Website for the STC Instructional Design & Learning Special Interest Group, a Community of Practice
9:00 am Pacific / 10:00 am Mountain / 11:00 am Central / 12:00 pm Eastern
Thursday, November 5, 2015
On November 5, 2015, the STC Technical Editing SIG and our IDL SIG are hosting a joint presentation of “Editing Training Materials, Part 2” by SIG member Lori Meyer. Free to SIG members.
See the details and register on the Technical Editing SIG website.
The IDL SIG awards scholarships each year to assist students who are pursuing a graduate degree in a field related to Instructional Design. Students applying for this scholarship are expected to be able to demonstrate their focus on topics related to Instructional Design through their academic studies, current jobs, and graduate or special projects.
The Scholarship Committee recently evaluated several applicants’ academic records and potential for contributing to the Instructional Design profession, and selected two deserving winners:
Elizabeth’s background is in business and higher education. Her passion is to understand adult cognition and how modern technological tools can support deep learning. As Program Director of Literacy NJ, Gloucester County, Elizabeth uses instructional design to study and enhance our adult literacy student curricula and digital tools in an effort to address the workforce development and literacy needs of the region.
Kyung’s background has covered being a high school teacher, an educational technology journalist, and an instructional designer in Korea. He also worked as a researcher at the Global Teacher’s Institution. In America, he was the recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award from the Northwestern State University. His goal is to make education possible, available, and better for all learners through the design of effective learning environments and technology.
Congratulations to both winners, and thank you to the other applicants for your efforts. All of the submissions were fascinating to read and judging was challenging.
Watch for an article by each winner in an upcoming issue of IDeaL, the IDL-SIG award-winning newsletter.
Also, please bookmark this page, watch for announcements, and return here early in 2016 when the 2016 scholarship competition will re-open. Application forms and other documentation requirements will be posted then. In the meantime, please read our Scholarship FAQs.
STC members can add the IDL SIG (and any other chapters and SIGs) to their membership at any time by following these steps.
The next page you see shows your contact information. You can update any information as needed. In the lower right corner, in the Add-Ons section, the IDL SIG should be listed with your payment amount.
Many thanks to Lori Meyer for compiling this information for us!
Join us for the “BPMN Basics: What You Need to Know for Your Content Strategy” webinar with Dr. Jackie Damrau.
10:30 am Pacific / 11:30 am Mountain / 12:30 pm Central / 1:30 pm Eastern
Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Register on Eventbrite. 
It’s one thing to know content, it’s another to understand the business and how that content works within business processes. This session demonstrates how to model business processes, including documentation processes, using the BPMN 2.0 standard. Learning what a model, a process, and a process model are is critical to determining if a graphical model will represent your content better than traditional words. You’ll learn about different types of process models through a view into the world of graphically modeling your business process content.
All Audiences. The content will be introductory (e.g., > “101 level”)
Dr. Jackie Damrau is a Sr. Business Systems Analyst at CBRE. In her role, Jackie models business processes and other department workgroup processes using BPMN modeling notation to use in gathering requirements for automating existing paper-based workflows as well as to help in improving processes. Jackie has more than 25 years of technical communication experience. She is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), member of the STC North Texas Lone Star chapter and the Instructional Design & Learning SIG, and the Book Review Editor for Technical Communication. Jackie’s past international positions have been as a SIG manager for the Instructional Design & Learning SIG; assistant SIG manager of the Management SIG; elected member of the Nominations Committee; and general manager of the STC International Summit Awards (2010–2012). Jackie enjoys spending time raising her grandkids and reading “books” when time permits. Find her on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/jackiedamrau) or on Twitter (@damrauja).
Register on Eventbrite.
Sign up today and join the STC IDL SIG and the UUX SIG for “How to Design Documentation with Users in Mind” by David Dick on September 17, 2015.
10:30 am Pacific / 11:30 am Mountain / 12:30 pm Central / 1:30 pm Eastern
Register on Eventbrite.
We all have ideas about how something works; and we all have ideas about how something should work. These ideas are based on our previous experiences with the same or similar products. When products work the way users think they should work, they can successfully use them. When products do not work the way users think they should work, they get frustrated.
Cognitive psychology refers to the way we develop an understanding of how something works as a “mental model.” Mental models are a key concept in the development of user guides, tutorials, demonstrations, and user assistance.
This webinar teaches practical approaches to understanding user’s mental models, and the types of documentation we can use to help users develop an accurate understanding about the product, and how to use it successfully.
Intended audience: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, or All Audiences
All levels and all audiences, especially practitioners of instructional design, training documentation, user assistance, and user experience
I am an STC Fellow, Manager of the Usability and User Experience SIG, member of the Washington, D.C. – Baltimore Chapter, and co-author of “Web Services, Service-Oriented Architectures, and Cloud Computing: the Savvy Manager’s Guide.” You can follow my musings about usability at http://notebook.stc.org/tag/david-dick/.
Register on Eventbrite.