ID Blogs: Learning From the Collective

Keeping pace with technology, the field of instructional design (ID) is changing and developing at a lighting pace. Blogs and RSS feeds allow ID novices and experts alike to quickly and easily share knowledge and information. Tapping into the “ID collective brain” fuels an explosion of innovation and knowledge in a way that could never be done in the past. Practitioners from all over the world, working in diverse specialties, are able to contribute to ID literature quickly and easily. There are many sites that contain practical tips, observations about the current state of ID, and glimpses into the future of ID.

Despite the great potential for blog sites to help advance the discipline, those not acclimated to using blogs can be overwhelmed by the number of blog options and the different blog formats typically found on a blog page. It is very easy to become “lost” in a blog, unsure how much information has been viewed and how much information is still to be viewed. In addition to the challenges of learning to use a new communication medium, there is also an inability to verify the worth and validity of the information that can be accessed, unless the blog author is a well-known expert in the field.

There are blogs written by current practitioners such as Ways of Knowing, and blogs written by instructional design graduate students, an example is Patrick’s IDT Blog. Both blogs discuss instructional design situations and the authors provide insight into how they dealt with these situations.

The blog site ISDELEARNINGANDMORE utilizes a friendly, conversational tone to discuss current ID issues, and the author shares links to other ID learning sites, thus enabling the reader to not only read about current with ID trends, but also provides an opportunity to enhance knowledge and skills through one web location.

The blog IDEAS: INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN FOR ELEARNING APPROACHES discusses instructional design from a scholarly perspective and includes many links to blogs and articles related to the theoretical base of instructional design and eLearning. The blog site includes links to educational technology, eLearning delivery strategies, faculty development, instructional design, instructional technology and many other useful topics.

The variety of instructional blog sites that are available provides the opportunity to tap into collective instructional design communication in order to enhance knowledge and understanding through the experiences and blogs of others that have gone before. It is important to remember, however, that the validity and reliability of each blog author and their experiences must be carefully assessed against personal knowledge of ID theory, education, and individual experience.