Scaling feedback?
Do you have any way of providing feedback to your learners? If so, how do you think about scaling it? Hey all! I recently had a coffee chat with JulieDirksen and she said something that got me thinking (well, she said a lot of things that got me thinking but this was one I wanted to share!). She was talking about how for a long time, feedback was one of the last things in learning that you couldn't scale. But, she noted that with AI that is now changing—it's now more possible to scale the experience of receiving feedback on your work. As a community professional, scaling feedback is something I've long thought about doing via nominating experts from the community to help spread the expertise of an "instructor" beyond one single person—I'm actually going to be giving a session at Articuland next week in Orlando that touches on this! But, all of this got me thinking about different forms of providing feedback and how they have the potential to scale, and I wanted to pitch this question to the community and get your thoughts.Recruiting for an Instructional Designer
We're looking for an Instructional Designer for a full time position. Interviews starting 14 Sept 26. Hybrid working (3 x office days): Can be based at any of our UK locations. We have over 500 sites from as far north as Aberdeen to as far south as Cornwall, so most of the UK will be in commuter distance of one of our offices. Salary: ~ £38,000 - £41,000 depending on experience. Company car or car allowance up to £7,500. Up to 10% annual bonus. What will I be Doing? As one of our Instructional Designers, you will: Work alongside two other Instructional Designers within a larger L&D team. Design, develop and deliver high-quality digital learning and e-learning solutions aligned to business priorities. Conduct training needs analysis and collaborate with subject matter experts, project teams and stakeholders to create engaging learning experiences. Create storyboards, multimedia content and learning materials using tools such as Articulate 360, Vyond, Camtasia and LMS platforms. Manage multiple projects, ensuring quality, accuracy and on-time delivery while continuously evaluating and improving learning effectiveness. Support the creation, publication and maintenance of digital learning content, providing guidance on best practice where content is developed collaboratively. What are the Requirements? We're looking for someone who brings a blend of instructional design expertise, creativity and stakeholder engagement skills: Bachelor's or Master's degree in Instructional Design, Educational Technology, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent experience, with 3-5 years' experience in e-learning content development. Proven experience designing and delivering self-guided digital learning programmes, with strong knowledge of learning principles, learner engagement and instructional design methodologies. Proficiency in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel, together with Articulate 360, LMS platforms, Photoshop, Vyond and Camtasia. Strong communication and project management skills, with the ability to work independently and collaboratively across a range of stakeholders. Full UK Driving Licence. If you are interested or know of a suitable candidate please let me know...ID Toolbox
Practical tools for e-learning developers… Over the past several months I've built a set of browser tools for the bits of Storyline and Rise that used to cost me hours. Eleven of them, all completely free, no signup, no accounts, nothing to install. They run entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded anywhere, which for me was the whole point, I wasn't keen on posting client content to a website just to check something… ID ToolboxLess Is More Is Not Just About Content, but About Learning Experience
After working in instructional design for many years, I've come to realize that "less is more" is often misunderstood. It is usually associated with simplifying content, such as making courses shorter, reducing information, or avoiding overload. But in my experience, it goes beyond that. Even when we have correctly identified what learners need to know, do, or change in order to meet business goals, there is still another important question: How should we design the learning experience itself? The goal should be to help learners learn with the least unnecessary effort. Not by removing depth or rigor, but by removing friction that does not contribute to learning. Over the years, I've seen many different approaches to learning design. Some learning experiences feel under-designed, where the lack of structure or intention makes it difficult for learners to stay engaged or understand the purpose of the content. I've also seen cases where, in an effort to avoid being "too simple" or "boring," additional layers of interaction, visual elements, or gamification are introduced. Many of us have probably spent hours building advanced interactions in Storyline or carefully structuring a Rise course because we wanted the learning experience to feel more engaging. There is nothing wrong with using these features. The question is whether they genuinely support learning. Sometimes these additions are driven more by what the tool allows us to build than by what learners actually need. As a result, learners may end up spending more time completing interactions than understanding, retaining, or applying the knowledge that really matters. This is especially important in corporate learning. Learners are often balancing training with their daily responsibilities. Time is limited, and attention is limited. That is why I believe we should be intentional about where we add complexity. Interaction is not the problem. In fact, meaningful interaction is essential for learning. The key word is meaningful. The most valuable learning experiences are those that help learners understand concepts more deeply, retain what they have learned, and apply that knowledge in real work situations. This is where I choose to focus my design effort. Not on adding interaction for its own sake, but on identifying the moments in learning that truly matter. Instead of asking, "What cool Storyline feature can I use here?", I think we should be asking, "How does this interaction help learners understand, retain, or apply what they need to learn?" When we design with that intention, learning can often become simpler while also becoming more effective. That's the kind of learning experience I continue to strive for. I'd love to hear how you decide when an interaction is truly worth adding.An eLearning Course May Be Teaching More Than You Intended
After many years in instructional design and eLearning, I’ve come to question something we often take for granted about learning. We tend to think of it in simple terms: The learner learned it. The learner didn’t. The course worked. The course failed. But I don’t think learning works that way. People always learn something. The more important question is: What are they learning? Consider a poorly designed eLearning course. An employee attends a course because they genuinely want to learn. But the content is difficult to follow, the activities feel disconnected, and the experience becomes frustrating. The course doesn’t help with the problems they actually face at work. We might conclude that the learner simply didn’t get much out of it. But they may have learned something very different from what we intended: “I could have spent this time getting my work done.” Or “eLearning is a waste of time.” That is still learning. It’s just not the learning outcome we intended. And if that happens repeatedly, something else happens. We spend a great deal of effort trying to motivate learners, get them interested, and hook them into the learning experience. But several poor learning experiences can work in the opposite direction. Learners may become more guarded and less receptive, even when they are later required to learn. There is an interesting example in Taiwan. The government has invested heavily in eLearning for public servants, offering a large number of courses across different topics and allowing employees to choose based on their needs and interests. There are many good courses among them, but the quality is mixed. In 2018, a proposal was submitted on Taiwan’s Public Policy Participation Platform calling for the abolition of the eLearning program for public servants. One of the complaints was that requiring 20 to 40 hours of eLearning each year was a waste of time with little effect. The proposal received nearly 8,000 endorsements in just three days. What interests me is not whether the program was good or bad. It’s this: If people repeatedly experience learning that feels ineffective, what are they learning about learning itself? Maybe: “This isn’t worth my time.” And that may be a bigger problem than one ineffective course. A poor course doesn’t simply fail to teach what we intended. It may teach learners to distrust the learning experience itself. So perhaps we need to ask a different question when we talk about learning effectiveness: Not just, “Did they learn what we wanted them to learn?” But: “What else did they learn from the experience?”What tools do you use?
What are your go to tools you use everyday and wouldn't be without in your authoring process? Here's mine. There's one thing they all have in common, and for me it's the important bit, nothing gets uploaded. They're plain HTML and JavaScript running in your browser. When you drop a .story file, an image or a SCORM zip on one of these, it gets read in memory on your own machine and that's the end of it. No server, no account, no sign up. Most of what I work on is client material and I'd rather not be posting it to a third party site. I suspect I'm not alone in that. They're all completely free, no trial, no limits, no nonsense! Story Auditor Variable health checks Storyline project files. Finds broken and at risk JavaScript references, unused variables and script issues before you ship. Story Documenter A complete written specification from a .story file. Every slide, every trigger in plain English, every quiz answer etc, ready to print or share with clients. Great for creating storyboards. Image Press Resize, compress and convert images in the browser. E-learning size presets, a target file size, batch zip download, and image metadata stripped on output. Great free tool for managing images for projects. SCORM Bench Run a SCORM package against a logging LMS runtime, without uploading it. Every API call visible, live data model, the manifest checked. Works with SCORM 1.2 and 2004. And a quick question; what's the thing in your workflow that still doesn't have a tool? These only existed because I moaned about something enough and then got annoyed enough to fix it!Rise Custom Blocks: Focus Order Workaround to Deleting Objects from the Order?
Hi all! This question might already have been posed, but has anyone found a good practice when setting the focus order in the Rise custom blocks that are currently in beta? As far as I can tell, you can set the order, and add alt text, to objects but you can't delete any objects out of the focus order, to make it less of an issue for a screenreader, like you can in Storyline. Have you just been marking objects that would otherwise get deleted out of the order as decorative, using ""? Any other best practices for the focus order in these Rise custom blocks is also appreciated. Thank you!The Red Pen
AI drafts fast, confidently, and about half of it is wallpaper. This course teaches you to edit it, spot the six tells, fix them without swapping one kind of slop for another, and check the numbers a model will invent with a straight face. The Red Pen | Rise Tools used: Canva, Gemini and Rise CanvasWorried about AI taking your job?
Most people use AI the way they use a search bar. Type something vague, take what comes back. That's how poor course content gets made. This course is about using it deliberately. You'll practise briefing an AI properly, interrogating what it gives you, and deciding what your own expertise still has to supply. The AI Shift Tools used: Canva, Gemini and Rise CanvasHow Rise Canvas was created
I’ve had several requests to detail how I created Rise Canvas Rather than trying to respond to everyone via DM, LinkedIn etc, I thought I’d detail everything here in one post. I’m a web/app designer in addition to being an ID (and some other side hustles that pay the bills!) so this has been a bit of a background passion project initially started for my own work… This will be a long read, so I’ll write it in several parts… This will be fairly non-technical as this isn’t really the place to discuss technical detail.. Part 1 coming next…
