The beauty of social media has always been that it amplifies formerly unheard voices, using words in a way you may never have heard before. The danger of social media is that with every click, the voices become less & less diverse, in the name of artificial intelligence or machine learning providing us a service. […]
Author: debra
Life as an intrapreneur
I literally grew up crawling around the floor of a family business, looking up to my mom, my grandmother, and a lot of friends – aka customers. The experience deeply ingrained an entrepreneurial spirit within me. Today, I think of myself as an intrapreneur. In the Chief Learning Officer article, Does your company value intrapreneurship, […]
Take control of your learning
Advice to my younger self… In college, I came across more than a few ‘weed out courses.’ One in particular was a Calculus course that I struggled to get through – twice. The struggle was real and it did a lot to weaken my self-confidence. When I encountered the next ‘weed out course’, I just […]
Why choose a career as an instructional designer
Design is a way of life… All day, every day, we either purposefully design our environments, or unconsciously fall into someone else’s design. We put on our favorite outfits to feel strong, capable, and in control or choose something very different to show a softer side that is open to being cared for. We read […]
Ban the word training
Some days, I wish we could just ban the word ‘training,’ as it relates to learning in the workplace. It kind of makes me think of ‘teaching an old dog a new trick.’ I’ve always embraced it, by thinking of it in terms of practicing & developing core skills required to ultimately excel in any field, but when […]
Challenge learners
Learning is more than just consuming ideas. Ideally, it’s a catalyst for learners to challenge the ideas being presented.
What is instructional design?
In the workplace, for instructional design to result in changed behaviors and improved performance, it must be deeply embedded not only in the way we learn, but also in the way we work. The question is, how do we do this systematically? It is an age-old question, and the answer is…one step at a time. ADDIE […]
Position Yourself for High Performance
Ok, so suddenly I’m getting lots of revelations during my yoga class that apply to challenges I face in my daily life! Today, my instructor urged us to ’embrace the wobbles.’ She commented that the challenge of balance in yoga is not solely about how we show mastery of poses, but how we react to and […]
Thrive during organizational change
When executing change management in business, that space between ‘business-as-usual’ and a new way of working can be challenging to navigate. Roles and processes are ambiguous and the solid structure on which you previously stood strong, is crumbling beneath your feet. In the meantime…how do you juggle the new and the old? Taking a lesson […]
Self-directed vs. Self-paced Learning
While reading the article, “Why we need to stop using ‘self-paced’ in Competency Based Education (CBE) descriptions,” I had my higher education ‘hat’ on when suddenly I was struck by the similarities between workplace goals of cultivating a ‘learning culture’ and competency based learning in higher education. As organizations and job roles are evolving at […]