Erika J Beahm

I have seen so many job postings for learning/instructional designers that require content-area expertise--only learning designers with experience with this-super-specific-enterprise-software will be considered. Why isn't it more common knowledge that it's usually better if your learning designer doesn't have a lot of prior knowledge in the content area? That's what the SME is for. The SME-ID relationship depends on the SME to be the holder of the content expertise and the ID to be the holder of the learning expertise. Then we become greater than the sum of our parts. Then the magic happens.

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Instructional designers operate in all sorts of corporate environments. My work currently fits in the realm of B2B SaaS customer education. What’s that, you say? Let’s clear up these terms for those interested in jumping over to technical instructional design. B2B is business to business, as opposed to B2C, or business to consumer. A random individual off the street wouldn’t necessarily use our products. Our software is intended for other businesses who use our products to manage customer experiences and billing. SaaS is software-as-a-service. Now, my company sells a range of technical products, but SaaS is a part of our offerings. SaaS offerings are solutions that are cloud-hosted and typically accessed through web browsers. How does that impact instructional design? Instructional design comes in the form of education services the sales team includes in bids and proposals. We have to stay on top of versions of the products, and how the new releases are rolled out to clients. I’ll go into more detail about this process next week, but know that technical instructional design is an exciting space to be in. #InstructionalDesign #eLearningDevelopment #CustomerEducation #TechnicalTraining Image Description: A young officer worker sits at a desk and types on her laptop

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Here's my prediction for the future of Instructional Design! Subject Matter Expert says the content or provides the content and within minutes an Instructor Guide, Participant Book and a Slide Deck will be ready for review. The role of Instructional Designers will be to finetune the AI through example Slide Decks, Participant Guides and Instructor Guides as well create style guide instruction prompts for the AI to develop the materials as desired. Next growth area is automation of instructional design! #aiforid #instructionaldesign #genAI

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📺 If you've ever reached out to the YL Training team for help via email, there's a pretty good chance we started our reply with "We thought it would be easier to show this instead of writing it out, so here's a quick screen recording to answer your question." In a continuing effort to broaden our support channels, we've expanded our #YouTube site to include more of these concise and timely #Storyline360 and #Rise360 #tutorials! #Follow and #subscribe at the link below to be notified as we add more videos that will help you with those #Articulate360 and #instructionaldesign #FAQs. And👇comment below 👇 with YOUR suggestions for Storyline and Rise360 tutorials you'd like to see!

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Brilliantly said by Tim Slade: "You want 100% guaranteed job placement and financial freedom as an instructional designer in 2024? Well, here’s the secret… 🤫🤐👀 The only people achieving financial freedom in this industry are those selling that dream to others." With all the noise and (A.I.) overpromising in the industry (and maybe in any industry), it's difficult to focus on the work that needs to be done and on acquiring the necessary hard-working ID skills and capabilities. We need more authentic conversations about our role as L&D professionals, instructional designers, learning consultants and trainers. #LearningAndDevelopment #DigitalLearning #InstructionalDesign

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Five essential steps for anyone transitioning to Instructional Design, in order: 1. Join your local chapter of the Association for Talent Development (ATD). 2. Network with professionals in the Learning and Development field, primarily through ATD events and meetings. 3. Build a network of 500 connections on LinkedIn and use the platform to grow, connect, and showcase your skills. 4. Develop an authentic and professional resume that highlights your unique skills and abilities. 5. Create a comprehensive portfolio that demonstrates the content you can produce through an eLearning authoring tool (such as Articulate Storyline) and a graphic design tool (such as Canva, Adobe InDesign, etc.) Feel free to reply if you have any questions, need more details, or have additional insights to share. Transitioning to instructional design can be challenging, but it's so able. I successfully made the switch by following these five steps. #instructionaldesign #learninganddevelopment

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As instructional designers, we are a curious bunch who are continually learning and growing. This month, something I’m working on is using Microsoft Copilot across Outlook, OneNote, Teams, and Office. So far I have used Copilot to draft an email campaign, summarize meeting transcripts, and list potential quiz questions based on a script. I have to scrub most of the input to make it more generic, for example by replacing the name of software with "digital product," but it still works. Very happy CSG gave me a test license to tinker with this new AI tool. How about you…learning anything new? #TransitioningTeachers #CareerDevelopment #ProfessionalDevelopment #ProjectManagement #InstructionalDesign Image Description: A photo of a woman reading a book on an outdoor staircase, next to text that says “What I Learned This Month”

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