L&D Managers and Instructional Designers, the function is splitting into two camps. The ones who let AI do the first draft of every course. And the ones about to find out their build velocity has been cut in half compared to the team next door. I ran a 60 day pilot with a 1,800 person retail client. Two designers, same brief, same deadline. One used a traditional authoring tool. One used an AI authoring tool. Designer A shipped 4 modules. Designer B shipped 11. Here's what the AI authoring tool actually did: ✅ Generated full course outlines from a single topic or objective. The first draft existed in 4 minutes. ✅ PPT to SCORM conversion built in. Legacy decks became interactive modules without rebuilding from scratch. ✅ Drafted scenario based assessment questions from the source content. SME review time dropped from 6 hours per module to 90 minutes. ✅ Generated voiceovers, visuals, and short clips inside the tool. No vendor handoffs, no version chaos. ✅ Pulled brand fonts, colors, and templates automatically. Designer time on formatting fell to almost zero. ✅ Exported clean SCORM packages that ran on every LMS the client tested. The job isn't to write the first draft anymore. It's to edit a strong one. Designers who fight that shift will spend 2026 explaining why their team ships less than the one across the floor. Want to try it yourself? Here's the link: https://lnkd.in/gqEfnZ-Q Want to talk through whether this fits your authoring workflow? Drop "TOOL" in the comments and I'll connect with you directly. #InstructionalDesign #LearningAndDevelopment #AuthoringTools #eLearning

Instructional Designers, the best in the field quietly stopped buying standalone authoring tools last year. If you're still stitching seven SaaS subscriptions together, you're paying twice and shipping half as much. I've tested 11 LMS platforms over the last 14 months. Real builds, real learner cohorts, not demo logins. The one I now recommend to ID teams under 5 people did this for us: ✅ PPT-to-SCORM converter that handles narration timing, branching, and quiz logic in one upload. Saved us roughly 9 hours per course. ✅ AI Storyboard that turns a learning objective into a draft outline with media placeholders. ✅ AI Media Studio for voiceover, captions, and avatar video, all native, no vendor swap. ✅ AI quiz builder that drafts knowledge checks from the source material so they actually match the content. ✅ Course recommendations that nudge learners through skill paths without me hand mapping every prerequisite. The reframe that landed for our team. Stop buying tools, start buying time. Want to try it yourself? Here's the link: https://lnkd.in/ghmkhzNA Want to talk through whether this fits your workflow? Drop "LMS" in the comments and I'll connect with you directly. #InstructionalDesign #LMS #LearningAndDevelopmen

Instructional Designers, the best in the field quietly stopped buying standalone authoring tools last year. If you're still stitching seven SaaS subscriptions together, you're paying twice and shipping half as much. I've tested 11 LMS platforms over the last 14 months. Real builds, real learner cohorts, not demo logins. The one I now recommend to ID teams under 5 people did this for us: ✅ PPT-to-SCORM converter that handles narration timing, branching, and quiz logic in one upload. Saved us roughly 9 hours per course. ✅ AI Storyboard that turns a learning objective into a draft outline with media placeholders. ✅ AI Media Studio for voiceover, captions, and avatar video, all native, no vendor swap. ✅ AI quiz builder that drafts knowledge checks from the source material so they actually match the content. ✅ Course recommendations that nudge learners through skill paths without me hand mapping every prerequisite. The reframe that landed for our team. Stop buying tools, start buying time. Want to try it yourself? Here's the link: https://lnkd.in/dmJk639q Want to talk through whether this fits your workflow? Drop "LMS" in the comments and I'll connect with you directly. #InstructionalDesign #LMS #LearningAndDevelopmen

If you are waiting until you're "ready enough" for Instructional Design — these 5 myths are the reason why. Let's kill them one by one. Don't let them stop you too. Read this carefully. 👇 There are 5 myths about Instructional Design that are keeping talented people out of this field. All of them are completely wrong. ❌ MYTH 1 — “You need a design degree to become an ID” ✔️ TRUTH ID is one of the most background-agnostic fields out there. What you need is curiosity and empathy. Not a specific degree. ❌ MYTH 2 — “Instructional Design is just making PowerPoint slides” ✔️ TRUTH ID is diagnosing performance gaps. Designing learning journeys. Measuring behavior change. Navigating stakeholders. Building systems that make people better at their jobs. PowerPoint is the last thing on the list. ❌ MYTH 3 — “Only edtech companies hire Instructional Designers” ✔️ TRUTH Consulting firms. Healthcare. Banking. IT. Government. Manufacturing. Every organisation that trains people needs an ID. And every organisation trains people. The market is bigger than most people ever realise. ❌ MYTH 4 — “You need to learn Articulate Storyline first” ✔️ TRUTH Storytelling. Learning objectives. Storyboarding. TNA. These come first. Always. Tools are the last thing you learn. Not the first. Articulate Rise and Storyline is free for 30 days. That’s more than enough to build your first portfolio. ❌ MYTH 5 — “AI is going to replace Instructional Designers” ✔️ TRUTH AI can generate content. It cannot diagnose a performance gap. It cannot navigate a difficult stakeholder. It cannot design a learning strategy aligned to business goals. AI is making IDs faster. Not replaceable. The best IDs right now are the ones using AI as a tool. Not the ones afraid of it. Every one of these myths has stopped someone talented from entering this field. Don’t let them stop you. The door is open. It always has been. 🦸 Save this post 📌 — share it with someone who’s been holding back from ID because of one of these. Which myth did YOU believe before today? Drop it below 👇 #InstructionalDesign #CareerInID #LearningAndDevelopment #IDmyths #LnD #eLearning #IDcommunity #CareerSwitch #CareerGrowth #TrainingAndDevelopment #ZeroToSuperhero

“Instructional Designers just make slides.” That’s like saying: A doctor just writes prescriptions. An architect just draws buildings. A filmmaker just creates videos. The output is visible. The thinking behind it is invisible. Great Instructional Designers don’t start with: ❌ “What should this slide look like?” They start with: ✔ What business problem are we solving? ✔ Why are learners struggling? ✔ What behavior needs to change? ✔ Is training even the right solution? Because real learning design is not decoration. It’s performance strategy. A strong learning experience blends: 🧠 Psychology 📊 Business understanding 📖 Storytelling 💻 Technology 📈 Measurement In the AI era, content creation is becoming easier. But identifying the right learning problem, designing meaningful experiences, and driving behavior change? That’s becoming more valuable than ever. The future of Instructional Design is not “slide making.” It’s performance consulting + human-centered learning design. And honestly, the best IDs were never just creating slides in the first place. #InstructionalDesign #LearningAndDevelopment #ELearning #LearningExperienceDesign #CorporateTraining #AIInLearning #LearningStrategy #Upskilling #FutureOfWork

Some instructional designers say they love innovation… …but panic the moment their workflow changes.😱 That’s a problem. Because experimentation is no longer optional in modern eLearning development. Recently, after Articulate demonstrated their new AI Avatar + text-to-speech feature, I decided to experiment with it inside a real eLearning project currently in development. Not a fake sandbox. Not a “someday I’ll try it.” A real project. Here’s what I did: → Took an image I had already refined in Copilot → Uploaded it into Articulate Rise as a custom avatar → Added my script → Generated narration using one of the ElevenLabs voices inside Rise → Then generated the avatar video The output? Honestly…better than I expected. Will I use it in the final deliverable? Maybe. Maybe not. But that’s not the point. The point is this: Experimentation expands your creative range. Every time you test a new workflow, tool, interaction style, or development approach, you gain another mental reference point: 👉🏾 “This works.” 👉🏾 “This doesn’t.” 👉🏾 “This could work under the right conditions.” 👉🏾 “This would improve learner engagement if I modified it.” That’s how stronger instructional designers are built. Not by endlessly consuming webinars. By testing things. Even awkwardly. Even imperfectly. Even when the result never ships. Because the next breakthrough in your work usually comes from an experiment that almost failed.# What have you experimented with recently inside your eLearning workflow? Share in the comments. 👇🏾 📲 >>> If this resonated, 👣 FOLLOW ME for more. I write at the intersection of instructional design, company culture, encouragement, and leadership. >>> 🌟 STAY ENCOURAGED 🌟 #eLearning #IDProThomas #NewIDCareerTips #InstructionalDesign

Agree with this completely. According to the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, AI requires Human Oversight. It [AI] should be used as a "dance partner" to process data at scale, but human professionals must make the final decisions.

📚 A recommendation for aspiring and seasoned Instructional Designers alike: If Edward Tufte's transformative thinking on visual communication and information design hasn't crossed your path yet, rectify that immediately. "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint" makes an excellent entry point—it's the kind of work that fundamentally challenges how we think about information design trapped inside slideware. (From there, move to "Envisioning information", a brilliant book with a remarkable range of examples for the idea of visual thinking.) As long as learning content lives on screens and breathes through slides (both inherently rectangular), the cognitive style baked into this method remains, at its heart, the Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. And that should give us serious pause about effectiveness, cognition, and how we actually learn and design for learning. So it`s worth investing time understanding Visual Thinking and Information Design through Tufte's lens. His critique isn't really about the software. It's about a way of thinking—a cognitive style that privileges linear sequence, worships the bullet point, and dissects complex phenomena into digestible (though often distorted) fragments. No matter how innovative modern learning solutions market themselves, a closer look reveals something telling: at their core, many of today's "learning revolutions" still perpetuate the same rectangular geometry. Why? Because they still live in slideware—sometimes dressed in prettier aesthetics, but fundamentally unchanged. It's less revolution than rearranging furniture. The learning revolution won't materialize from more polished slides in sophisticated architectures. It arrives when we fundamentally rethink how we present information. Just imagine: What if learning's history had unfolded differently? What if, instead of rectangles—from clay tablets to parchment to paper to pixels—we'd inherited an entirely different geometry? Holographic learning, anyone? 😉 Until then, we`d better train that design muscle in instructional design. --- What I`m listening: Depeche Mode: Where`s the Revolution? (vinyl album, 2017) #ID365 #instructionaldesign #informationdesign #visualliteracy #learningdesign #visualthinking #futureskills

Most instructional designers are preparing for the WRONG FUTURE!! A lot of IDs are still focused on: • mastering authoring tools • building faster modules • polishing visuals • creating more content But AI is already reducing the value of production-heavy work. FAST! The future of instructional design probably won’t belong to the people who can build the most courses. It’ll belong to the people who can: → solve performance problems → improve onboarding outcomes → influence behavior → align learning with business goals → use AI strategically Because honestly? AI can already help create: • quizzes • storyboards • scripts • assessments • learning outlines What it still struggles with is context. The messy human side of learning. The politics. The stakeholder alignment. The behavior change. That’s where future-ready IDs will stand out. I think the role is shifting from: course creator to learning strategist. And most people in L&D still haven’t adjusted to that shift. What skill do you think instructional designers should build right now to stay relevant over the next 5 years?