With the winter holidays approaching, I'm getting ready to start chipping away at my frankly terrifying to-be-read stack of books. Which made me wonder what kinds of learning and development or e-learning books you all might have enjoyed recently or be getting ready to read soon.
Here are a small handful of books that are absolutely essential reading if you want to be a skilled, professional instructional designer:
Michael Allen: Michael Allen’s Guide to E-learning (2nd Edition) OR Designing Successful E-learning
These two books cover similar ground, so you probably only need to read one or the other. I originally read Michael Allen’s Guide to E-learning (1st Edition) and it completely changed everything I thought I knew about instructional design. I used to recommend it all the time, but when Michael Allen released Designing Successful E-learning I switched to recommending that book instead, since it was newer and more up-to-date. Now there’s a second edition of Allen’s first book, so it may actually be the one containing the more current information. You can’t really go wrong with either; they are both great.
Why are they great? Primarily because they give you a way to get past the common (mis)conception of e-learning as a fancy way to deliver information. Allen’s “CCAF” model—Context, Challenge, Activity, and Feedback—provides a simple, yet extremely powerful way to rethink the very purpose of e-learning, no longer as “telling” but rather as providing practice opportunities for learners. Allen's principles, like "Put the learner at risk" or "Don't start at the beginning" or "Test before telling" run counter to much ingrained practice in the industry. But radical though they are, the principles he lays out are, I think, exactly what is needed to shake e-learning out of its doldrums and take it to the next level where it can actually be of genuine value to the learner and the learner’s organization. Read either of these books and you'll never want to design e-learning the "old" way ever again.
Ruth Colvin Clark and Richard E. Mayer: E-learning and the Science of Instruction
From the time Richard Mayer moved from Indiana University to take a position as a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he has focused his research on how people learn from multimedia materials. Obviously, this has a powerful relevance for the design of successful e-learning, and this application of his research (and the relevant research of others, too) is very well summarized in E-learning and the Science of Instruction, a book he co-authored with Ruth Clark.
Additionally, this book is particularly powerful when paired with either of the Michael Allen books on this list. This is because Allen focuses on the larger instructional design issues: How can I know that my learners have met the learning objectives?, How can I give them opportunities to demonstrate mastery?, and so on, while Clark & Mayer focus on the tactical questions like How formal should my voice-over narration be?, Where’s the best place to label my graphics?, How should audio interact with the visuals on my screens? Taken together, they provide a very powerful one-two instructional design punch.
Ruth Colvin Clark: Evidence-Based Training Methods
Evidence-Based Training Methods covers some of the same ground as E-learning and the Science of Instruction, but it also covers some topics (such as worked examples and instructional games) not covered in E-Learning and the Science of Instruction, so there is still benefit in reading them both. Evidence-Based Training Methods doesn’t delve quite as deeply into the underlying research as E-learning and the Science of Instruction does, though it still provides full citations.
Doug Lemov: Teach Like a Champion 3.0
Lemov is the managing director of the Uncommon Schools—a set of charter schools in Boston, New Jersey, and New York. His book project started as "The Taxonomy of Effective Teaching." Lemov noticed that there were some schools located in impoverished neighborhoods which, despite expectations, had the majority of their students score high on standardized tests. He wondered what it was about those schools that allowed them to succeed where so many others failed, and he had a hunch that their success was due to effective teaching. So he started visiting classrooms in these schools, often with a video camera, observing "champion" teachers in action, trying to identify specific things they did that made their students so successful. In the current "3.0" edition of his book, he identifies 63 techniques. In essence, he’s moved from evidence-based practice, to practice-based evidence, which may be equally important.
He’s done the industry a huge service by not only cataloging specific techniques that expert teachers use, but also by naming them, potentially giving us all a shared vocabulary in which to talk about what teachers do, and to design materials to support teachers in what they do. By giving techniques names, Lemov also makes it easier for us to create designs that reference these techniques by name. Read this book and you’ll be ready to design ILT courses with facilitator guides that indicate when to "cold call", "show call", "turn and talk", or "Do Now." You’ll be able to design handouts that "Standardize the Format" and increase the ease with which "Circulating" instructors can quickly scan for right answers and common errors in student work. You’ll be able to design group discussions with guidelines to leverage Lemov's "Habits of Discussion." And so on. A really great resource if you design or teach ILT courses.
Roy V. H. Pollock, Andy Jefferson, and Calhoun W. Wick: The Six Disciplines of Breakthrough Learning
This is a really terrific book about the end-to-end process of creating training that matters. It reiterates many of the points made by the other authors in this list, but does so in the context of training generally, and not just with respect to e-learning or the classroom specifically. It looks at what has to take place before training and what has to take place after training in order for changes in behavior introduced in training to actually take hold in the learner population. Essential reading, especially for training managers.
That's such a great collection of books! And I really love your point about Teach Like a Champion about how just having a name for a technique makes it so much easier to use them in the learning experiences we design.
6 Replies
Here are a small handful of books that are absolutely essential reading if you want to be a skilled, professional instructional designer:
These two books cover similar ground, so you probably only need to read one or the other. I originally read Michael Allen’s Guide to E-learning (1st Edition) and it completely changed everything I thought I knew about instructional design. I used to recommend it all the time, but when Michael Allen released Designing Successful E-learning I switched to recommending that book instead, since it was newer and more up-to-date. Now there’s a second edition of Allen’s first book, so it may actually be the one containing the more current information. You can’t really go wrong with either; they are both great.
Why are they great? Primarily because they give you a way to get past the common (mis)conception of e-learning as a fancy way to deliver information. Allen’s “CCAF” model—Context, Challenge, Activity, and Feedback—provides a simple, yet extremely powerful way to rethink the very purpose of e-learning, no longer as “telling” but rather as providing practice opportunities for learners. Allen's principles, like "Put the learner at risk" or "Don't start at the beginning" or "Test before telling" run counter to much ingrained practice in the industry. But radical though they are, the principles he lays out are, I think, exactly what is needed to shake e-learning out of its doldrums and take it to the next level where it can actually be of genuine value to the learner and the learner’s organization. Read either of these books and you'll never want to design e-learning the "old" way ever again.
From the time Richard Mayer moved from Indiana University to take a position as a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he has focused his research on how people learn from multimedia materials. Obviously, this has a powerful relevance for the design of successful e-learning, and this application of his research (and the relevant research of others, too) is very well summarized in E-learning and the Science of Instruction, a book he co-authored with Ruth Clark.
Additionally, this book is particularly powerful when paired with either of the Michael Allen books on this list. This is because Allen focuses on the larger instructional design issues: How can I know that my learners have met the learning objectives?, How can I give them opportunities to demonstrate mastery?, and so on, while Clark & Mayer focus on the tactical questions like How formal should my voice-over narration be?, Where’s the best place to label my graphics?, How should audio interact with the visuals on my screens? Taken together, they provide a very powerful one-two instructional design punch.
Evidence-Based Training Methods covers some of the same ground as E-learning and the Science of Instruction, but it also covers some topics (such as worked examples and instructional games) not covered in E-Learning and the Science of Instruction, so there is still benefit in reading them both. Evidence-Based Training Methods doesn’t delve quite as deeply into the underlying research as E-learning and the Science of Instruction does, though it still provides full citations.
Lemov is the managing director of the Uncommon Schools—a set of charter schools in Boston, New Jersey, and New York. His book project started as "The Taxonomy of Effective Teaching." Lemov noticed that there were some schools located in impoverished neighborhoods which, despite expectations, had the majority of their students score high on standardized tests. He wondered what it was about those schools that allowed them to succeed where so many others failed, and he had a hunch that their success was due to effective teaching. So he started visiting classrooms in these schools, often with a video camera, observing "champion" teachers in action, trying to identify specific things they did that made their students so successful. In the current "3.0" edition of his book, he identifies 63 techniques. In essence, he’s moved from evidence-based practice, to practice-based evidence, which may be equally important.
He’s done the industry a huge service by not only cataloging specific techniques that expert teachers use, but also by naming them, potentially giving us all a shared vocabulary in which to talk about what teachers do, and to design materials to support teachers in what they do. By giving techniques names, Lemov also makes it easier for us to create designs that reference these techniques by name. Read this book and you’ll be ready to design ILT courses with facilitator guides that indicate when to "cold call", "show call", "turn and talk", or "Do Now." You’ll be able to design handouts that "Standardize the Format" and increase the ease with which "Circulating" instructors can quickly scan for right answers and common errors in student work. You’ll be able to design group discussions with guidelines to leverage Lemov's "Habits of Discussion." And so on. A really great resource if you design or teach ILT courses.
This is a really terrific book about the end-to-end process of creating training that matters. It reiterates many of the points made by the other authors in this list, but does so in the context of training generally, and not just with respect to e-learning or the classroom specifically. It looks at what has to take place before training and what has to take place after training in order for changes in behavior introduced in training to actually take hold in the learner population. Essential reading, especially for training managers.
Julie's new book is fantastic! Other's I'd recommend:
- Learning Experience Design Essentials by Cara North
- How We Learn and Why It Happens by Benedict Carey is always one of my favourites.
- The eLearning Designer's Handbook by Tim Slade
- Upskill, Reskill, Thrive by James McKenna and Kendra Grant is on my list of to-reads.
That's such a great collection of books! And I really love your point about Teach Like a Champion about how just having a name for a technique makes it so much easier to use them in the learning experiences we design.
This is an awesome collection as well! And thanks for reminding me I need to pick up Cara's book!
Great idea, Bianca!
I have ten new books that I will read this month.
The three I'll read first are:
-L&D Playbook by Brandon Carson
-Connection Culture by Michael Lee Stallard
-Designing Virtual Learning for Application and Impact by Cindy Huggett, CPTD, Jack J. Phillips, PhD., Patti P. Phillips, PhD., CPTD, Emma Weber
Based on this list in this thread, I must add to my existing stack of reading materials! Happy learning! ✨
I suspect this thread is going to end up adding a whole second pile to most of our to-be-read piles!