 Well, everyone, I have the top of the hour, so let's begin. Welcome, everybody. Welcome to the Future Trends Forum. I'm delighted to see so many of you here today. We have a fantastic guest on a great topic, and I'm really looking forward to our conversation. We've been talking about instructional design since we launched the program, and this comes in various ways and various types. We've talked about new forms of pedagogy online, how best to teach digitally, and in general, we've been looking at how to teach both online and off. Since the pandemic began, instructional designers really came to the fore as all of higher education quickly had to learn how to teach online, or how to teach online better. I think now instructional design is having a great moment, which is really, really important. Now, in order to celebrate and explore that moment, I'd like to welcome Luke Hobson. At MIT, Luke is a instructional designer who does, I think, the work of 12 people. He manages to not only help faculty there, not only teach classes there, not only to write books, including a great book on what to know about being a instructional designer, but he also has his own YouTube series, and he's all over his social media. Luke is something of a star in the ID world, and I'm just delighted that we can have him here. So let me welcome Luke to the stage. And greeting, sir. Hey, Brian, thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it. Oh, my pleasure. I'm really glad to see you, and I'm glad you're well and up and about. Yes, yes, COVID was not fun. Eight days, and just like two days ago, my smell and taste came back. I was like, yes. So I'm getting back on track. That's great. That's great. I'm so glad. I'm so glad. And you look great, and you sound great, too. Thank you. Thank you. Well, where are you this afternoon? I am in the extremely warm, sunny New Hampshire. What? 60 degrees in February. Totally normal. Just fine. What? What? Has it melted all the snow? It's getting, there's still some snow, but for the most part, yeah. Gosh. Oh, my gosh. Oh, that's wild. That's not what I expected at all. Well, we asked people to introduce themselves in a particular way here in the forum. We asked people to introduce themselves by describing what you're gonna be doing for the next year. What are the big projects and what are the big ideas that you're gonna be focusing on? So you're getting a sneak peek, Brian, because I literally haven't told anybody about this yet. Surprise. Fun fact about something. I am currently working on designing a brand new type of instructional design bootcamp that is meant for higher education instructional designers. I've been teaching a lot of courses out there about instructional design, and I noticed time after time again that universities were sending their entire instructional design team to learn from me, mainly about collaborating with subject matter experts. And finally, I was just like, you know what? I'm just gonna give it to the people. So I'm gonna be making an entire learning experience, talking about Andragaji, learning science, backward design, analysis, evaluating effectiveness. Just gonna put it all together and that way, folks will know everything that I know. That's my plan. Fantastic. What kind of format is this gonna take? So it's gonna be an online type of an experience. It's gonna be cohort based as well too. So it's gonna be that type of community interaction and make people feel supported and that they're not going through that learning journey alone. So that's my plan. No idea about any other details. As far as for, I don't know how long it's going to be. I don't know the price. I don't know anything else, but I'm working on it behind the scenes. So I'm excited to finally get this thing out there into the public. Is there a link we can share yet? Nope. This is, I'm literally telling you and the 200 people on this call for the first time. So there's no link. There's no wait list, nothing yet. It's just, this is what's to come. I'm so excited. That sounds great. I can't wait to see it. And I hope I can join in and learn. Thank you. Thank you. Of course. Of course. And meanwhile, you're gonna keep making videos and you're gonna keep doing your work with faculty and all that. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Naturally. No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna still be doing everything at MIT, the University of Miami, the blog, the podcast, the YouTube channel and maybe you're adding a new book or two. I don't know. I have no idea. I basically, I try to obliterate all of my free time by talking about instructional design. I did a great job with that over the years. So I'm just gonna keep on riding that wave. It's been a lot of fun. Well, that's fantastic. Well, good luck with that obliteration that we benefit from immensely. Friends, the way this normally works is I ask one or two questions of our poor guest and our guest gets to answer and have fun. And then it's over to you. So I would like just to, you know, remind you to start thinking of your questions that you'd like to put to Luke. And the one I'd like to begin with right now is in this year 2023, what are some of the dynamics that are changing the instructional design field as we see it? So as far as with instructional design, one of the things that I've been actually eagerly happy about as far as we're seeing for what people have been doing more about has been really going back into kind of like the fundamentals about how we design learning experiences, which I know this talk because it's like all about futuristic. And by all means, I can talk about chat GPT, I can go into all the futuristic fun things for sure. But one of the things that's made me feel really happy about is discussing more about learning strategies and seeing that that is actually coming into the forefront for what people have been trying to do for revising the learning experiences. So to give you an example, when I went to my graduate schooling back in 2012 for my master's in marketing, almost every single course was laid out in the exact same way. It was an online degree. Every single class was about 10 weeks in length and I had to do a reading, a discussion board and then an essay and I repeat that 10 times and then that was the end of the course. And it never had this type of creativity or innovation where I was just like, I need something. Like there's gotta be like something new. So then hearing now in 2023 when talking to people saying like, what are you actually doing? What type of creativity innovation are you bringing inside of the learning experiences and hearing more about how people are using scenario based learning and project based learning and games and simulation and case studies and narratives and journals and peer reviewed essays all these different types of things are now coming into lights and we're seeing more and more universities being able to showcase that, that they're saying, hey, look like we're diving into micro learning. We're really hitting home competency based education. We are trying to be able to explore X, Y, Z and that as an instructional designer makes me so happy to know that we're trying to be able to make more engaging relevant meaningful learning experiences. There was a great article in the Chronicle higher ed yesterday about immersive learning and it managed to talk about everything except technology. It talked about a lot of really great projects but it didn't really give us that sense about technology can be used. So that seems like a huge, huge impact. Let me ask another question. Do you see the field growing? That is, are we seeing more and more structural designers? Are we seeing the field get bigger and more prominent on campus? Are we seeing its research enterprise expand? Oh yeah, absolutely. It is growing by the day. I mean, we're even right now putting aside higher education. It is this nuts to see how many people are hiring for instructional designers. As far as for any name, any organization, Apple, Google, Tesla, Twitter, Spotify, Amazon, Wayfair, anything, we all have instructional designers somewhere. And what I've been loving seeing right now is the growth of instructional design within the sports world. So, so far the Packers, the Broncos and now the Jets have an instructional designer. Same thing too, there was a football club in the UK just hired an instructional designer and the Portland Trail Blazers just hired an instructional designer. So, not even thinking about, and higher ed honestly is where I see this growing the most. Like yes, right now inside of corporate America and of course within actually the government too as far as for with the army, with the Coast Guard, many different military positions, same thing. They're hiring up instructional designers or as they call them ISDs, instructional system designers over there. But, oh yeah, we are growing up a storm that's been crazy. Oh, that's terrific, that's great news. And, well, let me get out of the way. Let me, let me turn this over to the audience. I'd love to hear what your questions are. So again, if you're new to the forum, just go to the bottom of the screen and click the question mark button and type in your question. And if you wanna join us on stage, if your mic is on and your camera is on and you'd like to see what's going on, please just hit the raised hand button and I'll bring you up on stage. We have one question which includes a terrible, terrible personal observation here. And this comes to us from Paul Walsh. What happened to the beard? I thought it'd be funny, somebody challenged Brian's majestic beard. Paul, I didn't know that, that's terrible. I know, I know, Paul, I'm so sorry. And RIP to my beard, I was reminded this actually this morning because I did an interview with Tom McDowell last year and it finally came out today and it had, not entirely last year, but whatever, close enough. Months and months ago and I had an entire foot long beard. So it was, yeah, it was a foot long and that's when finally I thought my wife is going to divorce me. So I was like, you know what? I think it's time. So unfortunately, I had to say RIP to the beard but it was there. And Brian, I don't know how long it takes you but I had to do the whole, right? Yeah, exactly. I was gonna say my routine in the morning was the full on beard balm and then the combing and then the whole, you know, that, that's quite a bit of time. I like, I save like 15 minutes in the morning now getting ready to do that anymore. Well, that's the saddest thing I've heard all day. I know. And Paul, thank you for asking that crucial question. I, my heart goes out to you on a less lighthearted and a more serious though, we have a really great question coming in from Karen Billiner who says, Luke, do you think or fear that ID hiring will become commodified in the future? Gig work is needed and what impact might that have on the value of instructional design? That is an interesting question. I don't have a type of a fear about that as much so as that I'm loving the fact that in one type of a sense that instructional design is growing so much that we're having all these other different types of unique opportunities that have been coming about whereas before thinking about contract work was sometimes often hard to come by and then now being able to see about where it has come to and speaking with some of their different types of a few clients as well who I've been working with where I was like this opportunity would have never come about a couple of years ago. You want to make your own academy. You want to be able to go and become an OPM. You want to be able to go and do whatever that really wasn't a thing. It was really hard to being able to find those. But one thing that I do have a bit of a if I want to be able to classify as a fear of something is having the some of the folks out there who are trying to be able to outbid one another for different types of freelance work and then to undersell themselves because instructional design, we wear every hat under the sun. We do quite a bit of work pertaining to learning science and research and project management, relationship management, technology. So for some people who are like, oh, I can just make your course for you and then I go do something quickly and like throw it out into the web and it's like, no, that's not what we're talking about. Like you made a course but that's not necessarily going through the best instructional design practices. You just kind of put something together and cobbled it up and said, here you go, I'm in it. You know, sound a little bit of a different trend. Well, that's something that we should definitely keep an eye on for. And Karen Belnier, thank you. Thank you very much for the really, really good question. Folks, if you're new to the forum, that's an example of a Q&A box question. And as I say this, eight more just appeared. So let me just see if I can catch up. This is for our good friend, John Holbeck up in the upper Midwest, hopefully not freezing to death. John says, how can it feel whose roots are firmly delivering corporate and military training facilitate 21st century learning? Addie is passe. That's funny. So yes, when you think about our entire origin as far as you're going back from instructional design, sure, when we think about World War II, basically that's when the roots of instructional design but we have come from such a long way from just talking about Addie. Is Addie still used? Sure, of course. Because also it's a little bit of a common sense if you think about it, as far as you're being able to analyze a problem then trying to be able to design everything to then deliver it put, that all does make sense. But to be able to say that we have basically stopped growing after that and we have not gone further as far as you're being able to know more about androgogy and learning sciences and how we can really make something become meaningful. Well, we can do a lot more nowadays. Addie is something too that even, what's this put Addie aside? There are some instructional designers out there who don't even touch Addie nowadays. So if you wanna be able to have more different types of instructional design models pertaining to backward design or for using something more along the lines of agile or waterfall or phase gate or SAM, something else, we can do a lot more. And of course we should be relying more upon student voice and with data and with feedback and incorporating that into the learning experiences to make sure that what we are going to be designing is indeed going to be relevant and helpful for our students and for our learners. So there is a difference as far as for where we've come and where we are going to go to and we are constantly evolving, which is like the beautiful thing. We're not just staying stagnant, staying inside of the 1950s. We've still done so much more and we'll continue to keep on doing more and to keep on growing. And so even now is what we're currently seeing for the trends as far as for, like even our job title is morphing because we're talking about instructional design but I keep on seeing more and more different types of things coming about for learning experience designers. Where then there's gonna be this entire question about like, what's the difference between learning experience design and instructional design? And depending upon the job posting, it's literally no difference. This is, we have a new title and then other times people actually say, well, like, well, you should be using data more to inform your best decision-making abilities. And it's like, well, instructional designers should always be doing that. We should never just be unleashing a product out into the open and saying, hey, I hope it works. Like there has to be more to it than that. And even before instructional design, people were called everything. As well to like, it's constantly like a moving target as far as for where we keep on going. But the point is we are always moving, always growing and always trying to get better using best of what we know about from literature, from peer-reviewed-based information, and whatnot and so forth. So. Well, that's a great question and a really, really rich answer. Luke, that brings in a lot of different stuff. We have a question that came in from the chat from Shelby Rosengarten, who asks, how do educators who have worked in the field for a long time, especially those starting from before there were ID degree programs, seem to be transitioning to that role? Are there situations where experience is valued instead of credentials? So, yes, I would say that is possible, but where you wanna be able to actually go into capitalize as far as with your experience, and I'm not saying too, but there is not value inside of a degree. So let me just make sure I'm being very clear about that. But the point is, is as far as for, if you have all this different type of experience and all this knowledge inside of your heads, well, it's now time to be able to go in to bring that to light and actually showcase that. So if I was going to be coaching you right now and you come to me saying, hey, Luke, I wanna become an instructional designer. I've been doing this for years, but I've never had that title before. Well, what is it that I do? And I was like, okay, fantastic. Well, first thing is first, I want you to write down all the things you actually have accomplished inside of your timeframe, either as an educator, an instructor, a professor, whatever you've actually done, be able to think about those things, be able to then quantify them, talk about the projects, talk about the accomplishments, and then I want you to actually think more about how you can actually then go and to show that to somebody, especially for an interviewer or for being able to go in to show that to a group, like a panel of people, we wanna be able to really see as far as what you have done. So then that one is actually becomes much more important to be able to focus more on your portfolio and being able to really highlight what you have done and showing that. As far as we're going through with the motions too, when I say a portfolio, I don't just mean taking something as far as for like a screenshot and saying like, look at my class. And like, I've been just kind of giving that to somebody because that doesn't tell me everything. You were once again underselling yourself because there was so much more. So tell me more about the problem you were trying to solve pertaining to training with education, all the research that went into things, who were the target audience? How did you actually create everything as far as for with the learning goals and objectives and the outcomes? And then how you put it all together and then at the end of everything too, what were the results that actually solved the problem? What did you hear for feedback? If you could do this over again the next time around, what would you do differently? How would you actually go and improve what you originally built out? And once you can actually make this and becoming a type of like of a storytelling arc about what makes you awesome and what you have accomplished and bringing that into the forefront, that is going to knock the socks off of just somebody who has a piece of paper that says that I have a degree. Because then I can see everything you've done and say like, okay, now the interview is also going to change as far as for the shift of the conversation. Because usually when interviews start off, you try to be able to get a feel for each other, you're trying to see and whatever. And instantly as soon as I can see what you've done, now it's going to become much more about highlighting that and talking shop to then say like, okay, I know what you're doing, tell me more about this. Why did you choose this design in particular? I can see over here, but you have been able to talk more about peer reviewed based activities. What did you find about that? What was the community like inside of that one? Do people feel engaged as far as for that information and really diving on in home more and then your interview is much more going to be focusing on the nitty gritty and showcasing about how awesome you are because you know what you are talking about. So a very long rambling of an answer, but if we can highlight what you have done and really put that into a type of a portfolio piece or for a website or for something along those lines, that is going to really showcase everything you've done and all the amazing years you put into the work of your craft. So. That's a really, really rich answer. Thank you for the great question. And then Luke, what a terrific guideline to professional soft presentation. A big, big song for in praise of portfolios. Friends, we have more questions coming in. I'm so glad to see that. And we've got one right now, which actually turns from instructional design towards the faculty side. This is from Carolyn Silver. Hello, who says, what tips do you have for engaging instructors in trying to adopt new ideas in their courses? Absolutely. And no worries at all for not being able to come onto the screen. So when I'm speaking with instructors, one of the things I like to be able to do is actually to demonstrate the value as far as with using past examples and being able to show them as far as for what I've done. Because if I'm just having a Zoom conversation with somebody and let's say that like, hey, wouldn't it be interesting to go and to take your course idea and then to flip it over into something new? That's really not selling anything. They're like, I don't know. I have no idea what you're talking about, whatever. And then for, to give you an example, I was working with one professor before and we were talking about everything inside of this course and I mentioned to him, I was just like, you know, it'd be really awesome if we took all these lectures. I can string them together. I could turn it into a podcast episode for you. And he's like, you can do that. And I was like, yeah, let me show you. And I popped out instantly on my phone an example of another type of a podcast I did for a professor. We searched for it. I played like two minutes of it with him inside of the office that we were in that day. And he was instantly was like, I had no idea you could do this. And I was like, I have all the information that I need. So it's much more about being able to show it to them and being able to take past examples and kind of making like champions out of them and then being able to describe that process for them. Because then of course, after they hear more about your idea and they can actually see it, you could then go and talk more about the successes, the wins and everything. And of course, if you want to be open and transparent, perhaps how long it took them, perhaps what resources or information you're going to need to be able to build around that. But the everything too is that people talk. So if you show something to one professor and they love it, the next time you're going to be going and trying to get another person to an adopt an idea and the two professors talk together, what am I going to talk about? It's like, hey, look me in a podcast for me. And then it's like, I want a podcast. And all of a sudden that begins to keep on going throughout the organization. And the same thing can be said as far as sort of taking anything from scenario-based learning or with case studies or being able to talk about whatever idea you really want to be able to incorporate. If you can showcase that, provide those examples and also give them some type of a access into those things as well too. Because of course, people like to be able to sometimes get their hands dirty, go in, play around with things, check everything out for themselves, come back and go and answer any questions from there. That's a great way as far as for being able to take someone, make them your champion and to spread your idea and to keep on going from there. Excellent, excellent, great answer. And a really, really good question. In the chat, people have been commenting about how this reveals that relationships are vital. Oh, they're everything. Gregorio says it's 90% of her job. Yeah, that's an agree. Because the thing is too, Brian, is that when, so I'm describing like the five categories of instructional design, if you will, one of the things that I said was relationship management. That is just huge because of the fact that if you were going to become an instructional designer, you're going to be working with subject matter experts and perhaps we're talking about the higher education as setting aside of here. So professors, adjunct instructors, I mean, even industry experts, deans, directors, I've worked with literally everyone to create different types of learning experiences. And everything that you need to be able to do is really working with other people and being able to negotiate, to influence and to persuade. It's those people skills. And how do you actually get someone to really join your side? And of course, the biggest thing is really going, taking that initiative, going that extra mile, being able to really showcase in the highlights of these people that you do indeed care. And of course, being able to learn more about these people, which is like the very first thing that I do, as soon as I'm assigned to work on a new type of project with somebody, is that as soon as I get their name, I go and I do research about them. I want to know more about who they are, what they do, what are their passions, what are they like to be able to talk about? And of course, in the higher education setting, like what do they actually teach? What do they have online? If they have white papers, if they have YouTube videos, if they have anything, I dive into all of those things to learn more about them just so that that way I can try to get into the same headspace as they are. And then once I actually meet them, I'm basically doing an interview to be able to learn more about that person from there as far as for how do they like to be able to work? When is the best time for them to be creative? It's in the morning, the afternoon and the evenings. Do they like to be able to collaborate and brainstorm together? Or do they find as far as working with themselves as far as being a type of a solo person and then we can come back together as a group and then share those ideas? That's when they work best. If I can learn about all of these things before jumping into a project with somebody and throwing at them templates and guides and talking about nerdy instructional design stuff, they can do all of that beforehand. Our relationship is going to be so much better. And then by that time, if hypothetically speaking, anything else comes up in the future or perhaps I need them to do a favor or there's a demanding schedule when we have a lot going on, a lot of deliverables and due dates are coming down the road, they're far more likely to be able to want to work with me and to communicate with me instead of just trying to ghost me. And then I never hear back from them and I say, what's wrong? Are you okay? Is something going on? And instead we have a real relationship so I can pick up the phone and call them. And that is so much better compared to just wondering and guessing the entire time. So relationships, everything. Whoever said 90%, you were 100% right. Well, that's Sarah. Sarah is a fantastic person. Totally right. We have more questions and in fact, these two build on each other. So I'm gonna bring them up one at a time because they hit different things. This builds on the question of relationships with faculty. How do we advocate for ourselves as instructional designers besides the LMS tech people? Despite our expertise in so many areas, we often seem to be pigeonholed, especially in higher ed environments. Absolutely. So it's really going to be the way that you phrase instructional design and the way that instructional design is viewed inside of your organization. So when you first introduce yourself to somebody, as far as, so right now, well, Brian and I are working together on a brand new project. Brian is the professor I'm going to be working with him. As soon as I go and actually meet him and go through all the steps that I just talked about, I then actually say, so tell me, what do you know about instructional design? Wait for his answer. And then from there, I was like, have you ever worked if an instructional designer before? And sometimes the answers might surprise you because you're gonna hear from some people to say that, like, oh yeah, I worked with Alex before. They were my instructional designer. And basically I just submitted over to them my PowerPoint slides and they made some awesome type of course for me. And it was done. I'm like, cool, great, understand. It's not how we're going to do things because of the fact that that's going to be extremely difficult. And with what we are going to be building together, I want you to be proud of the fact that you're going to be putting your name on this, your stamp of approval. And that way, I want people to actually go in to take this type of a course and then to say how awesome it was to share about their testimonies online and then to go in to tell other students that they should absolutely be taking Professor Selleinso's section of the course because of how incredible it was. The point is, is that once I go into this and try to be able to almost like rewire how people view instructional design. So when I introduce myself, I say that really I'm here because I understand how adults learn. When I can partner with you, like a subject matter expert, we're going to be taking what you know about the different types of subject matter expertise and we're going to be computing it together as far as for what I know about designing learning experiences. And this pertains to being able to develop curricula, resources and materials that's going to be linking and aligning to outcomes, to competencies and to skills. And we're doing that purposefully to make sure that students are going to be getting the very most out of your course. They're understanding the goals. We're going to be able to see their progress and make sure that they're driving that motivation, that self-efficacy. And then everything that they are going to be doing is going to last until all the way until the end of a course. And they're going to get it because of how we are going to be building this together because this is going to be a partnership with you and I. And if you want me to just be the tech guy, I really can't do that. There's only so much I can do for you. But if you really want to make this the most incredible learning experience for your students, if we partner together, then this is really going to be what I can bring to the table. If I phrase it like that, that's extremely different from just being like, hey, just email me when you have learning management system problems. Which is what a lot of people may think about. So it's a different shift. It really is. And then of course, if that is going to obviously but will be a challenge, especially to if they're, if the buy-in of the organization, if that sentiment is around, unfortunately what you described as far as for like, oh, IDs are on the bottom of the ladder kind of thing. And they have no say. Then that is going to be a much tougher type of a conversation to have. But eventually you should be bringing up too with senior level leadership because we're all in this together. And if you just assume that I'm just going to be there where you can just blast me PowerPoint slides and try to make something that you think is actually going to be great. And it's not going to go so well. And that eventually is going to become an entire problem for the entire institution. When they're like, huh, no one's enrolling in courses. Wonder why? Like, oh yeah, well, because they're awful. Maybe that's why. So, you know, we need to be able to be in this together. Makes sense. Oh, it's brutal. First of all, Sarah, thank you for the really good question. Thank you again. And Luke, thank you for that terrific answer which really outlines this. There are a couple of questions that come in which really take that in some interesting directions as well. So let me bring this one up here. This is from John McCormick. Says, in the higher ed space, have you seen structural designers or learning designers partner with faculty developers in centers of teaching and learning, for example? The fields seem to have much overlap but are still in silos to a degree. Absolutely, absolutely. And I know John very well. So thank you, John, for the question. But it's true. And you bring up a fantastic point, John, about how there are certainly silos within higher education. And it takes people to really go out of their way to be able to go and to talk with one another about how we can best support each other. So definitely in teaching and learning labs and centers for learning and things of that nature, we all have them inside of our institutions and our universities. And it's usually not until you go into some type of a conference where we're all together and you're introducing yourself and you're like, hey, what do you do? Haven't you find out like, oh, I'm over in this center? And you're like, oh. I didn't know that we had that or that you did that. It's always especially too, because of course I'll take myself, for example, MIT's huge. Yeah, it takes a huge amount of effort for me to connect with other people and usually on LinkedIn of all places to say like, hey, I see you're a instructional designer at MIT. What do you do? Like what departments do you work in? And then from there, as then talking more about, well, then how can we collaborate together? Because John, as you mentioned, oftentimes things do overlap all the time. I mean, I'll even go into different types of websites that I'll see from other organizations. And it's talking about backward design and androgagy and pedagogy and going to all these things where it's like, of course, we talk about the exact same thing too. So why wouldn't we come together? And that's usually when someone can do something along the lines of being able to create a different type of series of trainings or for webinars or for creating their own conference or walk-in hours or whatever you can do to try to be able to bring the people together I meant to have us work on those projects in real time. That's when I see some more collaboration really being able to build up. But other than that, it's a lot more seeing it from an individual perspective. It takes quite a bit of effort to be able to actually go into feel that type of a unified voice throughout an entire institution. It's a challenge that silos are real. It's a strong challenge. Quite true, quite true. Well, thank you. And thank you for the great question, John. There's a lot going on in that world. We then had Alice Swendler then wanted to know about teams here. Let me see if I can get this to show. Oops. What does the Instructional Design Dream Team look like? Should IDs be video editors, producers, graphic designers, technology specialists, and that last piece about adult learning experts? Or should I, you got cut off there but I think, you know, how many people should be involved? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a fantastic question. So the best type of experiences come when we can actually bring in multiple perspectives and multiple voices. Can instructional designers do literally everything that you just said? Yes. Should they be doing everything? No, I really don't think so. Their time is much more well spent on other different types of areas. So I've been on teams before where there is a project manager, a senior instructional designer, a junior instructional designer, a graphic designer, multi-media, like a video editor, the person who was actually involved within being the one to go into film those sessions. And then to have something along the lines of someone within data analytics, learning analytics, and to have someone who was like the advisor, the customer support rep in a course, having different subject matter experts pertaining to both academia and within the industry in and of itself too from as far as from a corporate type of perspective. When you have that type of a dream team to work on something, and of course too, the types of projects that I'm referring to, they're larger projects obviously in nature. You're not gonna unleash seven people on a week-long training course. It's not as needed as opposed to saying, hey, we're making this brand new initiative. It's going to be a four month long process. Yeah, you're gonna want a lot of people to be able to actually go into work on that because of the fact too, but different perspectives are going to make learning experiences better when I can actually go and see a junior SME, sorry, a junior instructional designer and a senior instructional designer collaborating together to make sure that everything flows, that everything does make sense, that all the different types of assessments are gonna be relevant inside of the workplace or whatever the goal is that we're going to be designing, that's going to be way more helpful compared to this one person trying to do this by themselves. Once again, they always can. You always can do something by yourself, but if you can bring in more people, that would kind of be like my dream team, if you will, because you're gonna learn too. I learn things from our multimedia team all the time. They'll bring up questions and coaching and other different things and working with faculty members. And I'm in the back, I'm taking notes. And I was like, that was a fantastic question. I'd never thought about that before. So you can always learn from one another. So that's my dream team, if you will, right there. Well, that's great. That's a great answer. And I love the point about scaling appropriately, the team scale to the size of the project. What a great question. Thank you. And friends, you can tell Luke and I are very, very happy to answer your questions. And by we, I mean Luke, all the work. We have another question which develops this point a little further still. Dwells on one particular topic that you've already mentioned, which is from Paul Walsh. Are ISDs becoming project managers as well? Should a more formal project management background be part of the training education of designers? Are they becoming project managers? They might be. I'm not seeing a type of a sweeping reform of people going and becoming PMs. What I will say though, that I have seen from some people going into jumping into this different type of area is that, depending upon the sector, project managers, honestly, just make more money. So because of that factor, I have seen some instructional designers who are transparent and saying, you know what? I already do project management. Why don't I just kind of dive on in there and really just go for the gold and actually go and secure a higher type of a salary? I have seen that before. It would be interesting to think more along the lines of trying to be able to have a stronger form of education within project management going into the basics of instructional design. Because you're right. There's no PMP certificate. I never went through anything like that. It was more of just hands-on experience and training as far as for just failing a lot and then being able to say, OK, I need a better way as far as worth managing people and with managing these different types of projects. So it was much more about hands-on experience where I really learned about how to be a PM, if you will. So it's tricky because there's also plenty of organizations, especially if in higher education too, where there are PMs assigned to work with the IDs. I've seen that plenty of times. So it's tough to say from a huge perspective of just trying to give you an absolute answer, but it's way more it depends as far as should that goes. Tricky one, tricky one to answer. Well, but a good question, a very good question. And that's a really great point about PMs making more money. I can see that luring people away from the ID field. We have a great big question coming up. But first, I want to zero in on one particular tactical question. This is from our good friend Ed Finn. And Ed asks, as you mentioned, ID is too often associated with being too highly structured. Can you address the importance of clarifying questions? I often compare it to a librarian doing a reference interview. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I have seen instructional designers feel like they must follow everything like step by step by step. And that's never, we're working with people. People aren't perfect. They're never going to follow a certain type of a template or a guide. And even though you might being able to go and take something and follow that along those same lines, you need to know when to pivot and when to actually go and to move. So to give you an example, let's say that I'm an instructional designer. I'm currently working with one faculty member and they are currently recording the videos for their courses. At the end of the very first day, I can tell that they are just spent. They are super nervous. They're shaky. It took four hours to get them to feel comfortable. And hey, they have an entire another session coming up the next day and the next day. Sometimes it is totally appropriate to call it and say, you know what? Let's pivot here. I think we should try to be able to go. Let's go back to the drawing board. Let's talk more about our strategies and let's see exactly what we can do to make you feel more comfortable. And sometimes you're gonna hear being like, oh, Luke, thank you so much. I just didn't have enough time to practice. I was traveling this week. I just flew in. I know, I know what I'm talking about, but it's just, it's not there. If I just have a day to practice and we can just do it again two days from now, I promise you I'm gonna be ready. It's like, perfect. That's what I need to be able to know. So it's very much trying to learn more about the people and being able to ask those different types of thought provoking questions. As far as we're just really just saying about like, you know, how are you feeling? How was the direction? How are things going? What can I best do to actually support you? Which is a number of different types of things. One thing I love to actually ask too, which is kind of like of a weird question. It makes things people uneasy, but it's really interesting to ask this question. I like to, when I work with my subject matter experts, I ask about how they like to handle conflict. Which is different, because you're immediately opening up Pandora's box to say, we're not fighting right now. But if something comes about, what is my best way to be able to work with you so that that way we can just go past this and move to the next thing? So to give you an example, I asked this to one subject matter expert before and he took a second and he thought about it. And he was just like, you know what? Luke, my big pet peeve is I hate compliments sandwiches. Never give that to me. Just tell me straight. If something's wrong, let me know right away just so that that way I can try to correct it. We can put our heads together and we can move forward. So he's like, but the whole thing of you emailing me saying so far, what's great. Sneaking in, why it's not really so well. Sneaking back in, what kind of works. I hate that. And it's just a waste of time. It's like, you checkmark, sir. You got it. I will never do that with you. And sure enough, something came up in the project. We addressed it. I remembered what he said. So I just made sure to say like, hey, you know, we talked about this before. This is coming about. What can we do to rectify this? And he's just like, ah, got it. We moved on. It was incredible. So I started to be able to really ask more of those different types of questions to try to be able to get more out of people to get them to talk to me. And then that way I can learn more about going back into your question with structure, with design. Then I can know where to really put things in order because as designers, we do have a certain type of a cadence to the rhythm that we do follow. And usually it's like trying to be able to go and create learning objectives first, then assessments, then activities, and then content. And you build it. And then you try to go and get pilot data and then testing and then collect that feedback to go and revise it again, again, again. But sometimes that's not how it works. Sometimes people have a very strict schedule. Sometimes things come about, especially with COVID-19. Can't tell you how many sessions I had to cancel because of COVID, because of all these crazy things. We had to move locations. We had to, I had to pivot a billion times during the pandemic with what I did. So it happens, it comes about. But as long as you have that type of open communication and honesty and making sure that you can hear from those people and get that feedback and that way you're not just getting ghosted once again, that will allow you to keep on carrying on that conversation and trying to figure out what to do next. Well, that's a terrific answer. Wow, with a lot of stories in it. And again, thank you for that great question. We have a video question coming up. Let me see if I can bring Jen up on stage. Hello, Jen. Hi, can you hear me? You can hear me. Good to hear you. My brain is only working at 50% capacity. Today's I couldn't phrase the question in text. So my question is looking, I guess, back to the redundancy that tends to exist in higher education. And instructional design positions weren't always placed in an office or position of influence or power. And so it greatly frustrates me to see that much redundancy. How can we go about now getting the attention of leadership to say, hey, yes, we have a teaching and learning center. Yes, IT does conducts webinars. Yes, our DEI office. How do we try to make this more efficient? Great question, Jen. Great question. The trick with that is going to be being able to go and to collect and use data. So if you are doing something, so let's say, hypothetically speaking, you're going to be launching a brand new pilot program of a new type of initiative. And you want to be able to go and to do something that's really going to be different. So you've never done before. And let's say that you're going to be able to put in all the stops. It's going to be a cohort-based approach. You're going to have everything as far as making sure there are peer-review-based activities. There's going to be scenario-based learning. You're going to even have elements and simulations inside of there, whatever it's going to be. At the end of every single week, as you were designing the learning experience, what you then should be doing is actually embedding a survey at the end of each week and collecting the feedback from those students and hearing about, do they find it to be relevant? Do they find it to be meaningful? Do they find it to be engaging? How long are they spending inside of this? Do they have any suggestions for improvements? So on and so forth. Doing that every single week and then at the end of everything, actually trying to be able to host interviews and focus groups to learn more from them and hear about their entire experiences. Then once you have all of the student voice that you can actually then go and use, then you can take all of this data and this feedback with you and then to go and to organize the type of the meeting within the powers that be within your institution. And then say, look at what we did and look at these numbers. Look at these stories. Look how many times they actually tagged us on Facebook and LinkedIn to say, but this is the greatest course that they've ever taken. Look at it as far as for the retention rates about how from this course with the different types of support initiatives we put inside of here, we actually had a 95% completion rate inside of here. And now we can already see if they're looking forward to enrolling into the next course of the next to the next. They already signed up for the next type of four semesters, whatever it is. You have all of this credible data. And when you give it to somebody, it is now so much more where you can add in of course your own story and your own elements about everything. But now it's going to back up what you say with numbers. And for a lot of people, especially if in those who have a decision making capabilities within the organization, when they can say that like, oh, oh, you're telling me but this is actually going to generate more revenue, makes students more happy, increase the student satisfaction from course to course. And of course, if you can do even more on top of that as far as being able to talk more about collaboration and team efforts and even bringing in other voices too as well as from instructors, professors, facilitators, whoever to be able to go and to build a coalition around you, that is going to allow you to increase your type of influence within the organization and then to go and to use that as a driving force time and time and time again. So it's using data, it's building a team and it's trying to really just go and to take that and to do something awesome with it. Thanks. I kind of feel though that our overlapping colleagues are going to be doing the same thing, right? Everybody's playing for their position. Of course, of course. Always, always. I don't want it to be confrontational. It's just like, you know, I wish we could get leaderships like Zoom out and get a more holistic picture of what's going on and how we can merge certain places that would be more sense. Of course. And this doesn't need to be confrontational. Right, no. Yeah, yeah. If I start doing that, I can force you to be like, huh, what is she doing over there? Yeah, of course. This is like, why are you talking to them? What are you doing? Yeah, no, it doesn't need to be like that. But also too, you can pull in different types of data that we now have like an insurmountable amount of data now because of everything with the pandemic. As far as we're being able to go into pinpoint what some institutions have not been doing effectively, I've been talking about the negative types of impacts that have come from that. Like I firmly do believe that why, there's yes, there's many reasons for why institutions around the country have been, unfortunately having to close their doors. But I know from reading some of those different types of research pieces and articles that you hear from the students and they basically said that the courses were awful. And it's like, no kidding, you wanted to transition, you transferred to a different school because oh, guess what? They have something better and people actually seem to enjoy the classes they're taking. It's not to the fault of somebody as far as for, like I'm not gonna go and point fingers or whatever, but it's like, but we know, like if you've taken an online course before, you know when something's great and you know when something is like, ugh, like I'm just getting dragged over the cross the finish line because I just need to complete this thing to get my degree. So it's that and you can point to those stories too to be able to say that even XYZ institution has capitalized on this idea as opposed to this because you're gonna see too of a lot of different types of institutions out there do talk more about different types of approaches and models as far as you're being able to think more about with competency-based education or we're talking about experiential learning or talking about all the different types of approaches too to be able to say, look at what they're doing, it's awesome. It's literally like the advertisement on their front of their website because people love it so much. Can we bring that over into here? Can we do something new? So it's just a lot of data, a lot of stories and really trying to spread the word. And like you, I wish I could just say like this and all of a sudden, but that's not how it works. It's a fight. It's a fight to spread the good word about instructional design. It really is. Thank you, Luke. No problem. Well, thank you for the great question, Jen. And I hope you feel better. You sound great. Well, we have, that's an example of video question, friends. If you're new to the forum and you can tell that that works fairly well, we have three questions, Luke, almost four that really just overlap on each other. So I want to bring them up again and just see where they go. And this is the big question I was talking about, I mentioned before. Kevin Steves asks, how do you see AI impacting the role of the structural designers? Of course. And I was waiting for that. And I was just like, we're going to talk about chat GPT and all the other new ones that keep on popping up now. I haven't dived in yet enough into looking at Bing's new product. I can't, I can't speak to that all. But at least we're talking about chat GPT as far as for open instructional design specifically. I wrote a blog post about this the other day because it was really surprising to me about how much I can do with something along the lines of chat GPT. And of course, thinking about the fact that it is a chat bot. So a lot of people I see like they'll write about on LinkedIn and they're like, well, I asked it to create some learning objectives for me but the learning objectives were awful. And I'm like, yes, did you tell it to revise them and to make them better? Like, no, like, well, you can. So yes, if I want to be able to go and say, hey, I'm creating a new type of this brand new offering, I want to be able to go and to get a type of a sense about what types of learning objectives and learning outcomes potentially we could be using and I can brainstorm with my subject matter expert here but give me something to be able to go off of I'm making a brand new course talking about project management. And you can ask it to be able to create you five learning objectives using Bloom's taxonomy and it will give you sure enough five learning objectives. Are they gonna be great? No, cause then you can go back and actually say, I want you to revise these and not use the words understand, know and learn to make them more specific. And they can. So that is one step. And then of course, we can keep on building from there but sort of only learning objectives. You can actually go as far as being able to ask it to create case studies or scenario based problems. You can ask it to even create podcast scripts for your courses. I've done that. It works. It's mind boggling. One of the things I love to actually be able to do is to take the transcripts from all of the videos, put that into chat GPT and say, can you summarize this for me? Do they give me an overview for the end that I can give the students? Sure enough, it goes through everything and obviously the human that needs to go and prove freedom at it and line by line and give suggestions and whatnot and so forth. But it's all these little things inside of here that once again, to be very clear, I do not think that chat GPT is coming to take your job because I know it's what everyone fears is this like, oh my gosh, the robot overlords, they're here, I'm gonna be out of a job. And I'm like, I know, I get it. But we're not there yet. Yet is the key word there. Let's say we're gonna be like 20 years from now. Right now, we're not there yet. So instead, we can try to be able to go and to capitalize this and to learn more about how to embrace technology with doing these things. And the more I keep on sharing about this, the more I hear from other people as far as we're saying, oh yeah, I asked it to be able to go and take all my information and to create a type of an exam. I asked it to give me a couple of different type of suggestions if I wanted to go into do different types of learning activities inside of a course. And I said, what do you think? What should actually go into these different types of spots? You can use that for all those things right now. So to me, chat GPT and any other form of AI is gonna be coming out and launching more. It is a Kickstarter. It is something where you are just, you're not feeling it today. Your brain juices are not working. There's no creativity and you ask it to go and be able to do something for you. Chances are, it's gonna give you that type of idea that need a boost and you can keep on going from there. Well, just so you know, we had one question which was exactly this from Rick Bartlett. And I have to mention that I had chat GPT generate the rules for several simulation games and then I had to play the role of the simulation manager. I basically played the game with chat GPT, which was fun, but more to the point, our wonderful friend Roxanne Risken had a question. I think it was more on the learning side rather than the professional side, which is, can you discuss the use of AI chat bots? MIT stated this as being positive for students' emotional engagement learning. That's interesting. I honestly, I do not know enough about that. That was not in my area of MIT. I wish I could speak to that more, but the only thing that I can try to be able to go and I'm not going to make any assumptions here about as far as for that goes. But what I know that some people have been able to go and to use with chat GPT with and with all the different forms of chat bots is that it does not make them feel like they are alone inside of a learning journey. And they can actually go into communicate with that and to bounce ideas off of one another. So essentially it's like, it feels like you have a person you are working with. So you have like an accountability buddy, a study buddy, if you will. I know that some instructional designers have told me that's how they have felt when trying to be able to go in to do this. It's like, oh, I would usually do this within my office. I would just go over to someone's desk and I would say like, Hey, what do you think about this? And instead, now I'm using chat GPT to do that. And that's replicating that type of brainstorming activity. So I've seen that from designers being able to use it. I wish I could speak more to the MIT study, but that's how I've seen at least designers use it. Well, that's, I appreciate your candor and MIT is a small place. Why don't you just have all that in your head, right? Yeah, and it's just going to go walk over to the Lex Freeman's office and say hi. You know, kick down the door like, oh, that's going. Yeah. But Roxanne always has a keen focus on the emotional and mental health and are really, really glad to hear that. Let's point you in a different direction because we're almost out of time. And this is a question that I was going to ask myself. So I'm glad somebody else did it. Elizabeth Ratliff asks, will you be talking about instructional design research and future directions in this discussion? So I think now is your chance to do just that. I'd love to. I'd love to Elizabeth, thank you for saying this. So this is a thing that it is futuristic thinking that I've been talking about, but the amazing part is that we can do this right now. So within instructional design land, there are two different types of items that I want to be able to go and start pushing more for us to be able to fully adopt and embrace. And that is going to be learning tracks and changing the difficulties within online courses. So what does this actually mean? Is that essentially, if you're going to be designing a learning experience on the backend side, you can customize to the extent of being able to go into designate different types of learning tracks for your students. So hypothetically speaking, let's say that I am making a course talking about marketing and you could even come into this as far as you're saying, but your goal is to become a marketer for like a Google or an Apple, or perhaps your goal is that you want to become an entrepreneur and you were looking to learn more about marketing to help out your business. I can then therefore go into everything pertaining to the materials of the content, to the activities and to the assessments and I can customize that to either be a split for an entrepreneur or for somebody who is going into a team. And I can actually label and put them into these different forms of learning tracks. And when you come into the course, you can actually declare what track you want to go down so that that way what you were going to be reading and exploring and going through is going to be speaking to you and to your goals and not so much of a broader sense, but more of a hyper laser focus of what you want to be able to really do. I see this really being able to become used more specifically within the professional development sector and within certificate programs because in that way you can go and customize and do this. We're actually doing this right now within Edge's Low Academy and one of the learning facilitators, we have an instructional design principles for course creators program. And inside of there, when you go into the instructional design land, you actually pick and choose what sector you want to be able to hear more about. So hearing more from K through 12, corporate, nonprofit, government, higher education, you can literally pick and choose which track you're going to be going down and the discussions more based around those topics to be more relevant for what is it that you're doing. So they're called learning tracks, learning paths, whatever you want to be able to call them, people refer to them at different things but we can literally do this right now in real time. And if you want to take that one step further where I think we're going to be going into is being able to take all that different type of information and then to add in a type of a difficulty rank, if you will. So once again, let's think about it from a professional development perspective, you go into something, we know that there's no such thing as a one size fits all model for students. We do our best to be able to support them and to cater to them. But they call, come with different types of levels of prior knowledge for some of them. They have never heard about this subject matter before. For some of them, they actually have an anxiety around the course topic, math, hello, there you go. Is that hate math? I mean, you're going to have some people who are going to be laser focused and they're ready to take things to the next level. They could, hypothetically speaking, start on different types of tracks as far as for being an easy medium in hard mode. You can go inside of this, take let's say something a medium mode as far as for all the different types of course content after you're going through a week, you were struggling. You thought I was going to take you 10 hours, it's taking you 30 hours. You were just, you're doing everything right. It's not clicking. What can you do? You can go in and then say, you know what, I'm going to toggle. I'm going to go into the easy track. It will then open up more information, more supportive documentation, give you longer as far as for extensions on assignments, hypothetically speaking, whatever you want to be able to go into do, and then once you feel comfortable enough, you can then go and then bump up into back on the medium difficulty. And the whole point is that you were never stuck on one track the entire time. You can flip flop and pick and choose as you are progressing and as you're feeling more comfortable to being able to decide how do you actually want to be able to finish the learning experience? Once again, we can do that right now. And we have a technology, we have the brain power, we can do all of these different things. The thing is, is that it's going to take a while. It's hard work. It's a lot of hard work to be able to essentially go and pick three different versions of a course, if you will, and try to be able to modify them. But if I'm really putting on my tin foil hat here and thinking about futuristic thinking, that is where I think all of these different types of opportunities are going to be to really allow our students that customization, give them that freedom and that flexibility to be able to pick and choose how they want to be able to learn. That's where I think we're going. Well, I don't think you need a tin foil hat. I think it would be a fantastic hat by itself. Is the track called EduFlow? Is that the new movement? So the learning platform is called EduFlow. And EduFlow, you can do the tracks in EduFlow. Some other learning management systems have forms of learning tracks. But the thing that I can't get my head around because it's just so annoying is that you are stuck on a track, which is the point. You know, it's just like, oh, congratulations. You are now on this until you complete the course. And it's like, no, it's not the point. Like you want to be able to have the flexibility to pick and choose which way you want to be able to go. So as far as I know, EduFlow is the only learning platform that allows you to actually move people. They themselves can move, not the administrator has to make you and go and move. I think that's the only one I've seen so far. But speaking of tracks, we have to, with great regret, pause this track because it's the top of the hour. And we have somehow burned through an hour of time. Luke, you've been fantastic. Thank you so much for answering all of our questions and for giving us so much information. What's the best way of keeping up with you? Is it through your website, through Twitter, or through following you on YouTube or where? Sure. So I think LinkedIn is going to be the easiest place. That's usually where I hang out the most is on LinkedIn. Of course, if I'm a website, drlucopson.com, you can just Google me. I will pop up. Just so you know, I am not the actor on Netflix and I am not the swimmer in Texas who's crushing it. We all have the same name, which is why if you use drlucopson, usually my stuff pops off instead of theirs. On the bottom of your screen, friends, you should have a kind of tan colored button. This is drlucopson's site and that should bring you up to the start of it. Thank you so much, Luke, for all your time and for your energy. And thanks for sharing with us your news about your new project. And good luck with that. Thank you. Once again, thank you, Brian, for having me. An hour literally flew by. Oh, yeah, that happened. That's awesome. And take care. Absolutely. And friends, don't leave yet. Let me just thank you all for the fantastic questions. If you'd like to keep talking about this, the changes, the instructional design position and the profession, just use the hashtag FTTE. And you can keep up the conversation on Twitter. You can tweet at me, Brian is at Alexander, or you can tweet Ash Ending events. You could follow me on Macedon or you could also check out my blog. If you'd like to look into our previous sessions on structural design, curriculum, pedagogy, and so on, just go to tinyurl.com slash FTF archive. If you'd like to look ahead to our new topics, they include decolonizing higher ed, enrollment updates, and AI and academia. Go to forum, that future of education, that US to see more. If you'd like to share any of your own projects, any of your own work, a bunch of you have been typing good stuff into chat GBT during this conversation. Please email me. I'd be glad to share with everybody else. And in the meantime, thank you all for being with us. What a great conversation. I hope you're all doing well. I hope you're safe and sound. I look forward to seeing you next time online. Take care. Bye-bye.