10 ID Cheatsheets You’ll Want to Keep Close By

How do you become an expert?

Some say it’s 10,000 hours of focused practice doing something: 20 hours per week for 50 weeks of the year for 10 years. The exact figure is hotly debated. But, number of hours aside, the process seems to boil down to this:

You start doing a thing, and you do it for long enough that you get good at it.

Simple enough, right?

But when it comes to something like developing e-learning, there’s added challenge and pressure. You need to deliver results so you can satisfy your client and/or keep your job.

So that “just getting started” bit becomes fraught with anxiety:

  • What do I start on first?
  • What do I need to know not to waste time?
  • How do other people do this?
  • What if I fail?

In times like these, when you’re working on a project that’s brand new to you and you’re not sure how to get it started, tips lists and cheat sheets are a blessing.

By searching around, you can pull together information from experts. And before you know it, you’ve laid out a path for yourself from the things others have done.

In an E-Learning Challenge, we invited you all to build tools—tips and cheat sheets—other instructional designers could use. And you delivered. These examples are all super-useful references that will help you get better at creating effective e-learning:

  • Just getting started with blended e-learning? This set of tips from Tania Vercoelen is just what you need.
  • If you’re working on a project and not sure how long it’ll take, never fear. Jackie Van Nice has you covered with this helpful interactive cheat sheet focused on project timeline estimation.
  • Learn Gagne’s 9 Events of Instruction (or just brush up if you can only think of six or seven of them!) in this example by Montse Anderson.
  • Alison Nederveld’s cheat sheet helps you start a project on the right foot by dialing in your learning objectives.
  • Print ‘em out and doodle all over ‘em. Ryan Martin’s pile of helpful worksheets helps you map out scenarios for your e-learning.
  • Are you using your tabs effectively? Alexandar Salas’ example (and free download) will make sure you can answer with a confident “Yes!”
  • Preston Ruddell is here to hook you up with instructional design strategies for each level of Bloom’s taxonomy. (Not sure what that is? Go back a bullet point and check out Alexandar’s example again or skip to Dan Sweigert’s example below.)
  • Get to know your e-learning theorists in this drag-and-drop example by Matt Guyan.
  • Test your understanding of Bloom’s taxonomy in this clever cheat sheet-game combo by Dan Sweigert.

Be sure to bookmark any that catch your eye for handy reference later. Cheat sheets are no good if you don’t remember where you found them. ;)

The recap has all the examples we received, so be sure to check it out for more awesome e-learning aids. And if you want to design something to help out the community, don’t hold back. The challenge is still open here!

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Montse
Heather Vogt
Angela Garcia-Lavin