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A community that helps instructional designers create a more productive workforce.

Instructional Design

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As an instructional designer, you have the power to impact organizational results by designing learning experiences that give participants the knowledge and skills needed to perform.

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Design and develop outcome-based learning using proven instructional design approaches, practical models and templates, and an iterative process that considers learner and stakeholder input.

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A community that helps instructional designers create a more productive workforce. New to Instructional Design? Click below for an in-depth look.

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What is Instructional Design?

Get a monthly dose of the latest instructional design content, tools and templates, best practices, events, and more.

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Instructional Design Newsletter

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Facilitation Styles and Techniques

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Redefining the Future of Learning and Development With 70-20-10

Revolutionizing Education: Exploring the Latest Trends in Learning

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Beyond the Slice: How Making Toast Heats Up Innovation in L&D

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The Positive Sounds of Drip, Drip, Drip

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January 2025 - TD Magazine

Get to the Root of Manager Needs

The increasing demand for upskilling and reskilling, paired with technological advancements, has paved the way for new learning methods that are restructuring how organizations approach employee development. With the uprising of digital transformation, staying ahead of the latest L&D trends is crucial for organizations aiming to create a skilled, adaptable workforce. Embracing Personalization in LearningOne of the most transformative trends in L&D is the shift toward personalized learning experiences. Unlike traditional, one-size-fits-all methods, modern learners crave content tailored to their unique needs, goals, and learning styles. By utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics, organizations can create learning paths that adapt in real-time, ensuring employees receive the most relevant training exactly when needed. Adaptive learning technologies, which modify content delivery based on a learner’s progress and performance, are at the forefront of this innovation. These tools boost engagement and enhance retention, making them a cornerstone of contemporary L&D strategies. Microlearning: Small Bites, Big ImpactMicrolearning is another innovative approach gaining momentum. This method breaks down complex topics into short, focused lessons, making it easier for learners to grasp and retain information. By offering bite-sized content, organizations can meet the modern learner’s need for flexibility and quick access to information, making the learning process more convenient and less overwhelming. The shift toward microlearning aligns with the growing mobile learning trend, which allows employees to access training materials on the go. This is particularly important as remote work and global teams become more common, further illustrating the future of education technology in L&D. Collaborative and Social Learning Learning is no longer confined to formal, structured environments. Today’s workforce thrives on collaboration and knowledge sharing, leading to the rise of social and collaborative learning tools. Platforms that enable employees to interact, share ideas, and solve problems together foster a culture of continuous learning. Whether through discussion boards, peer-to-peer mentoring, or real-time collaboration tools, these methods promote active participation and build a strong sense of community within the organization. The power of collaboration is found in the content shared and the connections built across teams. These connections are the catalyst for achieving remarkable results and driving progress. Immersive Learning Technologies: The Future of EducationImmersive learning experiences are becoming increasingly common. Virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed-reality platforms allow employees to use simulations replicating real-world challenges in a safe and controlled environment. These technologies provide hands-on, experiential learning that enhances skills retention and builds confidence. Immersive learning is particularly beneficial in industries where practical training is essential, such as healthcare, manufacturing, and emergency services. The ability to simulate high-pressure scenarios without real-world consequences makes VR and AR indispensable tools in modern L&D. The Rise of AI-Powered Learning PlatformsAI is revolutionizing educational technology. From chatbots that offer instant support to AI-driven content creation, automation is making learning more efficient and accessible. AI-powered Learning Experience Platforms (LXPs) enable organizations to curate personalized learning paths, recommend content, and analyze performance data to predict future learning needs. This intelligent automation allows L&D professionals to focus on strategic initiatives, ensuring that learning aligns with organizational goals. By leveraging AI, organizations can foster a forward-thinking culture of learning that anticipates future skill requirements and addresses them proactively. The Future Is Now The latest L&D trends show that the future of learning is driven by innovation, adaptability, and a focus on personalized, collaborative, and immersive experiences. As organizations embrace these cutting-edge methods, they are better equipped to develop a skilled workforce ready to tackle today’s challenges and tomorrow’s opportunities. By adopting cutting-edge educational technology, businesses can ensure that their learning and development initiatives consistently drive success and expansion.

An understanding of the need for better online accessibility has grown markedly in recent years, perhaps accelerated by the digital shift during the COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020. Legislation in different parts of the world has also been a driver of awareness and action.Accessible learning is good for everyone.As an online activity, e-learning falls squarely within the scope of accessibility requirements. But whether you’re responding to a compliance deadline, pressure from customers, or a corporate commitment to diversity and inclusion, it’s well worth noting that designing training with accessibility in mind can enrich the learning experience for everyone, not just those with a defined disability. So, accessibility should be a priority for any L&D professional who wants to optimize the learning experience.Where to start?Unless your strategy is to invest in your own in-house accessibility expertise, the natural first step is to find the right partner to advise and assist you.First, they should understand the requirements of any legislation you need to comply with. Second, if you’re interested in more than compliance—because, let’s face it, ticking compliance boxes is not always the same as taking a best-practice approach— they’ll be able to explain different standards and what you could be doing to transform learning through accessibility improvements. There’s a difference, for example, between a basic screen reader experience, which may be good enough for compliance, and a great screen reader experience, which makes a real difference for usability.Third, they should be able to help you develop a roadmap and a plan to achieve your e-learning accessibility objectives.Consider remediation from the start.Every respectable accessibility improvement plan starts with an audit against the relevant standards to establish what accessibility gaps exist. Once these are identified, the next step is remediation—fixing the identified accessibility issues—so it’s worth considering from the start whether you want your accessibility partner to help you with this.If you’re happy to handle remediation in-house or through a different partner, then it won’t matter if the accessibility specialist you choose doesn’t have specific expertise with e-learning platforms, hosted assets, and content formats. But if you do expect to need their remediation support, it can be a big advantage if they are also e-learning specialists. Consider this carefully before making your choice—and don’t forget that accessibility covers both your e-learning platform and the training content that it holds.Consider the impact of localization.Hopefully, localization is part of your e-learning strategy, since L&D has a greater chance of success when it happens in the learner’s native language. But this means that accessibility testing must cover all the languages you localize into. Even if you’re applying the same accessibility standards across countries and languages (legislative differences may mean this isn’t the case), it simply doesn’t follow that if your e-learning is accessible in one language, it will automatically be accessible in any other.For example, what if your e-learning platform doesn’t accept voice commands in all of the languages you cater to? Or, what if the way you’ve handled forced line breaks for certain Asian languages causes real trouble for screen readers?When you’re choosing an accessibility partner, make sure that they cover all of the languages you need. If they’re helping you with remediation, they also need to know coding best practices that address the user experience from both a localization and accessibility point of view—not compromising one for the sake of the other.Another way that localization and accessibility can go hand in hand is that the right localization partner can make a big difference to your accessibility journey. For example, video accessibility might feel like a big hurdle to clear, but it isn’t if your localization partner also offers (multilingual) accessible content services such as closed captions, signed videos, audio descriptions, and descriptive transcripts.It's an ongoing process.E-learning accessibility isn’t a one-off project that you complete and forget. It takes continuing vigilance and an accessibility-first approach to platform and content development. Otherwise, improvements you make will be undone over time.If you use a third-party e-learning platform or rely on e-learning vendors for course design and development, you’ll need to engage with them to achieve your accessibility objectives. If you do any of this in-house, you’ll need to update your own software standards, guidelines, and checklists, and educate your software engineers and learning designers to put accessibility front and center.There’s certainly a lot to get right when it comes to e-learning accessibility. But that doesn’t mean it needs to be painful. Help exists to make the complex more controllable and achievable. I hope I’ve inspired you to get started.

E-Learning for Everyone: How to Address Accessibility

Businesses are continuously tasked with delivering the “right content,” the “right format,” at the “right time and place” to remain relevant to their audiences.The surrounding technology landscape is constantly evolving with new tools and capabilities that enable businesses to get more out of their content. This means that businesses need better control over their inventory of valuable content to utilize these tools to the fullest. This sparks the inevitable question: “What content do I have, don’t I have, or should I have?” (Shown in the following model.)The key questions to help you get started with your content evaluation are:What is the right content?Which format do my consumers prefer?Where are my consumers looking for content, and when?Imagine your content became a data set combined with data sets from other systems and could provide you the answers! Content Intelligence is about talking to your content. More correctly, treating that content as data, as you would website usage or a customer’s purchase history. Connecting people with content today should be based on what we know about that person—their tenure, their role, industry, training they have completed, and more. Content should be a source of trends, intent, opinions, and so much more. We should strive to live in a world where we can sense, predict, and react as quickly as the consumers of our content do. As content producers, this means continuously aligning with the business needs to influence our content inventory. These initiatives need to be driven by business impact. The higher the impact, the higher the importance and priority. This is where the power of artificial intelligence (AI) can make your content talk.Hopping on the AI Bandwagon AI is an accelerator that can help inform your decisions. Envision a scenario where the same content that assists a service technician in resolving that weird noise in your car’s air conditioner or aids a customer service representative in explaining the 20-page cell phone data plan can also be a source for derivative content such as FAQs, best practices, or even assessments. What if that content could be proactively delivered to the technician and CSR based on their tenure or experience level? Successful businesses treat their content as data, making it accessible to both human users and systems.Using AI to understand content usage and audience interactions can create a window into insights for ongoing improvements. With a well-defined content strategy and a toolset, like MadCap Xyleme, that can power Content-as-a-Service, businesses can monitor, distribute, and analyze content across diverse platforms.AI models perform optimally when supported by well-organized, richly tagged, and accessible data sources. For AI applications, content must be “AI-ready”—which includes chunking content, tagging it with metadata, and organizing it strategically.Future-Proofing Content Strategy As businesses continue to adopt AI, a flexible content architecture and thoughtfully designed ecosystem becomes essential. A central hub for managing, organizing, and connecting content systems with other applications in the content ecosystem provides a solid foundation that can adapt to emerging AI tools and the ever-evolving needs of consumers and businesses alike.Conclusion: We’ve Just Started Talking Content access and adaptability are crucial in today’s digital landscape. Businesses need to unlock the full potential of their content. By leveraging these capabilities, businesses are enhancing their current content strategy and establishing a resilient, future-proof foundation ready to adapt to new technologies, evolving user expectations, and the expanding role of AI in content management.

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