In this latest Member Showcase conversation: Dorota Langner.

Born and raised in Poland, then moving to France, then Ireland, and now living in Toronto - Dorota has had a fascinating journey thus far, and is about as passionate an instructional designer as you'll find out there.

It's always a treat to talk to instructional designers from other parts of the world and Dorota is no exception. And best of all, if you're an employer looking for someone that's worked for public and private companies, especially NGO's and multinational corporations, you'll want to reach out to Dorota - she's currently available for employment. And more than likely, she won't be for long.

Here's Dorota's website: https://dorotalearningexpert.wordpress.com/

So thanks for tuning in, and meet Dorota Langner in our latest Member Showcase.

In this Community Discussion episode, we asked the question "Do Instructional Designers Need Coding Skills?" The short answer is No. But - there is also a very strong case to answer that question with "It depends". Ultimately, the question can only be answered by defining the kind of instructional designer you're going to be, for example, a free lancer or a single person on a small ID team that might not have access to developers or coders.

Take a listen to the episode and you'll hear some great feedback from the audience that was composed of some strong instructional design veterans.

Also in this episode, we dive a bit into a project guest Carlita Godsey is working on. She's building a course on American Sign Language and reached out to the Community in this episode to see if she needed to learn how to code to be able to make her course better.

Link to slide deck: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1LjYJoouUgWl6HzvnIw3Ty8vjhuHMetbD3dHS-IShPeA/edit?usp=sharing

In this special episode, we have diversity, equity, and inclusion professional, Ankit Shah as a guest with host Cara North. The topic is How to Have Conversations About Race at Your Workplace. And Ankit offers an excellent foundation of how to start the conversations and hopefully, produce effective dialog that will help address what is at the forefront of most current discussion in our society - the topic of race.

Talking about race can be very uncomfortable. But it's an important topic to address, and having these discussions is an incredible opportunity for us to move forward.

Meet Devlin Peck of Peck Consulting. Devlin joined us to discuss an article he wrote exactly about that: How to Become An Instructional Designer in 2020.

As you might expect, there was a lot to go over, and we moved through the conversation at a quick pace. In fact, I can safely say this episode may have had more Q&A than any previous TLDCast we've done. We had over 200 people registered for this one, so the audience chat was a constant stream.

Give this episode a listen, it's full of helpful information and you may want to go the original recording for more detail. The chat transcript is also located in our Slack group at www.TLDChat.us. Enjoy.

https://www.devlinpeck.com/posts/how-to-become-instructional-designer

In this Community Showcase episode, we feature Gina Johnson, currently an adjunct professor of Communication at the college of Southern Maryland, and also a new instructional designer --- she just enrolled in a certification program that started a few days ago!

You don't often meet a workplace professional with this much passion and energy. Gina has a variety of skill sets that seem to have led her to instructional design, and it's going to be exciting watching her trajectory.

Check out the episode - Gina has a great career in instructional design ahead of her.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/gina-johnson-61a53b111/

In this Community Showcase episode, we feature Carin de Weme! Carin is a Senior Global L&D adviser based out of the Netherlands. She's a teacher turned instructional designer, very enthusiastic about her profession, and in this conversation, you'll find it obvious she loves her job and the creativity being an instructional designer offers.

It's also nice to hear the perspectives of our European members and supporters; they have insights that can inspire us here in the North America, insights that might help us think differently.

Enjoy the episode - Carin was a great guest and someone worth connecting with.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carindeweme/

https://oeb.global/oeb-insights/the-virtual-classroom-journey/

In this episode, Kristen Hayden Safdie hosts Nick Floro for a great case study on The DBQ Project, something that Nick and the Sealworks team helps to maintain and produce. DBQ means Document based questions, and The DBQ Project is a 6-Step Method that builds on students’ curiosity and increases motivation and confidence to answer a compelling, authentic question.

This is a fascinating project that you'll probably want to catch the video version of. Check it out here:

You can see the tools Nick uses for producing content, as well as how students interact with the system.

It's great stuff and it's likely you'll feel inspired after hearing Nick discuss it; he's obviously passionate about The DBQ Project and how it helps both students and teachers.

In this episode, we talk with Margie Meacham, aka “The Brain Lady”, one of the foremost experts in educational neuroscience and artificial intelligence and a long time supporter of TLDC.

We've spoken with Margie many times, but in this showcase, we learned so many new things about Margie that illuminates why she passionately pursues knowledge about neuroscience and learning.

[email protected]

Hamideh is a data scientist researching the application of digital marketing tactics and analytics into L&D. Essentially, she's an outsider in this space, and with a background in systems analysis, engineering, IT management, and data science, she is able to articulate some obvious improvements training could use, but is often blind to.

Take a listen to Hamideh's research results on applying digital marketing to L&D, as well as some of her own observations about how Learning and Development professionals should integrate design, data, and marketing into the work they do.

Shared links from Hamideh:

In this podcast episode, contributor Toddi Norum talks with beginning Instructional Designer, Christine Belzie. It's a fascinating time to get into the world of ID, and Christine is someone that Toddi has been particularly intrigued with on Linkedin.

So what you have here is an informal discussion between veteran instructional designer and newbie. It's an interesting mix in that you can see the differences in approach to this career from two people who are starting into it over a decade apart.

scriptwriting: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/three-lessons-ive-learned-from-writing-e-learning-courses-belzie