I'm starting this year with the hard hitting questions - Is instructional design a science? This question was posed to me in one of my doctoral program courses and I can't seem to shake it. So, I wanted to take some time this week to discuss and blog about the field and the practice of instructional design. In order to effectively discuss and answer the question for this week, let's 'chunk' the information. Let's first discuss what is instructional design. Instructional des

Every now and then, I end up in a conversation with a faculty member, co-worker, or employee about what I consider the age-old debate: Should instructional designers learn tools or theories? While I find it important to know both - eventually - initially, the theory should come first. At least that is my thought process and I wanted to blog today about why. This week, I had a student come to ask advice on interviewing as he has a job interview in the field of ID. As this i

What is AIDA? "AIDA stands for attention, interest, desire, and action, and can be used to describe the sequence of events that goes into making someone want to buy your product or service" (Bean, 2014). While author Cammy Bean uses AIDA, a classic copywriting model, to e-learning - I think the same concept can be applied in a wide variety of online settings. But first, let's run though what goes into each step. Attention - "What is your hook? How do you pull the learner in

Recently, I ran into a Linked In conversation where people were asking about Instructional Design (ID) models - some individuals were new to ID, some have been in the ID world for a while, and some were just there to add to the conversation. However, it made me realize that maybe there is a need for a blog post that discusses the different ID models I work with (especially in the higher education setting). First, let's discuss what exactly an ID model is. Long story short -