you in here! Welcome!
This is a great point. There are two extremes, right? The rigid tightly controlled learning experience and the open and free “go be creative” experience. The tightly controlled experience can be the right approach if we have really clear outcomes, but how much of life is that way? Going in the other direction can get you in trouble if you think you can just say - go be creative and then get amazing outcomes. Constraint is highly undervalued by those that want to be creative but don’t really understand the creative process. Wide open prompts and objectives do not foster creativity - you need something to bump up against and to keep you from flying off into the open to really be able to build something.
But your question is about balancing those two things and that is trickier. Once again I think it depends on context. Who are the learners - younger or less experienced learners may need more guidance and choices where those with more experience may be able to riff a little more. I actually like this word “riff” in thinking about this… Does that help?
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@apurva @autumm393 I really loved the emphasis you’re placing on context, purpose, and the nuance you bring to what are essentially human activities (and thus not well suited to pure routinization). A couple of additional resources that have been important in my own growth in the field have been a great edited collection from nearly 20 years ago called How People Learn (free PDF available here); Michelle Miller’s book Minds Online and John Bean’s Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. The book I’m most looking forward to reading next is Joshua Eyler’s new How Humans Learn. Finally, James Lang also has a list of 10 books that mostly look excellent: https://www.chronicle.com/article/Top-10-Books-on-Teaching/147015.
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@Amanda Oh that is a really good answer to that question Amanda - Accessibility is so important!! Thanks for bringing that in.
@steelwagstaff Hey!!! Michelle Miller is keynoting an event here on my campus next week - I’m new to her work - so cool to see you mention her here.
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@autumm393 @Amanda Librarians are some of our favourite people also, as are IDs (or whatever term you prefer to identify with, Autumm)! Like you said, they can partner together so well on the work they do. We always encourage open textbook project leads to try to include both on their teams, or approach them and seek out their advice on making better (quality, accessible, inclusive) resources.
@zoe I know this one is really pie in the sky but you are the one who brought the “magic wand” into it -
I would want all content to be created as an act of creative expression and as an artifact of lived experience. I’d move away from “content” and toward something closer to the creation of art.
@autumm393 Hi Autumn. I just took a look at the Cynefin Model. It is an interesting concept, but it looks like it application is in the world of leadership. Can you explain how you have used it or adapted for use when designing a learning experience.
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@autumm393 I agree so much! I’ve found working with IDs fantastic - there are some I work with on a regular basis, but these design shops are outside their unit and are just starting to think about incorporating OER into their workflow. Is there any one thing I could address that you think would be helpful for them?
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@autumm393 @steelwagstaff Thank you so much! This is quite the goldmine!
Michelle Miller is keynoting an event here on my campus next week - I’m new to her work - so cool to see you mention her here.
Ha! Small world 
@autumm393 Cool! I’ve never met her, but loved her book and would be very curious to hear what’s she like as a presenter and interlocutor.
@autumm393 Another question for you: You started at a community college and took a non traditional route to your first undergrad degree. What were the most important things you learned about life & work as a returning student? How does your own educational path inform your current ID/pedagogical consulting work?
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