About the Golden Rules
🦸 Instructional Design is a Superpower
At its core, instructional design is about owning the entire learning experience. It’s about taking an intentional approach and thinking carefully about every detail, from who your learners are to the materials, activities, and outcomes. If this sounds overwhelming, don’t worry. While successful instructional design does require planning, it’s more manageable than you might think.
Like any field, it comes with its own set of jargon—terms like Learning Experience Design (LxD), ADDIE, andragogy, Bloom’s taxonomy, interleaving, and e-learning. But at the end of the day, they’re all after the same thing: learning that sticks.
What I love most about instructional design is that its principles work far beyond traditional education settings. Whether you’re helping someone grasp a complex concept, motivating action, or persuading them to see things your way,if you follow these Golden Rules, you will be successful.
Is there more to instructional design than these 5 rules? Sure. But these golden nuggets will get you surprisingly far.
Here is a preview of the Golden Rules:
Start at the End: If you usually add slides as ideas come to you, there’s a better way—I promise.
Know Your Audience: Education isn’t one-size-fits-all. Tailor your lesson for a specific learner. And if you’re going in without a clear idea of who your audience is, I’ve got tips to help you adapt on the fly.
Bridge the Right Gap: You wouldn’t pick up a hammer to tighten a screw, so make sure you’re choosing the right intervention to close the learning gap you’re addressing.
Ruthlessly Manage Cognitive Load: Whether you realize it or not, your learners’ brains are already buzzing with cognitive tasks. Don’t add to it—be a responsible guardian of their mental workload.
Don’t Be Boring: Obvious, right? It’s easy to remember when we’re thinking about the education we want to attend. But sometimes we get a little too confident, assuming that our information is inherently interesting and important—no frills needed. Sorry,you still don’t get to be boring.
Check out the full resource for details on all 5 of these Golden Rules!