I’ve been keeping a list of both read, and to-read Instructional Design related books for these book clubs, and I wanted to share it with you! The list below contains both books I’ve read and recommend, as well as books I’ve found recommended by other Instructional Designers or people in a similar field. Enjoy!

While there are many softwares that can create captions for you, most of them can cost time and money to generate (especially if the captions are human generated!) If you’re looking to create captions for free (.srt, .vtt, .sbv file types), this tutorial is for you!

The following list contains some of my favorites that I feel break down personal finance concepts into easy-to-digest and actionable content. No matter where you are in your personal finance journey, this post will have something for you!

Accessibility is when you make sure that your course and its content are usable by as many people as possible. There are many ways to ensure that your course is accessible to your learners, and the following is a checklist you can use as you build your content.

If you’re looking to transition from teaching into tech as an Instructional Designer, one of the first things you should do is set up your LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is a professional networking site that many tech companies use to find and hire employees. My goal in this article is to help you set up and edit your LinkedIn profile so that you can avoid some of the same mistakes I made. Let’s get into it.

From my experience, I’ve learned that all you need to speak at a conference is knowledge of a topic, the right conference that aligns with that topic, and a stellar Call for Paper (CFP). Let’s take a step-by-step look at how I approach applying to and speaking at conferences!

If you want to start building a course but don’t know where to start - I’ve got you! I’ve spent years building out courses for all audiences - technical devs, non-technical tech folks, K-12 kiddos, and more. So I’ve built out this Course Building Starter Pack of four worksheets to help you get started! Each worksheet will be linked to its original blog post for you to learn more about it and how to use it!

Before publishing your course, you should identify and list any prerequisite skills or knowledge your audience might need before taking the course. To get started thinking about prerequisites, consider the following questions.

One of the perks of working in tech is that sometimes you get a professional development/learning stipend! At my company, once you reach the six-month mark working there, you can start to use your stipend! With my stipend, I bought a BUNCH of books! The books focused on education, storytelling, design/accessibility in design, and personal growth. Here’s a look at the books I bought with my professional development stipend.

A course outcome is one or more statements about what your audience will learn or what skills they will gain by taking and completing your course. Why does it matter? Having a well-defined course outcome gives your audience a clear idea of what they will gain from your course! You can use your course outcome(s) to market your course to your ideal audience. Also, knowing your course outcome will help guide you as you begin to reverse engineer the content of your course.

Wherever you are in your course-building process, one of the first things you will want to get clear on who your ideal course audience is. Your course audience is the group of people you are creating your course for. It's important to identify your audience so that the right people take your course, and so that the wrong people don’t take your course!

After I finished my book fair, I knew that I wanted to write a full post on both my planning timeline and what I spent on supplies! Here is the timeline of what I did to prepare my author booth for the Bay Area Kids Book Fair.

The key to creating an invaluable course (before you even start writing it) is to conduct a needs analysis that identifies the problem(s) your course solving for your audience. To do this, you must ask yourself and your audience a series of questions. Here is a list of questions you can use to conduct a successful and informative needs analysis.

Wherever you are in your course-building process, there are a few key things to think about to make sure your course reaches the right audience with the right content. My goal is to make getting started easier for you and to set you in the right direction for a professional, impeccable course. In order to create a course outline, you can start by thinking about three things:

Here are a few small details that can make a huge difference in the overall professionalism of your course. I’d recommend reading through each detail, and then checking your own course to see if you can spot anything you’ve missed!

I was in the classroom for five years, and after five years I wanted to try something new. I knew I wanted to work in a role that still gave me some sense of doing what teachers do best - teach and create curriculum. So after lots of research, I found a perfect role for me - Instructional Designer. In this post, I’ll share everything I did to transition from teacher to Instructional Designer.

Once you’ve gotten past your phone screen, you will probably be asked to complete a take-home project. After years in the industry and conducting many candidate interviews for my teams, here is the most common take-home project an ID will get. Let’s take a look at what it is and how to crush it!

If you’re writing instructional content, you want to make sure your word choice is clear and simple. Using simple language makes sure that your learner’s energy is going towards understanding your content rather than trying to understand complex words. The following is a list of words you might be using in your instructional writing that you can replace to make your writing more accessible.

When you’re creating your video tutorial, you'll want to make sure that they are as high-quality as possible to keep your viewers engaged and watching. Here are 4 ways to elevate your video tutorials!

A portfolio allows recruiters and interviewers to get a better sense of your skills, and gives you a chance to show off your best work! In this post, I’ll cover a few ways to set up a portfolio and give you some ideas for projects you can create for your portfolio that will both excite and impress recruiters.