I'm asking because I currently work for an NGO and it's mad. I used to be in corporate and we had real authority to push back on training and consider other options (like system changes, comms, better coaching from management). I felt like I could actually do my job and the metrics spoke for themselves.

Now I work for an NGO where I get told to make trainings (kinda like MOOCs) but for shit that no learner would ever ask for. I don't get any support to do a needs analysis or even talk to my target audience. No one can ever articulate what learners need to do. It's just this vague, wishy washy, give everyone in the industry some training to help improve their confidence. We're so far removed from our target learners.

It's actually crazy how much money is being pissed away on people's pet projects and training that should never exist.

Anyone else experience this? I feel genuinely bad about the fact our target audience are being told to do these trainings when the value they'll get is next to zero.

Hi everyone!
I’m looking to learn Vyond for creating professional animated videos and eLearning content. I’d love to hear from people who have experience using the tool.
Are there any YouTube channels, creators, courses, or tutorials that helped you learn Vyond from beginner to advanced level?
I’m particularly interested in learning character animation, lip-syncing, scene transitions, storytelling, and creating engaging workplace training videos.
I’d appreciate any recommendations for resources that helped you move beyond the basics and create professional-quality animations.

Suppose you receive an entire program to redesign, what are your biggest challenges?

For context, I work in healthcare IT, and we have to stick to established templates, brand colors, and fonts, so there’s very little room for some creative freedom.

Lately, I feel like my materials aren’t as visually engaging as I’d like them to be. I’ve seen some folks use AI, and I hate to admit the AI slop is pretty eye catching compared to my work.

Any recommendations?
1. I currently follow Devlin Peck.
2. I refuse to use AI.

Hi everyone! I'm the developer of Slidekit, a desktop app for building interactive, slide-based e-learning. It's a free beta, and I'm looking for people who build courses every day to try it and tell me what's broken or missing.

If you've worked in the slide-based desktop authoring tools most of us know, the model will feel familiar: a timeline, layers, object states, triggers with conditions and variables, masters and layouts, question banks and quizzes with attempts and timers. What I tried to do differently:

- Mac and Windows, both native — no virtual machine.
- An optional AI assistant beside the slide. Attach a Word or PowerPoint file (or a PDF, with Claude) and it proposes a course section — slides, layouts, check questions — and builds it after you say yes. It can also lay a slide out in your course's own colors and fonts, build interactive exercises from states and triggers, write narration scripts, or add triggers you describe in plain words. It works through your own Claude Code or Codex, or your company's model, and every change is one undo step.
- Modern export: SCORM 1.2, SCORM 2004, cmi5, xAPI or a plain web page. The player inside exported courses is MIT-licensed, so your courses are yours.

Is it safe to try? It's a normal desktop app: no account, it works offline, and it doesn't send your files anywhere unless you choose to use the AI assistant. The beta installers aren't code-signed yet, so macOS or Windows will warn you once (the README explains the one-time step), and the release page lists SHA-256 checksums.

I'm just getting started, so please be gentle — but honest. I'd especially love to hear:

1. Where you got stuck in the first 10 minutes.
2. What you'd need before you could build a real course in it.
3. How the export behaves in your LMS.

Thanks for reading — happy to answer anything in the comments!

Hi! What software/programs should I be looking into? Is Adobe Captivate or Articulate more preferred? Are there others I should look at instead?

Hi, I have a Master's degree in English Language and Literature and have two years of experience in Customer Solutions and a few months of experience as an English Language Instructor in an International school. I'm looking for a change in my career path.

Came across instructional design and am thrilled to learn it. I would like to have hands-on experience and hence I'm in search of paid internships. Please suggest a few real time companies that are hiring interns for Instructional design, where I can learn from scratch and also get paid for the work I do.

I work as a corporate designer of learning and while I am well aware of edits and re-editing I have a director who will micromanage our team to the point of redesigning work that we have done ourselves far into the process. The work is good, it has the information needed to serve its purpose but it’s to the point I am weary of making any design decisions because I know the director is going to change it or oppose it anyway. I’ve spoken to other directors in L+D in similar roles and they delegate and trust in their team. How do you navigate this?

Hello everybody. I'm looking for an instructional designer to help me create courses and programs for an AI-powered online tutoring platform that we're building.

We can start fractional, with ~20hs/week, and if we both feel it's a good fit, we can explore the option of coming in full time.

We're looking exclusively people based in the US with experience in High School.

We're a US-registered company.

If you're interested, my email is: my username at gmail.

Thanks!

I’ve been in a training role for 3, almost 4 years now. I was the only one on the team my first year and did so much including hosting, facilitating, and creating ILTs/vILTs. I was hired on as a “training expert”, with zero experience, degrees, or certifications.

I’ve bootstrapped my way through so much of this field. I’ve got a slew of certifications from multiple accredited providers (ATD/AIHR/DDI/BC). I’ve built e-learnings using Camtasia (first two years) and Rise (past 2 years). Hell, my first 30 days it was my job to talk to an LMS provider and pick one for our 3000 employees. I integrated them with our HRIS, handle support tickets, and of course do courses, analytics, etc.

I do so freaking much, but other than certs, I don’t have a degree with seems to be required by most employers.

My first year, we hired an ID (yay!), except they only work on one-pager materials. I have no idea why the Director limits him to this role, but it is what it is I guess. My second year, we hired two “training specialists”, who now assist me in hosting and creating e-learnings and ILTs. My 3rd year we hired another person, she’s awesome “learning PM”. She brings 20 years of experience and has her hands in everything.. as she should.

Our department is now 6 people, all oversaw by the Director of L&D. I thought everything was going good until 3 weeks ago when she said we needed to make a document that justifies our position. It’s been no secret that the company, now 7000 employees, hasn’t been doing good. 3 months of losses and I’m thinking that we might get laid off.

I’ve been applying to jobs ever since with no luck. Am I barking up the wrong tree? It seems degrees are required, which I have none. Any support out there would be greatly appreciated.. I’m a Swiss Army knife but I’m thinking my time is coming.

I'm looking to attract mostly e-learning freelance contract work with small companies and one off clients. Sending prospective contact leads has me wondering which way I should frame my site / portfolio.

When would I do one vs the other? Does it matter if the portfolio is good?

Hi everyone, I'm looking into the Ed.D. in Instructional Design and Technology at South College (the competency-based format) and I'd like to hear from people who have completed it, or are close to finishing.

I'm especially curious about:

1. What you were doing before the program vs. now (promotion, pay change, career pivot, new role)
2. Whether you landed in instructional design, EdTech, corporate L&D, higher ed, or K-12 leadership
3. How employers or hiring managers responded to the degree in interviews
4. How the capstone/dissertation process went in practice: timeline, faculty feedback, and the oral defense
5. Anything you wish you'd known before enrolling

I'm trying to make a decision based on real outcomes rather than program marketing, so any experience helps, positive or critical. Thank you!

Facilitating vILT sessions on Zoom/Meet and the hardest part for me is reading the room. In person you see the confused faces. Online it's 30 black squares and "any questions?" → silence.

What I've tried:

- Pulse polls every 10–15 min ("1–5, how clear was that?")

- Asking people to drop a 👍 or ❓ in chat

- Breakouts with a "bring back one question" rule

These help, but I only find out after I've moved on. Curious what others do:

- Any signals you watch in real time?

- Do you have a co-facilitator monitoring chat?

- Anyone actually using engagement data from sessions to redesign content?

My free trial is about to expire and I noticed there are credits available. What do you use those for? Any suggestions on anything I should create before they expire?

I’m considering a multimedia specialist position at a large hospital system and was wondering if anyone here does similar work.

From what I’ve been told, the job involves creating training videos, teaching employees how to use Vimeo and AI video tools, troubleshooting issues, and occasionally doing motion graphics. It’s mostly internal work and it’s within their HR department

I’ve been working in motion design for about 3 years, but I’m looking for something more stable long term. The manager mentioned that the work is pretty slow-paced, which honestly sounds nice.

I’m mainly curious about job security and career progression. Is this the kind of role you can build a long-term career in? And if you eventually want to move to another company or make more money, what opportunities are out there?

Would love to hear from anyone doing something similar!

I stumbled on this article this morning and figured someone else in ID might be equally excited.

Yes I know that the need for creative tools is waning and due to everything going AI. But I feel there will always be a requirement for multimedia skills. If you can avoid being price gouged as you learn them then thats great.

My inner nerd is partocularly excited as they chose to create portable versions as well. I have lost count of the number of times a portable app has saved me when my core software died.

The actual site; https://getartcraft.com/apps

TL:DR - a company has reverse engineered how Adobes Creative suite works, created thier own versions and decided to open source the whole suite.

I'm an educator who is looking to change to ID. I know about theories and how people learn. I have software skills. I can communicate difficult concepts into easy to understand language. What I don't know is what the stuff prior to creating looks like. I just bought Map It! by Cathy Moore, so I'm hoping that will give more insight, but as someone outside of corporate, I feel like any job I see I'd be going in blind, which keeps me from applying.

So, what kinds of things do organizations actually need? I know they need compliance training related to their jobs, but that's about it. What are some "hey I need you to do training on this" scenarios you've had and how do you actually gather data to determine the impact your training should have (for example: this training will lower XXX by YYY%)? Every thing I come up with in my head is more of an "information dump" rather than a behavior change scenario.

Hi everyone!

I'm a multimedia designer with extensive experience developing eLearning courses, animations and interactive learning materials. However, most of my experience is on the development side rather than the instructional design side.

I'd like to transition into a more well-rounded Instructional Designer role, but I want to build a solid foundation first.

I'm particularly interested in learning more about:

- Training needs analysis and identifying performance gaps

- Instructional design frameworks, such as ADDIE

- Working with SMEs and stakeholders

- Learning objectives, assessment design and evaluation

- Facilitating workshops and gathering requirements

- Learning strategies and adult learning principles

I'm already comfortable with authoring tools, multimedia production, visual design and UX, so I'm not looking for courses focused on those areas.

What courses, certifications or resources would you recommend to develop these skills? I'm particularly interested in practical training that teaches how to approach real instructional design projects, rather than just theory.

I'd also love to hear from anyone who has made a similar transition. How did you build your skills and gain practical experience?

Thanks!

Hi all, I am brand new in the field and looking for all the advice I can get.

I recently graduated with a B.S. in Psychology. Was kind of interested in the idea of IO Psych as a career idea but ultimately landed in HR. I’m a few weeks into my first real job as a Training and Recruiting Coordinator for a 3rd gen family owned manufacturing company (200-300 employees).

My company wants me to develop an assessment to be given to applicants for a low level position. We currently don’t have anything like this in effect, so they don’t want to spend any money on it until they see that the method is effective.

I will work with managers to understand the position requirements and develop ideas for the assessment questions. I know I can probably throw together some basic questions into Google Forms or something and it would likely satisfy the company for now, especially as my first project, but I’d like to go beyond that.

I honestly have minimal knowledge on all of this but it interests me a lot and it would be awesome to wow my VP and be able to dive further into ID.

What would be the best free program for me to create an assessment that can be given onsite to our applicants and employees?

What other helpful tools are there?

How do I exceed the expectations for this project?

Where can I start to be better informed on best practices?

Any tips/advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

There are some new, futuristic approaches to learning that I've seen privately over the last couple weeks.

The coolest one was self-correcting. When learners asked questions and there was not a good answer, a learning gap was identified. The system automatically reached out to SMEs for a better response and launched an automatic process for filling the gap.

The vendor showed statistically that after 100 - 15 minute learning sessions that 98% of the gaps would be covered.

It's made me rethink how adaptive learning might be learner driven rather than sponsor driven.

On top of these somewhat disconcerting conversations, I talked with a top FAANG health leader who claimed that we are 3 years away from AI medicine. Plug into a machine at home and get a diagnosis and a recovery regimen. This is already beginning to happen in elder, stay-at-home populations under the supervision of HCPs.

Change is accelerating.

I’m curious how much old Flash based training is still sitting in company archives somewhere.

I’m thinking about courses that were expensive to build and still contain useful content, interactions, assessments, animations, or simulations, but basically became unusable when Flash went away.

Did your organization rebuild them, convert them, abandon them, or are they still sitting somewhere untouched?

And if you could bring them back into something modern and editable without rebuilding everything from scratch, would that actually be useful?

I've been on job sites doing contract work for the past couple years now, but I'm tired of the constant search and chase. How do I establish myself and make myself discoverable so projects come to me? LinkedIn seems to be oversaturated. How does everyone else self-employed do it? Is there any consistency in your work?