BLOC Podcast

42: My L&D Bookshelf

January 25, 2022 Heidi Kirby Episode 42
BLOC Podcast
42: My L&D Bookshelf
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, I share with you some of my favorite books that are on my L&D book shelf. 

  1.  What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming an Instructional Designer by Dr. Luke Hobson 
  2. Design for How People Learn by Julie Dirksen
  3. The Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams
  4. Designing for Modern Learning - Beyond ADDIE and SAM by Crystal Kadakia and Lisa M.D. Owens
  5. The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
  6. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni

Enjoy!

Connect with Heidi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiekirby/ or on my website: www.heidikirby.com

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Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiekirby/

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Unknown:

Hi and welcome to the block the building learning and organizational culture podcast. I'm your host Heidi Kirby. And on today's episode, I decided I'm going to share with you what is on my l&d bookshelf. These are books that I have that I think can really help new experienced l&d professionals to either gain new skills refresh skills they already had, and everything in between. So let's get started. The first book on my lnd bookshelf is a new one. It's by my dear friend, Dr. Luke Hobson, and it's called What I wish I knew before becoming an instructional designer, you can purchase this book on Amazon in ebook or print format. And I think it's a really great primer to instructional design, I actually joked with Luke and told him that I wish I had it before I became an instructional designer myself, because it's such a good, comprehensive look at some of the technical skills, non technical skills, resources, community resources, learning resources, professional development resources, it's just a really great, comprehensive look at what being an instructional designer entails. And just the level of commitment and, and day to day expectations that you would expect from being an instructional designer. The next book is Julie Dirksen designed for how people learn. About a week or so ago, I posted this one on LinkedIn, because Julie had pointed out on her LinkedIn that for whatever reason, Amazon had the book on super sale, and it was only $10. The price has since gone up, probably because a bunch of people were sharing it on the internet, and a bunch of people were going out and purchasing it. But it is well worth any amount that you might need to pay for it. Again, available in both ebook and print format. This book, what I like about it is that it's not just walls of text, there are some illustrations in it to kind of break up the monotony of of reading a book. And it really is about the way people learn cognition, the way people process information and then how to best create learning experiences that, that work within that framework and that and can be engaging, right? Ways that you can make learning engaging for different people. And what it does is it speaks to me and I always say this, that I'm a really bad learner and a bad student. And I'm always looking to cut corners. And I'm always learning to do like, the minimum work possible. And I'm always learning to just like, or, or trying to just upskill as quickly as possible, get the information I need and move on. And so it really speaks to me, as someone who considers myself a bad learner, but knows that that's not true. And, you know, I think that some of the methods if they had been used when I was younger, or coming up in school, that my learning experiences would have been a little bit more successful. And maybe I wouldn't be such a quote unquote, bad learner. But if you've never thought about cognition, and the way people think and how we process information, definitely a great book to pick up. The next book on my bookshelf is the non designers design book by Robin Williams. Not the late actor Robin Williams, but a different Robin Williams. And this book breaks down visual design in such a simple way using the acronym crap, and really just helps the reader understand elements of visual design and as somebody who started out in instructional design, having visual design be like my area of greatest weakness. This was a no brainer for me to pick up and read and go back to periodically and I'm really glad that I own it because You can have all the Canva templates in the world, you can have all the PowerPoint templates in the world. But if you don't know the basics, and if you don't know why things are designed the way that they are, you're gonna keep putting out things that just don't look like good visual design, right. And I see this a lot from other other people in the field, especially if we come from education, we tend to lack those visual design skills, like we are bosses, at designing curriculum and designing lessons and differentiating for learners and facilitation even and, you know, creating a good video script and writing and all those things that being an educator helps us with. But what it doesn't help us with is the visual design. Because whatever we create whatever we give to our learners, that's, that's what they get. And it's hard when our learners are not necessarily experts in visual design for them to give us any critical feedback on how we've designed things. And I think that's why, at least in my case, it was something that was lacking for me. And I like to say that I'm crafty, but I'm not an artist. And so this book has really given me some great insight and some great rules to follow in terms of making sure my stuff looks a little bit more professional, and a little less. Elementary school art student, which is what I think my drawing capabilities are. And I also want to take this opportunity to say that my friend and guest of the podcast on a previous episode, don de Perry is coming out with a graphic design for instructional designers book. And I'm really excited. It's not quite out yet. It's going to be out here pretty soon, very shortly to give you a specific timeline. But no, I'm really excited for this book. I think it's really well needed. I think she's filling a really important gap. And definitely stay tuned to my LinkedIn because when the book comes out, I will be sharing it. So a twofer on the visual design books on my l&d bookshelf or seem to me on my lnd bookshelf. The next book I want to talk about is designing for modern learning beyond Addie and Sam. And this book is such a wonderful and refreshing book, and I'm so glad to have found it. It's by Crystal Kadakia. And Lisa M. D. Owens, and it contains what they call the learning cluster design model, which is an instructional design model for creating learning in modern organizations. And creating learning that not only is effective and engaging for the learners with them in mind and them at the center. But it also is designed to be aligned with business goals and outcomes, which I think is really powerful. Because if we think of traditional instructional design models, there's no real you know, they might allude to the business during analysis or evaluation. But like, I feel like one of the things as a corporate instructional designer that some of the formal instructional design models I studied, as a PhD student, were a little bit lacked lacking in practicality and in application in a business environment. And I think that the LCD model really picks up where those design models live off. And what's even more wonderful is that Krystal and Lisa have created this whole community around the model and they have monthly free sessions where you can come in and listen to how other l&d professionals are actually implementing the learning cluster design model in their work. And so, great book, great examples in there for how to use the model and a great model quite frankly. Another book I highly recommend that's a little bit outside of what you might typically see recommended in these these types of lists is the Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. This was a book that was assigned to me during my Ph. D program and I'm so glad that it was otherwise I may not have picked it up on my own. But it really talks about product design and when when people designers are designing something In a vacuum, and it's a little bit geared more towards product designers and UX UI designers, but I think it has some really great implement implications for instructional designers and people who are involved in the design of learning experiences, because it really shows how you can kind of get laser focused on what it is you're trying to accomplish. And completely forget the end user or in our case, right the learner, and how that can end up being such a wonky, for lack of a better word, a totally wonky experience for the learner, right? You were so focused on meeting the business requirements for X thing, that now you've totally overcomplicated the interface. And it's almost unusable, right. And so it's just kind of this like, look at how things are designed and how things are designed poorly. And I promise you that once you read the book, you will start noticing poorly designed things all around you. And if you're not subscribed to the subreddit, crappy design, you should definitely subscribe if you're going to read this book, because that will give you some really great real life examples to go along with the book. The final thing I want to share is a little less l&d and a little bit more leadership. But I think that there's still something really important, even if you're an individual contributor, if you are managing projects or managing your own work and yourself. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, by Patrick Lencioni is a wonderful book, I happened to purchase the graphic novel version because it was less expensive on Amazon. But I'm so glad that I did because the graphic novel, having those visuals helped me to get through it, I think a little bit more quickly than I would have if I had purchased the regular text based book. But it took me maybe an hour and a half to read. And if you've ever read something like Who Moved My Cheese, it's kind of in the same same line as that. And what's really great, and what's really wonderful is the approach that it takes to conflict and conflict resolution on teams and highlighting how important it is to have conflict on the team because that means that people feel confident enough sharing their different ideas. Because if you're in a group setting where there is no conflict, and you've got 567 people on your team, it's not because it doesn't exist, it's because there's somewhere in that that group where somebody doesn't feel confident enough to share their opinion, because it may not be the opinion of the others in the group. And so it really does highlight some of those different things that seemingly on the surface, everything might seem wonderful and great. But it really digs down into what are the different characteristics of a well functioning team. And so if you're part of a team, if you're leading a team in l&d, if you are an instructional designer who leads projects, if you're a program manager who leads programs, it's definitely a book that you should check out. So that's it. Those are my suggestions, just a short little episode this week of me sharing some book recommendations. The other thing is that that inspired this episode is that my current company gives us a $30 monthly allowance to purchase books. And I think that that's really wonderful. And I really wanted to just share that because I think other companies should do the same and other other leaders should really be looking at investing in different forms of professional development this year for their teams and books or an audible subscription or a Kindle subscription or money towards Kindle books are a really great way to do that. And so, if you're a leader and you're allocating professional development money, don't forget books, eBooks and audiobooks. Thanks again for joining me on the blog. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends and review us on your favorite podcast platform. I hope you'll tune in again soon.