Category: Podcast

I found myself having an interesting instructional design-related discussion today. The discussion surrounded on WHY we are instructional designers. Not the question of why is instructional design important or how we became instructional designers but rather what is the single best part of being an instructional designer? And it’s different for everyone. Some love the…

The first level of the Kirkpatrick model is often the one that is most often done but is also most often done wrong. This is the level most likely to be reduced to “smile sheets” or “vanity measurements” of did my participants “like me”. The reaction level of evaluation is the level where you can…

The second level of the Kirkpatrick model is assessing learning. And this is an area that instructional designers have significant control over and are typically skilled in. So in this video, I share a few ideas on how we can best mix up some of our assessments because no one wants to take a test.

Today as I struggle with the oppressive heat I wanted to talk about the third level of the Kirkpatrick model which is “Behavior” and this level of evaluation has to do with what our participants DO when they return back to work. So it is important for instructional designers to remember to ask what the…

The Kirkpatric model of assessment has four levels, reaction, learning, behavior, and results. Today I’m going to share a common misunderstanding regarding the Results Level. Essentially the results level of the model is asking the question “Do your efforts contribute to the results the organization is trying to achieve?” Not did you get the results…

One key component of eLearning that should be assessed before a project ever sees the light of day is the project’s accessibility compliance. In the United States if your project is touched by federal money chances are it’s covered by Section 508 which outlines accessibility requirements, and if not then there is a good chance…

Today I wanted to take an opportunity to talk about cultural diversity and the responsibilities of instructional designers to take cultural diversity into consideration to remove barriers to learning. This involves both language barriers as well as other considerations. Probably the largest consideration that I forgot to mention in the video is visual representation. Every…

  When developing assessments Rubrics are an excellent way to communicate expectations regarding performance as well as to assess in a fair and systematic fashion. There are times when an automatically graded multiple-choice test won’t cut it and so that’s where a rubric comes in. In broad terms, rubrics come in two flavors Holistic Rubrics…

The concept of alignment is one that is critical to a good assessment. Essentially instructional designers need to ensure that their assessment and content is aligned to the learning objectives and the learning objectives aligned to the overall goal of instruction. If any of these are out of alignment the entire project can be at…

The first step of developing an assessment plan, and the first step of instructional design, in general, is getting a firm grasp of the actual instructional goal. If you’re lucky you will have the opportunity to do a full needs analysis with resources and access to the learners, chances are you will need to be…