Instructional Designer Onboarding – a Multi-Modal Approach
In early 2020 I was tapped to design an onboarding program for three new Instructional Designers that would be added to our team in...
Featured Today.
March 24, 2023
What’s Different Between the Life of a Classroom Teacher vs. Instructional Designer?
How is the day-to-day life of an Instructional Designer different than that of a K12 classroom teacher? Many classroom teachers are looking to make...
February 10, 2023
The “Attention Method” for Effective Presentation Decks – Updated
This is an update to my previous post, The “Attention Method” for Effective PowerPoint Presentations. My Attention Method™ of presentation design is a philosophy...
August 24, 2022
Microlearning is not a Platform, it’s a Design Choice
One frequent buzzword you’ll hear a lot in the eLearning world is “microlearning”. More often than not, it’s pushed by companies trying to sell...
Ted Curran.net
Recording Screencasts and Lecture Videos via Zoom
The Coronavirus quarantine has given all kinds of non-technical computer users a crash course in Zoom online meetings. This creates an opportunity for those...
Backchannel? Slack Channel!
Harnessing Turned-On Brains A live learning conference or training event can be a busy, chaotic, and stimulating setting for learning new things. Not only...
Choosing Images is an Art Form
Whether you’re designing a presentation, an online course, or just updating your blog, your choice of images can add meaning to your message, or completely distract from it. At worst, poorly-chosen images can diminish your credibility, distract your audience, and even get you into legal trouble (!!!), so it’s important to choose images with care.
You Should use the Word “You” in Instructional Materials
According to learner-centered instruction, the focus needs to be on what information you retain, the lasting insights you create, and the skills you are able to perform after the training event is over.
Motion Graphics from Keynote to Video
My process for creating animated motion graphics is unconventional but it has distinct advantages over the industry standard method of using Adobe AfterEffects or...
UbD is the Ultimate Learning Technology
This is a pretty dense, fiber-full article about backward learning design by one of my instructional design heroes, Michael Feldstein. It introduces the concept of Backwards Design (part of Understanding by Design, which he also introduces). Most importantly, it makes the case that designing course strictly aligned with learning outcomes enables us to collect data programmatically, scalably, so we can make timely interventions that result in better student learning overall.
Planning a Complex Project with FoldingText and Markdown MindMaps
I recently started planning a three-day live training event with a colleague, in which we had to design several active learning experiences, with the...
From “Just in Case” Learning to “Just in Time” Learning
In this post, we’ll discuss the difference between “just in case” learning and “just in time” learning, showing the ideal use cases for each.
Use Twine for Branching Learning Scenarios
The open source writing tool Twine bills itself as an “Interactive Fiction” authoring program – a way for people to make text-based choose-your-own-adventure games...
Some Greatest Hits...
TedCurran.net is Creative Commons CC-BY-SA
Ted Curran.net by Ted Curran is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.