How do you balance your workload as an instructional designer?

You should have a daily work tracker/planner to track your work progress. Also, do your projects according to the order of priority. Some projects may be important but not urgent; it is best to focus on the projects that are important and urgent at the same time.

Before diving into a new project, it's crucial to establish a comprehensive understanding of its scope, goals, and deliverables. Utilizing a project management tool or spreadsheet helps break down the project into manageable phases, tasks, and milestones. Assigning realistic deadlines and estimating resources for each task ensures effective planning. Anticipating potential risks and challenges allows for contingency planning. Regularly reviewing and adjusting the plan ensures adaptability and keeps the project on course.

Careful planning is definitely the way to go when you're first starting out. As you learn and gain experience, work toward getting a "feel" for projects. Within any specific organization, projects tend to have a similar look/feel to them and you can begin to estimate the time/resources/effort that will be required to complete the project with reasonable accuracy. Where this "feel" becomes important is when you're given a project that is an "emergency" or has a very tight timeline. Being able to quickly get a feel for what is being asked and how long it might take to get it done becomes a valuable resource in situations where taking the time to carefully plan might not fit in the timeline.

Setting boundaries as an instructional designer is one of the most difficult skills to master. Most IDs (and ID departments) tend to drift toward "order taker" status and have to be extremely vigilant to not let that become the default. One way that I have found to maintain boundaries is to work closely with client groups. The more closely you work with a client the more comfortable you will be in asserting boundaries and ensuring you can continue to influence effectively.

Algo que en nuestro equipo de trabajo ha funcionado es explicar al cliente el proceso completo e indicar las fases en que tiene que revisar y dar aprobación. Explicar que tiene que estar seguro para evitar reprocesos que afectan en tiempo y costo.

Prioritizing quality is a great approach, but there can be situations where you will be forced to compromise. When those situations arise, that is when your skill and experience will let you know where your efforts will have the greatest impact. Corporate environments can be messy. Part of the job of an ID is to make learning rise above the mess and provide clarity and organization - even when the process of arriving there might have been chaotic.

Every organization has templates, branding, and style guides that inform the look and feel of learning projects. Templates are your friend. Become familiar with them and make them work for you. One of the projects I enjoyed was to periodically (every 6 months or so) I would try to find some free time where I could go in and "refresh" the templates. Either by adding small tweaks to formatting or adding new options. That practice always made working with the templates feel less like a chore and more of an exercise in exploring what was possible within the boundaries of the template.

A avalia??o das solu??es de educa??o sempre com um olhar mais amplo, permite a cria??o de conteúdos modulares (quando de temas transversais) que podem ser aplicados a diferentes cursos. Além disso, a cada dia temos novas ferramentas disponíveis no mercado, que além de construir conteúdos também geram slides e sugerem desde dinamicas a vídeos na constru??o de cursos inteiros, criados com inteligência artificial. Assim, neste contexto atual, cabe ao design instrucional, a avalia??o crítica e ajustes de modo a tornar a experiência de aprendizagem personalizada ao público atendido, bem como adapta??es com olhar para a diversidade e humaniza??o, evitando os vieses presentes nas bases de dados de IA.

Our team is building a library of additions to our templates. These library items include different types of interactions that can add stickiness to our courses. Everyone on our team has different experiences and we all add these to the library.

Un concepteur pédagogique doit aussi rester pragmatique et éviter de monter des structures de formation hyper complexe sous couvert qu’il doit absolument produire une solution exceptionnelle. Alors que la simplicité est peut être plus efficace

A mí me han sido muy útiles herramientas como chatGPT, copiloto, entre otros porque me ayudan a crear una base a la que reviso y adecuó según lo que estoy trabajando.

One of the best practices I've ever been a part of was to have an annual or semi-annual meeting of the minds with all the learning professionals in an organization. All the facilitators, IDs, or other folks attached to the learning organization would get together and share best practices, and new ideas or hear from the practitioners to listen to what they needed or wanted to see or what was causing them frustrations. These meetings were always a highlight of the year.

Role definition and team support It’s important, before to develop, redefine roles, expectations and be sure to have a team around on which you can count on. In my personal experience, I noticed an effective result and effort balanced with the team by defining roles, tasks and expectations around a course development. Each expert is awareness about his role and how/when can play/act in the project. Your team will be there to support in the way you already agreed with them, this can help you on balance your workload.

à mon sens, le concepteur pédagogique doit toujours rester dans son r?le. Il n'est donc que très peu décisionnel. Il faut retourner au partenaire / client pour lui demander de fixer des priorités, c'est tout. C'est lui qui paie, c'est lui qui décide, non ?