Thoughts on the Mindtools L&D Podcast’s “Navigating the fog of learning design”

Link to this recent podcast.

Dr Guieswende Rouamba’s reflections on the podcast, including why they have written “The Instructional Designer’s Guide to Project Management” were very interesting so I thought I would share some reflections:

1. My MSc covered project management for instructional design in quite a lot of detail so I would say I have a different experience to that described as the norm.
2. An approach of having two levels of PM (as described by Dr Rouamba) between instructional designer as project manager and a higher level person performing portfolio management is certainly similar to a lot of my organizational experience.
3. The challenge and vagueness of “engaging” learning and the need for clear expectations. This resonates due to some recent experience in considering engagement vs outcomes vs brevity vs constraints.
4. How can ID work best given the challenge of shifting priorities and SME availability challenges? This has certainly been my experience and, again, makes ID (in my opinion) unlike some other areas – for example, common business tools like RACI, KPIs and SMART goals can be tricky in ID.
5. The importance of clarifying roles. I am increasingly viewing this as the major challenge in many projects (not just ID ones) as the professional profile and mentality of different people can be quite different to what you expect.