Overcoming Past Mistakes as Instructional Designers

Are you a new instructional designer? This is for you. 🫵🏾 🤔 There will ALWAYS be something you’d change about a past eLearning project. Always. A cleaner interaction. A tighter script. A better assessment. And if you’re not careful you’ll convince yourself: 👉🏾 “If I just tweak it one more time, it’ll finally be perfect.” It won’t. Perfection in our work is a mirage. And chasing it quietly drains you in ways most new instructional designers don’t see: 1️⃣ It rewrites your memory of your own work. “If I had only done…” Now the entire project feels like a miss, even if it delivered real business value. 2️⃣ It keeps you stuck instead of shipping. You delay progress chasing polish. Meanwhile, the business needed “good and live,” not “perfect and late.” 3️⃣ It trains stakeholders to expect endless revisions. If you don’t draw the line, no one else will. Now every project becomes a moving target. 4️⃣ It erodes YOUR confidence over time. You stop seeing yourself as someone who delivers and start seeing yourself as someone who ALMOST gets it right. 5️⃣ It steals energy from your next opportunity. You’re mentally stuck in the past, instead of improving forward on the next project. At some point, you have to decide: 👉🏾 “This is strong. This solves the problem. This ships.” That’s not settling, it’s professionalism. Stop downplaying and undermining your expertise. You’re more than enough! >>> What is the 1 thing that keeps you guessing the completeness of your projects, time and time again? Feel free to share your wisdom 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 🌟 #IDProThomas #NewIDCareerTips #InstructionalDesign

Perfection stops more aspiring instructional designers than lack of skill. People wait until their work feels ready. Until their portfolio feels polished. Until they feel confident. That moment rarely comes. One of our students, Holly Backus, said something simple that captures what actually works: “Do it messy and participate in the community. The connections and support you get will make a difference.” That advice is more powerful than it sounds. Because learning instructional design isn’t just about reading books or watching courses. It’s about practice and feedback. You design something. It’s imperfect. You share it. You get feedback. You improve. Then you repeat the cycle. Again and again. This is how instructional designers actually develop their skills. And the community piece matters more than most people realize. When you participate in a learning community, you gain: • feedback on your design work • exposure to different design approaches • encouragement when things feel difficult • professional connections that last beyond the program Many instructional design careers start with something simple: Someone sharing their work. Getting feedback. Improving. Then doing it again. So if you're trying to break into instructional design, here’s the practical advice: Don’t wait for perfect. Start messy. Because messy work you share and improve will take you much further than perfect work you never show.

Most instructional design portfolios fail before hiring managers even open them. Not because of the projects. Because of the website. Your portfolio isn’t just a container for projects. It’s a design artifact. And instructional designers forget something important: eLearning is basically a miniature website. If your portfolio site is: • cluttered • hard to navigate • visually inconsistent • slow or confusing Hiring managers immediately see a problem. Because they assume: “If the portfolio website is poorly designed, the learning experiences probably are too.” A strong portfolio website should show: • clear navigation • thoughtful structure • clean visual hierarchy • simple user experience In other words, it should demonstrate good learning design. Before anyone opens your projects, they’re already evaluating how you design experiences. Your website is the first learning experience they see. Curious: What’s the biggest mistake you see in instructional design portfolios?

This captures a shift I’ve been thinking about a lot lately: starting with impact, not content. I’ve been focusing on needs analysis and intake, and one thing becoming clearer is how much the initial question shapes everything downstream. If we start with content, we often get more content. If we start with decisions, behavior, and impact, we get a very different design conversation. The “decisions → behavior → impact” flow especially stands out to me. That feels like a powerful way to keep learning tied to performance. Curious—how do others surface decision points during intake or early design conversations?

Instructional designers have always used a hybrid set of skills. • HTML to structure content. • UX to create intuitive flows. • Data analysis to refine learning. • Visual design to communicate ideas. • Project management to keep timelines. • Learning methodology to shape outcomes. • Accessibility to make learning usable for everyone. • Technical writing to translate complexity into clarity. • Storytelling to turn concepts into memorable learning experiences. AI prompting is nothing new to an experienced Instructional Designer. It only accelerates the ideation, prototyping, and iteration, but it still needs a skilled Instructional Designer to make it happen.

Bloom’s Taxonomy is the most name-dropped framework in instructional design. And the most misused. Every ID job posting says “must know Bloom’s.” So you memorize the pyramid. Remember. Understand. Apply. Analyze. Evaluate. Create. You learn the action verbs. You stick them on learning objectives. And then nothing changes about how you actually design. Here’s what I see constantly: an objective that says “learners will analyze the policy” paired with a multiple choice quiz that tests recall. That’s not analysis. That’s decoration. Bloom’s is useful. But only when you actually use it — not just reference it. When Bloom’s helps: → Matching assessments to objectives. If your objective says “evaluate,” your assessment better not be a recall quiz. Bloom’s keeps you honest. → Scoping a course realistically. Teaching someone to “remember” a process takes 5 minutes. Teaching them to “create” takes weeks. Bloom’s sets expectations with stakeholders. → Pushing past surface-level learning. If every objective in your course is “understand” or “identify” — you’re building a Wikipedia page, not a course. When Bloom’s is a waste of time: → Using fancy verbs to impress stakeholders but not aligning the actual course content to them. → Spending 30 minutes debating whether an objective is “analyze” or “evaluate.” If it doesn’t change the design, it doesn’t matter. → Treating the pyramid as a ladder you must climb. Not everything needs to reach “create.” Sometimes “apply” is the entire goal — and that’s fine. The real test: look at your learning objective. Now look at your assessment. Do they match? If the verb says “apply” but the quiz says “select the correct answer” — Bloom’s isn’t your problem. Alignment is. Swipe through the carousel for the visual breakdown. ↗ Day 7 tomorrow: Week 1 recap + AMA. Ask me anything about instructional design. #InstructionalDesign #BloomsTaxonomy #eLearning #LearningAndDevelopment #CourseCreation

Most instructional design portfolios don't have a work problem. They have a framing problem. There's a specific pattern I see in portfolios that don't land: The language is academic. The structure is template-driven. And the focus is on what was built rather than what was solved. ➡️ "This module includes interactive elements and a final quiz." That sentence tells me nothing about why the project mattered, what was at stake, or what changed because of your work. Compare it to: ➡️ "I identified the high-risk behaviors driving compliance errors and designed scenario-based practice around those specific decisions. Managers reported fewer repeat errors during quarterly audits." Now we're talking about business impact. Now I understand your thinking. The shift isn't about embellishment. It's about translation — taking real work and describing it in the language that decision-makers actually respond to. If you've been struggling to articulate your work's value, this is usually where it starts. What's the hardest part of positioning your portfolio? I'd love to hear where people get stuck.

One piece of feedback almost every Instructional Designer hears: “Make it more engaging.” No context. No direction. Just that. For a long time, I tried to guess what that meant. Now, I ask one simple question: “Do you want better visuals, more interaction, or improved flow?” That one question changes everything. Clarity saves time. Clarity improves output. Clarity reduces rework. Sometimes, the best design decision is asking the right question.

Most aspiring instructional designers get one thing completely wrong. They think the biggest problem in this field is competition. I hear it all the time: "The ID market is saturated." "There are too many people trying to become instructional designers." "How do I stand out?" But here’s the reality after working in this field for years. Competition is not the real problem. Execution is. A lot of people like the idea of becoming an instructional designer. They like the idea of: • designing learning • working remotely • building courses • having a creative career But when it comes to actually doing the work — that’s where most people stop. Real instructional design requires things like: • analyzing messy performance problems • interviewing subject matter experts • breaking complex work into teachable steps • designing realistic practice environments • iterating and improving solutions That work is harder than people expect. And that’s where the so-called “competition” disappears. The truth is: Most people don’t follow through long enough to become good at it. The instructional designers who succeed are simply the ones who: • keep practicing • keep building projects • keep refining their thinking • keep improving their design skills Inside IDOL Academy, I see this play out constantly. The designers who consistently show up, build things, test ideas, and improve their work rarely struggle to find opportunities. Because strong instructional designers are always in demand. The barrier isn’t competition. The barrier is doing the work long enough to become excellent. If you’re willing to put in that effort, you’ll discover something surprising: You don’t have to worry about competition at all. You just have to keep getting better.

As Instructional Designers there are things we are talking about that sound relevant but they aren’t as crucial as it seems and distract us from a laser like focus on outcomes. Here’s a short list to help sharpen focus: Content —> Usefulness Learning —> Doing Engagement —> Transformation Prize —> Continuous Improvement