Instructional Design Pro (Part 2): No Beginners Allowed! (Udemy.com)

This is the second course I have taken from this instructor. I did not care for the approach but liked the content. I recommend any new students read the text and, if needed, watch the videos after for added instruction. I got the same out of the course by just reading the included pdf and resources though.

There were two key takeaways from this training that really resonated with me: 1) the more difficult a concept is to understand, the more important it is for trainees to come up with the answers on their own, and 2) in a well-designed training, the brains of the trainees should be working more than the brain of the facilitator. With respect to the latter point, I really liked the organization of the teaching tools based on purpose (get their attention, help them follow along, facilitate understanding, assess their learning). The teaching strategies section, however, left a lot to be desired in my opinion. To start, it is heavily focused on a particular theory of learning styles that I was unable to find any research on (or even references to outside of Jason's own website). Given the ongoing debate among researchers about the validity of learning styles, I would have liked for him to spend more time justifying his choice to use this theory (or at least direct us to where we could learn more about it). That said, the emphasis on learning styles wasn't a total dealbreaker for me as I could get on board with the ultimate conclusion: that what's most important is to incorporate a variety of teaching strategies/modalities into any lesson. What I found more disappointing, however, was how heavily tailored the provided strategies were to the specific use case of medical trainings on "EMR" software systems (Jason's area of expertise). For example, here are some quotes from the workbook: "Trainees learn and gather information during this phase of the activity by interacting with the software, each other, the trainer, and their workbooks" "During the activity, watch the trainees’ screens." "The guide [role] reads the instructions in the exercise to the follower [role]...as the follower uses the software." This was particularly problematic because he presents the strategies/activities as if they are the best and only strategies you might need, whoever you are and whatever you teach, when in reality they are just a small sample of possibilities that (in my opinion) work best for content that is heavily process-based with relatively simple underlying concepts. As such, rather than spending so much time learning how to implement these strategies/activities exactly as Jason has in his previous trainings, I would have liked more emphasis on the big-picture goals/purposes of the strategies and which features of the strategies are actually needed to achieve those goals (versus those that could be modified based on the audience or context). Relatedly, I think this section would have been much more helpful if instead of grouping the strategies into "individual", "partner", and "group" activities (completely meaningless distinctions with respect to designing the curriculum), the strategies were grouped based on the type of objectives they align with, or the contexts in which they're most useful. Lastly, on a completely separate note, there were a number of instances in both this module and the last one that called Jason's credibility into question for me. For example, I noticed several instances where he would say one thing in the video while the workbook would say another. This was particularly confusing when he would give an answer to a benchmark/learning check in the video that differed from the answer provided in the workbook. The worst, though, was when he would attempt to exemplify a certain strategy or concept using his own Curriculum Design Sheet (the one he created for this course) or an activity he facilitated in a previous lesson--only for critical elements of the strategies/concepts to be missing. I almost felt like I was being gaslit at times because he would imply he'd done certain steps of a strategy that (in my opinion) he'd clearly missed or imply that something he'd said/done was a clear example of X or Y when (in my opinion) it wasn't.

The content of the course was great, however, I found myself becoming increasingly frustrated with the camerawork within the classroom. The camera was constantly cutting off portions of the display and in many cases the slides being displayed to the in-person audience were nearly unreadable to me.

I am in a unique environment. I am an instructor on an overseas contract and limited on what I am to instruct on. This class assisted me with being able to properly create and present a lesson plan and follow through with it. I learned how to be more engaging as an instructor and get my trainees involved and keep their interest.

This is a wonderful course. Jason has been able to break down the nitty gritty of instructional design. If you ever designed curriculum in the past you will appreciate the level of detail that is required to do it the proper way which Jason has put together in this course.

Same with part one, this is so specifically tailored to the medical industry and this one piece of software that it completely takes away from the concepts being taught. This would be much better if the facilitator made this into a true course or video where he simply teaches in conjunction with the book, rather than trying to teach using a recorded personal facilitation for a company.

I am impressed by the amount of important information in this class.

I really enjoy the teacher, he's good. Very engaging and great at his job. Lots of excellent information, well distilled for easy comprehension

It's really useful to look at the training strategies and understand about the 4 types of learner, and how you can engage and help them learn better. This is golden!

This course is a great match for I am an instructional designer and I want to take my skill set to the next level.

im hooked, tell me more

Explanation and breakdown of the steps to create the Teaching Strategies were very well put together. Very informative and will make the organization approach much better