Peer Review

What is Instructional Design?

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Reviewed:: Mar 1, 2021 by Instructional Design and Technology

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:

Instructional Design Central (IDC) provides instructional designers & learning experience (LX) design professionals access to content and resources.There is a list of resources, a blog, and a link to community site. There's everything from links to articles to jobs.

Type of Material:

Collection

Recommended Uses:

As a supplement and a list of collection/community resources, it's a helpful site. Ignore the commercials and go for the "meat" of the resources. The newsletter is also worth reading. Unfortunately, a lot of resources/freelance professional IDs do include commericals on their sites, however, that doesn't mean users can't glean helpful information and stay informed in the field.

The recommendation is to review the blog, the articles, the community links, and the newsletter. Skip the free or paid apps if you're not interested.

This is a START of the journey for beginning IDs-not the end.

This should be used as a reference source for information about Instructional Design.

Technical Requirements:

Chrome and Firefox browers.

Identify Major Learning Goals:

Those are not clearly identified, however, the author does link up to definitions of what and ID or an instructional technologist does, useful tips, sample templates, and community (which includes questions/job postings). The purpose is to acquiant/re-acquaint users with ID and instructional tech trade. The caveat is a lot of commercials.

Target Student Population:

College General Ed, College Lower Division, College Upper Division, Graduate School, Professional

Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:

some ID and instructional tech knowledge is useful

Computer literacy, background in Educational Technology or Instructional Design.

Content Quality

Rating:

Strengths:

Concerns:

Lots of commercials for free and $ resources.

The sources could be more credible or scholarly. On the opening page, the concepts are introduced with quotes from Wikipedia and a universtiy website. There are plenty of FREE website references (Connie Malamed; Patti Shank, Cathy Moore, etc.), that could have been listed on the site. The author could discuss the nuances of working as an instructional designer and/or technologist in a corporate vs. academic field.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:

Strengths:

worth reading the blog, "tidbits" for IDs, and checking out community resources.

The blogs are written by field practitioners from various countries. They are the strongest portion of the site.

There is a lot of information that can be of use to the Instructional Designer, including providing templates for various tasks. The reader is left with no doubt about the purpose of the site.

Concerns:

Structure the site a bit better. The app advertisements, free or cost, are a bit much.

Write an introductory page with the goals and objectives for the site-especially since this is a topic for the "Grateful to be an ID" blog.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:

Strengths:

easy to navigate

Concerns:

Cut down on commercials, somehow, they are a bit "in your face." It's overkill.

Proofreading is useful: this may seem minor, but typo's detract from the reader's attention (mine, anyway).

--TalentLMS recently published a fantastic article to decode common instructional design l and eLearning terms and acronyms.

Other Issues and Comments:

Blogs are the strongest portion of the site.

The site is almost too flashy-check the accessibility on the site.

Creative Commons: