In our first playlist episode on Certificates and Certifications, we had a lot of questions for Christy Tucker about graduate certificates.

Christy is a Learning Experience Design Consultant at Syniad Learning and has done a great deal of research on grad certificates, which she's posted about on her blog.

In fact, when I was researching this topic, Christy's articles came up so many times it only made sense to invite her on to the broadcast.

So the post this conversation is primarily based on, is titled similarly: Instructional Design Certificate or Master's Degree?

You will learn more than you expected in this conversation. Christy answered more than a dozen questions on this topic, and I'd say the one thing that stood out to me is not necessarily the importance of the grad certificate or the Master's degree, but the portfolio you create.

So give this one a listen, if you're interested in this topic, you're sure to enjoy it - Christy was a wonderful guest and you can find her blog at https://www.christytuckerlearning.com/.

In this episode, Cara North and Jonathan Rock discuss Discursive Practices in L&D.

So what are discursive practices? In this case, they are the dominant ideas or practices in an industry that ultimately define that industry.

And in this episode, Cara and Jon discuss a recently released capability model from ATD, the Association of Talent Development. In this release, there were some somewhat surprising descriptions of skills L&D practitioners should have, and Cara and John opened up a discussion with the community about some of these skills and their relevance...or non-relevance.

So take a listen, I think this episode will give you quite a bit to think about.

You can continue the conversation in our Slack group, join for free at www.tldchat.us. Or go to our website at www.tldc.us.

In this Productivity Playlist episode, our guest is Nick Floro, President of Sealworks Interactive.

Nick is well-known for sharing fantastic app and software tips, and I'm delighted we were able to get him in for this episode.

His discussion was focused around new project productivity tips and hacks, and he shared the entire suite of tools he and his team uses whenever they start a new client project. You'll find specific tool recommendations in this episode, and even folder and file directory structure suggestions, which coming from a 30 year veteran in this space, is absolutely gold.

You're not going to want to miss his shared dropbox sheet that displays the outline of his talk. The link to the sheet is in the description.

He also took a photograph of his six monitor array workstation. Mind blowing stuff.

You can find all of the resources Nick mentioned here in his shared Google Sheet: https://paper.dropbox.com/doc/TLDC-The-Productivity-Playlist-Nick-Floro--AthOwGHvR0uRlj19XhgPVp8UAg-c4SLzXOL88jrSw6TnehLM

When you consider productivity, "reflection" isn't the first thing that comes to mind. Maybe it's because we don't value reflection as something that's a part of our workday; it's more of a new age-y concept, like mindfulness and meditation.

Well like mindfulness and meditation, reflection definitely has its place in increasing personal productivity. And in this episode, Jo Cook of Lightbulb Moment explains why.

Setting goals, leveraging accountability, and doing check-ins are all elements of productivity and Jo offers some real-life examples of how she stays productive using reflection.

This Productivity Playlist episode features Jonathan Rock aka JRock.

JRock works in a learning department of ONE. That role may or may not be familiar to many of you, but at the very least, you can imagine how important it is to maintain a level of productivity and efficiency being the lone instructional designer in an organization.

So in this episode of the Productivity Playlist, Jonathan focuses his tips on time management, preserving focus, and letting processes work for you.

And don't forget, if you'd like to watch the live broadcasts of these episodes or become a Member of TLDC, The Training, Learning, and Development Community, you can find us at www.tldc.us. You can also join our Slack group at www.tldchat.us.

In this Community Discussion episode, we discussed GOALS.

Since it's the beginning of the year, it only felt natural to reflect on what's ahead for 2020. So in this episode, some of our live audience contributed their 2020 goals and we also had a couple of fantastic onscreen guests.

Mike Simmons, Founder of Catalyst Sale and known for his stellar ability to execute on and accomplish goals, broke down how he sets, executes, and achieves his goals.

Michael Abrams, an Organizational Development Professional and Entrepreneur who is working on a doctoral thesis focused on goals, offered some excellent insight into how we process goals, some strategies for success, and even some of the psychology behind goal setting.

It was a great conversation that covered fitness topics and Dairy Queen Blizzards to tracking, analysis and failure potentials.

I hope this discussion inspires you to succeed at your goals, and at the very least, set some goals for the year if you haven't already.

In this episode, Kristen Hayden Safdie interviews participants from the 2019 Fall xAPI Cohort. This series of interviews is a great way to learn more about the Cohort sponsored by Torrance Learning.

The eight guests that appeared and their projects are:

Team Alexa, featuring Bryan Wanzer and Izzy Laura, discussed using xAPI to track learners that were functioning as customer service representatives, and an Alexa device was functioning as a customer calling in.

Next up was a fascinating project with Joanne Rosequist, who was using xAPI to track early childhood education.

Then Stephen McBroom took his turn and described his project using xAPI to track interactivity in a training video.

Then Jonathan Rock was invited in to talk about his project using xAPI to track gameplay in Dungeons and Dragons.

Then we had Eric Schneider, who is using xAPI with Unity 3d, a cross-platform game engine.

Then Kristen talked with Judy Katz. They were both on a team that used a technology called Pebble.

And finally, the last guest was Brian Floyd who had a great project using xAPI that tracked new product training built in Captivate.

You can sign up for the next xAPI Cohort here: https://xapicohort.github.io/

This TLDC Productivity Playlist episode took place on Thursday, January 2nd, 2020.

This discussion featured Kristen Hayden Safdie who discusses some of her more recent productivity tips and hacks from 2019, which she is carrying into 2020.

Kristen discusses these productivity tips in this episode:

Realistic sleep schedules

• Most important thing is to get rest - but find what is natural for your schedule and your body

Journal using the bullet journal format (book recommendation below)

• Integrating personal and professional lists

Running timer

• Harvest

Book recommendations

• The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

Additional recommendation

• The Pomodoro Technique

Productivity Software

• Notion.so (affiliate link - this offers us some usage credit)

This TLDCast was a Community Discussion that took place on Monday, December 30th 2019.

Featured guests for this broadcast included Kristen Hayden Safdie, Toddi Norum, Tameka Harris, and Cara North, and it was hosted by me, Luis Malbas.

The topic was Must Have ID Skills for 2020 and Beyond and the live show was quite busy in chat to go along with the brisk conversation onscreen.

As a result of our discussion, we ended up with ten skills currently important for Instructional Designers to have:

Design Thinking

Take a listen - some may or may not surprise you!

When we talk eLearning, we are often considering moving beyond PDFs, MS Word, and Powerpoint. But implementing eLearning in your training program isn't just about a shift in tools and platform, it's also about the fundamental question of how you are answering business needs. And just as important, the context within which you are launching your eLearning is a critical component of its success.

So listen in on Andrew Hughes and Alex Salas as they discuss their own "Tips and Tricks to Unlocking the Potential of eLearning". This is an excellent episode from two highly experienced instructional designers that have worked on eLearning projects big, small and everywhere in-between.

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