Category: Newsletter

By Mellissa Ruryk

by Viqui Dill

Did you know we have a whole library of recorded webinars that IDL members can watch for free? Did you know that members can attend all of our future webinars for free? Yep, that’s just some of the benefits of belonging to the IDL SIG.

Free recorded webinars

To see one of our past webinars, visit the Free recordings of IDL SIG webinars for members page at http://www.stcidlsig.org/membership/webinars/free-recordings-of-idl-sig-webinars-for-members/ and log in with the password. Don’t have the password? Contact me at programs@stcidlsig.org and I’ll email it to you.

Choose from our Lightning Talk webinars with Kit Brown-Hoekstra, Viqui Dill, Jamye Sagan, Mellissa Ruryk and Robert Hershenow: What I Would Have Liked to Know When I Started Out by John Hedtke; Getting Started with Video Training by Mary Whalen; and many more.

Free upcoming webinars

To register for one of our free webinars, check out our Calendar of SIG Events page at http://www.stcidlsig.org/news-and-events/ and follow the link to Eventbrite. Webinars are recorded. So, feel free to watch with us in real-time and then re-watch at your leisure. If you cannot attend, sign up anyway so that you will get a link to the recording.

Future programs include Push Marketing with John Hedtke; PowerPoint Tips with Robert Hershenow; Fred Flintstone to the Rescue with yours truly, and many, many more.

We are always looking for speakers and program ideas so feel free to contact me at programs@stcidlsig.org with any ideas or to volunteer.

And speaking of volunteering

We need a volunteer to take over my role as Programs lead. It’s a really fun job and you get to connect with the heroes and thought leaders of our profession. You can work on your own schedule and learn some new online tools to add to your professional toolbox.

Not a member yet?

To join our SIG, contact membership@stc.org. It’s just $10 for current STC members and will pay for itself in your first webinar.

See you at the next webinar!

by Jamye Sagan

 

As a virtual community, with all of our members scattered across the globe, we do not have the same opportunities as geographically-based communities to meet up face-to-face. Since 2013, we have hosted the IDL SIG Virtual Open House (VOH) so that new and prospective IDL SIG members could learn more about our community’s mission and goals, learn more about member benefits, and meet some of our leaders and volunteers.

During our VOH, participants have always had the opportunity to ask questions about the SIG and what we offer. This year, we’d like to try something new. We’d like to combine our VOH with a virtual party (VP), where we would encourage all attendees to share a photo or story. The VP (not be confused with Vice President!) we hope will add a very human, personal side to our VOH. Hey, it is all about making real, enduring connections!

We are still finalizing the date, but it will take place in early to mid-November. If you can’t attend in real-time, we will have a recording available, so you can watch and share with your instructional design and training colleagues and students.

We will provide more details about the VOH and our virtual party as November draws near.

Hope to see you there!

by Jamye Sagan

 

Within the IDL SIG, we offer a variety of programs and services to our members, including Training Material Evaluations, which won a Pacesetter Award in 2011. In this program, IDL SIG members can have their training materials evaluated by an IDL expert from our SIG. We offer this at no charge to our members. If confidentiality is a concern, evaluators can sign non-disclosure agreements. Materials can be at any stage of development, from storyboard to completed module.

Once materials are submitted, the evaluator reviews the materials and offers written, formative feedback. Participants and evaluators then meet virtually to discuss the feedback. This can be done via Skype, Go To Meeting or any other web-based conferencing tool, or even over the phone.

Who can benefit from this program? Anyone can, regardless of instructional design (ID) experience. Some of us may be experts in one or more aspects of ID, but may need guidance in another area. Some of us may have recently graduated from an instructional design program and eagerly anticipate more “real world” experience. We all can benefit from having a second pair of eyes look at our materials – especially if we are the only ID practitioners in our department or area.

Some of us (like myself) may not have formal education in this field, and may have been tossed onto the ID stage, but are quickly finding out that we enjoy our new roles and are happy to learn more. Tapping into expert guidance will give you much needed confidence and assurance as you take on ID.

A couple of years ago, I submitted a course module for evaluation. My evaluator offered detailed feedback on my materials. Although eventually my work project was put on hold, I still gained valuable knowledge from this experience.

Please take advantage of this wonderful program. For more information about our Training Material Evaluations, please visit: http://www.stcidlsig.org/news-and-events/training-evaluation/ .

 

 

By Crista Mohammed

In my first installment on the value of volunteering, I described how my career has been fundamentally shaped by volunteering. In this article, I share how volunteering has helped me grow as a person. Of course it is nigh impossible to dissect the professional impacts from the personal. In so far as you have developed, both lives—your professional and personal, benefit. I have tried to distill as best as I could how my twenty odd years of volunteering has informed my personal growth. I dedicate this article to all the fine people who run the IDL SIG and make hard work incredibly fun!

Idle hands

We all know that old adage about idle hands and whose workshop they make. As a youngster, I had absolutely no time to be idle. Volunteering kept me busy. It was fun too. Looking back, volunteering offered a healthful, wholesome type of socialising that I wouldn’t have had otherwise. By selecting how I spent my free time, I made a conscious choice about the company that I wanted to keep. It matters not what your primary goal is for joining a voluntary organisation, you will inevitably be socialised into the norms of that group. If you choose well, then the personal impacts are felt. With the IDL SIG, I wanted to belong to a community of practice—my primary goal. Inevitably, belonging entails subscribing to the ways in which people participate in and create the community. The folks in our SIG are warm, generous and encouraging: Demonstrating warmth, being generous and inspiring others in a virtual community takes a great deal of effort and they do it well. It is impossible to not want to reciprocate that goodwill: I might be falling short, but I know they will forgive me. How do I feel after a meeting? A sense that I have spent my time well with like-minded, kind folks.

Coming to your own

Belonging to a group involves both conforming to the group and carving out a niche for yourself: these are processes with opposing ends. As you learn from the group you become part of them, while shaping a unique you in response to them. You emerge with a new dimension of you. You may be the pragmatist; the dogged, determined one; the sage, totally Zen one. In the IDL SIG we even have the warm, kind, cat-loving one (a shout-out to Jamye Sagan)!

I have yet to figure out which one I am in the IDL SIG—seems like all the great roles are taken! So far, I have been able to create an air of mystique because our meetings are via Adobe Connect and there has been no service to Trinidad and Tobago where I reside. My contributions to the meeting have been typed newsletter reports  and messages in chat. So the group has not heard my voice nor my accent, which will be incredibly foreign to them. Viqui ( the cheery, guitar playing one), our programmes manager and co-manager elect, recently wrote to say that there is now service to my part of the world. I need a new me: My mystique will soon disappear as I start speaking at the meetings! I will no longer be the most intriguing IDLer in the world.

Something larger than you

At school, I loved our annual sport meet, because of the marching. I am certain that I didn’t march well, but there is something to say about belonging to a group, about being part of a larger body – a body that rallies, works, plays in unison with you. Teaming directs your energies to something that is bigger and more significant than just you. It is an amazing feeling to share in successes that you could not have wrought on your own. Similarly it is a relief and comfort to be able to share disappointments.

My IDL SIG triumphs are quarterly guarantees. When IDL: Design for Learning gets published, no matter how humble our offerings, waves of satisfaction wash over me at having served my community. It is a victory made possible with lots of help from friends.

I am reminded by my senior class students that a text is only worth reading or listening to if it is sincere (they are currently mulling over Aristotle’s ethos). I hope that the sincerity with which I have shared my experiences of volunteering shines through. I sincerely hope that you are convinced to volunteer for the IDL SIG and STC! Your professional goals and personal aspirations can be met in our one stop shop. For more information on volunteering opportunities with the IDL SIG please see http://www.stcidlsig.org/about-idl-sig/volunteer-opportunities/