Category Archives: Corporate

Do you need a degree in Instructional Design?

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I have written about this before but given that we are starting a new school I will reiterate my thoughts: Yes you more than likely need an instructional degree in order to be a good instructional designer.

When it comes to health and longevity, the world has a lot to learn from the small Greek island of Ikaria. Famous for its high number of centenarians and remarkably low rates of chronic diseases, Ikaria’s secrets to a long and healthy life have garnered global attention. At the heart of this island’s unique lifestyle is a simple yet powerful elixir known as the Ikaria Lean Belly Juice. Let’s delve into this intriguing concoction and discover its potential benefits.

The Ikaria Lean Belly Juice: Nature’s Gift

The Ikaria Juice Reviews is more than just a trendy health fad; it’s a time-tested tradition deeply rooted in the island’s culture. Passed down through generations, this elixir is a blend of fresh, locally sourced ingredients that Ikarians believe contribute to their exceptional health and longevity.

Key Ingredients:

Herbs: The juice often features a mix of Mediterranean herbs like rosemary, oregano, and thyme, known for their antioxidant-rich, anti-inflammatory properties.

Honey: Locally sourced honey adds a touch of sweetness to the juice while providing natural enzymes that aid digestion and support the immune system.

Citrus Fruits: Lemons and oranges, packed with vitamin C, antioxidants, and fiber, are believed to boost metabolism and promote healthy digestion.

Leafy Greens: Fresh greens like kale and spinach add essential vitamins and minerals, contributing to overall vitality.

Olive Oil: Extra virgin olive oil, a cornerstone of the Mediterranean diet, is rich in heart-healthy monounsaturated fats, associated with reduced heart disease risk.

The Health Benefits of Ikaria Lean Belly Juice

The Ikaria Lean Belly Juice boasts a multitude of potential health benefits:

Gut Health: Enzymes from honey and fiber from citrus fruits promote digestion and regular bowel movements, supporting a healthy gut.

Immune Boost: The vitamin C in citrus fruits and antioxidants from herbs fortify the immune system, helping the body fend off illnesses.

Heart Health: Monounsaturated fats in olive oil may lower the risk of heart disease, a key factor in Ikaria’s low heart disease rates.

Anti-Inflammatory Effects: The herbs in the juice possess natural anti-inflammatory properties, which could help reduce the risk of chronic diseases.

Weight Management: When combined with a balanced diet and exercise, the Ikaria Lean Belly Juice may contribute to maintaining a healthy weight.

Incorporating Ikaria Lean Belly Juice into Your Life

While the Ikaria Lean Belly Juice offers promising health benefits, it’s essential to view it as a part of the broader Ikarian lifestyle. To truly reap its rewards, consider adopting other facets of the Ikarian way of life, such as:

Mediterranean Diet: Embrace a diet rich in fresh vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean proteins, and, of course, olive oil.

Physical Activity: Engage in regular, low-intensity physical activities like walking, gardening, and swimming.

Social Connections: Prioritize meaningful relationships and community involvement, reducing stress and enhancing overall well-being.

Stress Management: Incorporate relaxation techniques like meditation, deep breathing, and leisurely time with loved ones into your routine.

The Ikaria Lean Belly Juice: A Tasty Tradition with Potential Health Perks

In conclusion, the Ikaria Lean Belly Juice is more than a delicious elixir—it’s a symbol of a balanced and holistic approach to well-being. While it might not be a magical potion for eternal life, it’s a flavorful way to nurture your health. By sipping on this delightful elixir and adopting some Ikarian lifestyle principles, you can embark on a journey towards a healthier and more fulfilling life. Embrace the wisdom of Ikaria, and you might discover the secret to a leaner, healthier, and happier you.

Can you learn to be an instructional designer without getting a degree? Yes. In fact, you can learn about any subject through libraries, internet, etc. You have been able to do this as long as books have been available to the public. However, would you want a doctor to work on you that didn’t have an MD? and just learned through some internet resources? Sorry but you would not. Instructional design is no different. There is a lot that goes into the design process and being a good designer is not easy. I would never hire someone that was not trained in a very solid ISD program that taught them how to be an instructional designer and provided them experiences to apply it.

So where does the notion that you do not need an ISD degree come from? Most often, bad designers. I am sorry to say that but usually when someone says this they either do not have the degree or came from a bad program. Choosing a good instructional design program taught by qualified instructors is a whole other issue. But usually when I find these people that do not believe in the ISD degree and that you can learn ‘on the job’ I can ask them anywhere from 3-5 questions about design, that are vital to design, and they do not know any of the answers – why? Because they themselves are usually not good designers because they do not know how to really do instructional design. Because if they did, they would realize that you really need someone trained to do it well.

Just as an example. I run into this problem all the time with managers. Managers that were hired because they were good workers. Yet they were not trained in management. So they end up failing, messing up, etc and at the very least making simple management 101 mistakes that they didn’t realize they were doing because they had no training.

Some related blog posts:

How to become an instructional desginer

10 reasons to get a degree in ISD

What to look for in an instructional design program

Should you go to college

How to evaluate a professor’s teaching

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This is a very good question. I recently wrote a blog post on how professors are evaluated based on students reactions to the course (as in do they like you are not). Unfortunately when doing an evaluation, this is least important compared to other criteria (not that its not important just that in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t tell you much). In that post I discussed how you properly evaluate a course by doing the following:

Step 1 – Student reactions. Did students like the training, process, course, instructor? This is the lowest and least important level. It doesn’t tell us if the course, instructor, or training was effective at all. This is the only thing student evaluations measure. Thus faculty are critiqued on whether students liked them or not. Not whether they actually taught anything at all.

Step 2 – Learning. Did the students learn what was taught? This is pretty important. If they learned the content then the course was effective. This is not measured on student evaluations.

Step 3 – Transfer. Are students able to apply what was learned to their jobs? This is very important. This is not measured on student evaluations.

Step 4 – ROI (return on investment). Was the training worth it? What were the benefits of the training? This is extremely important. This is not measured on student evaluations.

Personally, I only look at step’s 3 and 4 when evaluating myself. They are difficult to obtain but I periodically check on my graduates and they tell me what was useful, what they got from my courses, and they thank me for courses or information that they may have not appreciated at the time but then did when they started their careers. This is the exact feedback we all need to hear. All of my courses and materials are geared towards a career in instructional technology and design – so they are all practical and project based. I teach the students how to work, handle/respond to situations and clients, and how to excel in their careers. So I hope that my students give me that type of feedback but you never know until you ask and unfortunately we are not asking. So when doing a professor evaluation we should be looking at those important factors, not just popularity. I should note that my reaction/popularity scores are always good. I just feel that they do not tell me anything.

Having said that, when I fill out my annual performance charts I usually only have step 1 from above, provided by the school along with some quotes from alumni who lead me to believe step 3 and 4 were met. However, I do not think those quotes are really examined as part of my teaching because they are qualitative and not everyone will take them seriously. So I write this to call on faculty to start demanding that we examine whether learning took place, if the students are using it, and was the class worth it. Otherwise why are we teaching it (the topic or course)? Maybe there is justification (as in its an intro course that is needed to get to the more advanced topics and thats fine). But it’s something we need to consider. The teacher with the highest step 1 may not teach the students anything and this is a problem. As a result I am personally going to start doing a few things…

1. Do a pre and post test of content in my courses. This will evaluate student learning and will be objective (true/false or mult choice) and will measure low and high level knowledge. This will measure course objectives. This will tell me if students learned or not as I can compare the scores.

2. Send out annual or biannual surveys to my alumni asking them for input into how my courses and program is impacting them. What information are they using? What didn’t they get from courses that they needed?

I believe this information should be required of all faculty but since it’s not I will start collecting it and providing it for myself for my peace of mind. Hopefully I can start a trend here into better accountability for my own teaching and that of others.

Using students evaluations to evaluate faculty

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As my semester gets closer to the end I start receiving emails about end of the semester student evaluations. These evaluations are used to determine if faculty are doing their job (i.e., teaching). So should these be used to evaluate faculty? Well since part of my job in corporate settings was to evaluate training let’s compare what is done in corporate america to determine the success of the course vs what is done in education. In corporate we generally used Kirkpatrick’s evaluation model. As you are reading this keep in mind that student evaluations only measure step 1 of this model. So…

Step 1 – Student reactions. Did students like the training, process, course, instructor? This is the lowest and least important level. It doesn’t tell us if the course, instructor, or training was effective at all. This is the only thing student evaluations measure. Thus faculty are critiqued on whether students liked them or not. Not whether they actually taught anything at all.

Step 2 – Learning. Did the students learn what was taught? This is pretty important. If they learned the content then the course was effective. This is not measured on student evaluations.

Step 3 – Transfer. Are students able to apply what was learned to their jobs? This is very important. This is not measured on student evaluations.

Step 4 – ROI (return on investment). Was the training worth it? What were the benefits of the training? This is extremely important. This is not measured on student evaluations.

As you can see student evaluations are not very important. I mean they tell us whether students liked the course or not. However, thats it. They do not even tell us if students learned anything. Essentially students could rate a course where they learned nothing really high and vice versa making these kind of evaluations worthless when they are by themselves. Thus should faculty be evaluated with these? No. At least not as the only measure and certainly not as an important measure. It’s a pretty worthless measure. There is a reason that we use these other steps in corporate settings – we know that they are meaningful yet for some reason higher education has yet to recognize that.

Essentially what I am trying to say is that if I tried to rate a course or teacher in corporate settings the same way I did in higher ed I would be fired.

ATT UVerse Review – Avoid this company

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Since I signed up for ATT UVerse and switched from Comcast I have noticed some interesting things that others should be aware of before they get this service. So here are my thoughts. And before you read this realize I am not one to complain about this stuff but I have never had such bad customer service in my life:

1. Do not believe anything they tell you. In fact, they will actually lie to you – well they did to me and I still just cannot believe how I was treated by this company. When I signed up for the service I was promised 1 year of HBO/Cinemax for free – nothing I care about but it was promised to me. I asked the person on the phone several times if this was for the year and she said yes. Keep in mind I actually said ‘this is for the full 12 months of my contract’ and she said yes. I asked this question like 2-3 times just to make sure that I understood correctly and she wasn’t giving me one of those 3-6 month deals that would end and increase my bill. Three months later I realize my bill jumped $50. So I call ATT and they say there is nothing they can do. I ask them to listen to my previous phone call (as they record them) and they said they would and get back to me within 5 business days. I thought great, they dont believe me but once they listen to the call I will get what they promised. 7 business days with no phone call from ATT I call them up and they apologize and tell me a manager would listen to the call asap and get back to me. 7 business days after this with no call I call again. I am told that no one is going to contact me and that even if this person promised me a free year of HBO/Cinemax that the company was NOT going to give it to me. Wow. ATT will be dropped very soon for this. Customer service gets an F.

2. Internet – I pay for up to 18mbps. I average around 6. This is terrible. No way on off peak hours should I be getting such terrible internet.

My recommendation – Avoid uverse like the plague. Comcast isnt much better but they never lied to me and my internet was always around 13mbps when I paid for 15. So what have I done? At this point I had to drop a bunch of services that were promised to me in order to keep my bill at the original cost. A real bummer. I had high hopes when I heard of Uverse but its a real let down. Oh well at least people now know not to sign up with them. I think the best thing to do is to cut the cord altogether.

 

Multimedia: Learner Preferences For Multimedia Learning

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This is my latest publication. This was a really interesting study on multimedia and I am doing a follow up. Here is the abstract and link to full article:

ABSTRACT: Today’s learners are using multimedia on a daily basis. From computers to cell phones, it’s very difficult to get through a day without being exposed to multimedia. Prior research from Mayer and colleagues has revealed the multimedia principle, which communicates that two representations that explain for one another are better for learning than just one. While much of this research focused on cognitive load and learning, it did not focus on learner preference. As a result, a survey was presented to learners to discover their preferences for the multimedia, modality, redundancy, and coherence principles in a multimedia environment. Overall, participants agreed that they preferred multiple representations to a single one. However, the most surprising results were found when learners were presented redundant representations and irrelevant details. Learners indicated they preferred redundant text and sound with images to image and text or images and sound and that they preferred highly detailed and colored images to simple images. This indicates that while learners may learn better if we following the multimedia principles, they might decrease learner interest or motivation, which could have an impact on instruction

Citation:

Pastore, R. (2014). Multimedia: Learner Preferences For Multimedia Learning. Journal of Multimedia Processing and Technologies, 5(4), 134-144.

Instructional Design Hourly Rates

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Many students (and former students) ask what they should be charging clients when they do contract work (and I have to figure this out when I am working on a proposal). Hourly rates in instructional design can vary widely (and they should). Rates should vary by task and client. First lets start with some of the  numbers then lets get into more specific reasons to choose an hourly rate.

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First, the average instructional design salary is around $78,000 a year in the US. So if we were to calculate an hourly rate based on that it would be $36 and hour (which is 78k a year) but we would add 30% for benefits and retirement, which means that the average instructional design hourly rate should be around $47 an hour. However, given that contract work is not guaranteed and sometimes part time, this rate should be around $50-$60 an hour.

Now there are some other statistics. eLearning.net reports that instructional designers typically charge anywhere from $20-$90 an hour. And this will vary based on task, quality, and speed. They report that most of the foreign companies charging $20-$30 an hour purposely take longer on tasks and do not provide the quality that someone charging $50 and hour would do. Additionally given the role instructional designers play, outsourcing to a foreign country has not worked well for many that have tried it due to the language and time barriers – its very tough for a subject matter expert at your company to have meetings with someone who has a 12 hr time difference and doesn’t know how to put american culture into the training.

Finally, and most importantly elearn Magazine has created this image which shows some numbers by task. Keep in mind this is from 2007 but it does show how different tasks and clients should demand different rates.

So here is a list I have comprised based on stats and my own experience. These should vary based on the task at hand, the quality expected, experience of the contractor, location, and client:

1. Business strategy, proposals, needs analysis, needs assessment – $100-$250 an hour

2. Simple Design (articulate, captivate, PPT) – $60-$100 an hour

3. Advanced Design (simulations and games) – $75-$150 an hour

4. Development with Articulate, Captivate, or other authoring tools -$35-$70 an hour

5. Development that includes programming, Flash, HTML5 – $60-$125 an hour

6. Implementation – $50 an hour

7. Evaluation – $75-$250 an hour

How to save time and money in computer based instruction delivery

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The answer – Time compressed instruction. Look here for a what is

Here is what we know:

– žaudio can be compressed up to 25% in a multimedia environment without sacrificing comprehension of factual and problem solving knowledge or increasing cognitive load (Pastore, 2010; Pastore, 2012)

This means that an hour of instruction could take 45 minutes. Lets put that into perspective, 1 hour of compressed instruction (25% so 45 minutes) vs 1 hour of regular paced instruction would save your company:

  • 100 employees who make an average of 50k per year ($24 an hour)
    • Savings of 25 hours and $600
  • 1000 employees
    • Savings of 250 hours and $6,000
  • 10000 employees
    • Savings of 2500 hours and $60,000

So yes you can actually save a lot of time and money by using this method of delivery instead of regular paced audio instruction