Let’s get straight to the point here. As professors, we are always running out of time, isn’t it? Often we want to make sure we choose the right activity or the right type of assessment for a learning goal. And how many times do we go through the uncertainty whether an activity or an assessment item did or did not meet the learning outcome? Are more practice activities needed? Are the current assessments leading students to mastery?

I remember a time when I was the youngest instructor at a community college. I had a hard time establishing control over my classroom. Students would take me lightly and would expect me to be lenient in marking attendance to grading papers.

In their book Understanding By Design, Wiggins and Mc Tighe (2005) demonstrate the design of one single classroom lesson using the WHERETO mnemonic. As the term indicates, instructors are encouraged to think about the direction in which the students will head after completing the lesson. Again, the instructor is asked to begin with the end in mind.

When it comes to instruction design, borrowing screen real estate design principles from the interaction design field is inevitable. While interaction design is all about designing for user experience, instruction design is all about the learner experience. See a correlation between them? Both fields work towards improving the user/learner interaction with their interface. Another important concept instructional designer deal with is how the human mind scans and absorbs new information. Specifically, how is the text-based content consumed by the human mind. In this article, I would be discussing the fundamental habit of the mind that has been subjected to textual information. The goal here is to observe this habit and design instruction around it to yield maximum learner achievement.

How far have you come as an Instructional Designer? Far enough. How can you be sure of that? The number one reason it is safe to assume that instructional designers have come a long way is the unavoidable awareness about them. More and more organizations are seeking the professional services and consultations of these unsung heroes. Accreditation bodies are no longer showing mercy to training institutes and higher education organizations who have laurelled the ropes of an instructional designer, but do not possess a formal schooling of an ID. 2020 is definitely the year of the Instructional Designer! In this article, we bring to you the top trends instructional designers should be actively engaged in to develop.

I had once worked with adult students on a Computer Organization and Architecture course. These students had day jobs and came to class in the evenings. They were trying to improve their job prospects with the aid of a certification in computer related programs.