You know something's changed when you find this page funny.
Today I finally found some half decent websites (not including the one above) for 'designers' who work on instructional projects. The resources for this field are growing with designers frustrated at the gap they find themselves in between education (higher ed. to be specific) and design.
Usable learning is quite good as a start point after you've read this to get a rather genreal overview of how it's all connected. Emergent radio is a station you can stream to provoke thoughts (if not a little frustrating and annoying) and Upsideleanring is a nice place to refresh and get some inspiration.
It took me quite a while to understand that the field of Instructional Design is not a typical filed of 'design' per se. And after attending Ascilite in Wellington this year I kind of, well, felt annoyed that people who had not been trained as 'designers' in the traditional sense, were calling themselves designers and using the term 'design' willy nilly. (I have 15 pages of frustrated notes but shows the need for my position!)
At the end of the day both graphic designers and instructional designers use design thinking, with the latter focusing on specific learner models and the former focusing on design principals. There needs to be more obvious and open communication between these two areas instead of designers creating with a lack of pedagogy and instructional experts advising with a lack of design theory. I'd also like if both parties didn't claim to be experts about the other if in fact they are not.
I am defiantly no expert in pedagogy learning outcomes and instructional design but luckily I work in a collaborative team with people who are. I am however trying to increase my knowledge in this area because I cannot design without doing so. I have learnt so much in the past 5 months of working within the University - but there is a long way to go, and I'm privileged to be gaining knowledge with every job I'm involved with.
Oh and I shan't forget to mention Hybrid Pedagogy it's one of the best sites I've found thus far (they have a FB page too)
