37 Great Resources on Instructional Design

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Instructional design is one of the most important and hottest topics in education today. With the diversity of technologies, audiences, and modes of teaching continuing to grow, it's essential to stay up-to-date.

We've compiled a list of our 37 favorite resources on instructional design. We chose these resources because they offered detailed and accurate information, and were written by professors, administrators, designers, and other authoritative sources. Check them out to find ways to improve your learning environment.

Academic Resources  -  Multimedia & Interactive Resources  -  Blogs

University & Academic Resources

1. 7 Things You Should Know About... (Educause): Educause is an educational non-profit. This series provides detailed, but concise descriptions on emerging technologies and practices, like E-Readers and Personal Learning Environments.
2. Case Studies: Explorations in Instructional Technology & Design (University of Virginia): This resource walks you in detail through three different case studies. Each case study wraps up by discussing outcomes and expert perspectives.
3. Creating a Hybrid College Course (Journal of Online Learning and Teaching): This academic resource provides great diagrams, statistics, and student feedback to go along with all the information. The author boils down all the important concepts into bullet points at the end of the piece.
4. Creating Online Courses: A Step-by-Step Guide (University of North Carolina): This resource is structured around three important considerations for building an online class—the reason for creating it, how much work it will take versus the payoff, and how you will package the class. The resource ends with 10 important lessons for building online courses.
5. DesignShop: Lessons in Effective Teaching (Virginia Tech University): This comprehensive hub is broken down into four sections—evaluation, assessment, process, strategy, and development. The Web-Based Instruction portal is particularly helpful.
6. Distance Education at a Glance: Instructional Development (University of Idaho): This comprehensive article covers all of the basics and is also part of a comprehensive series on distance education. Check out the links at the end of the article to find other great resources.
7. Educational Technology Resources (University of Warwick): This is a detailed guide to using informational technology in the classroom. It includes sections on good web practice, creating your own web pages, and more.
8. Elements of Effective E-Learning Design (The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning): This academic essay was written by Andrew Brown of Queensland University of Technology and Bradley Voltz of St. Joseph's Nudgee College. It offers great information and is supported by an extensive list of resources.
9. Information & Learning Technologies (University of Colorado Denver): This site was created by Professor Brent Wilson. He is a professor in Information and Learning Technologies and teaches classes on instructional design, e-learning, and other related topics. On this site, he shares his papers and some of his classroom resources.
10. Instructional Design (University of Illinois): This is a great web portal that is a mix of straight information and interactive media. There are multiple PowerPoint presentations, interactive quizzes, and more.
11. Instructional Design (University of Minnesota): This resource is a bit more basic than some of the others that made our list, but it's clear, concise, and a great jumping off point.
12. Instructional Design (University of Wisconsin): This web portal has sections on Learning in the Digital Age, Technologies, Designing the Experience, Keys to Success, and more.
13. Instructional Design for eLearning (Minnesota State Colleges & Universities): Upon completing this tutorial, you will be able to name and explain the five phases of instructional design and apply them when transitioning your class into the online realm.
14. Instructional Design Tips for Online Learning (California State University Chico): This is a six-section checklist that will make sure your online class is a success. It includes tips like addressing "Netiquette" and making sure you give rich and rapid feedback.
15. Instructional Strategies for Online Courses (University of Illinois): This focuses on instructional design for online classes. It covers everything from small group work to collaborative learning to mentorship.
16. Integrated Learning Communities (Maricopa Community Colleges): This resource focuses on creating successful learning communities. Various professors share their experiences and wisdom, and the last section provides a great guide to building your learning community.
17. Integrating Instructional Design in Distance Education (Penn State University): This web tutorial includes instructional classes, strategies, tactics, and examples of integration like audio- and video-conferencing.
18. Principles of Online Design (Florida Gulf Coast University): This is a very well-designed and clear tutorial for building online courses. It goes through all of the important principles of instructional design and provides best practices and examples for each principle.
19. Seven Principles of Good Practice (University System of Ohio): This resource is nice because it focuses on seven important principles of instructional design. Each principle has its own page with multiple sections and a list of resources.
20. Tools and Tips for Teaching and Learning (Penn State University): This resource is brought to you by the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence. It has a wealth of information, but also offers extras like PDFs of quizzes and grading rubrics.
21. Using Course Websites as Instructional Tools (Florida State University): This resource covers the basics and history of online learning, and then walks you through building and taking advantage of your own class website.

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Multimedia & Interactive Resources

22. Distribution of Content in Online Classes (University of Illinois): This is a 22-page PowerPoint that focuses specifically on how to get your online content to your students. It goes over course management systems, instructional strategies, and more. It is part of this great web portal.
23. Implementing Universal Instructional Design: Resources for Faculty (University of Minnesota): This is the PowerPoint presentation that was given at the 22nd Annual Pacific Rim Conference on Disabilities. It focuses specifically on designing your class to be inclusive for people of all abilities.
24. Instructional Design for Online Courses (University of Illinois): This 25-page PowerPoint presentation goes over the basics for designing an online class. It includes learning outcomes, learning activities, and evaluation options.
25. The Instructional Design Process: This video goes over the basic phases of the instructional design process—analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation.
26. Instructional Design Rules of Thumb - Learning from the Pros: While this is certainly not the fanciest video on instructional design, it does offer a variety of perspectives on instructional design from professors across the country.
27. Past and Future of Instructional Technologies (The University of Texas at Austin): This video is brought to you by the University of Texas and features Dr. Judith Boettcher, former executive director of CREN (the Corporation for Research and Educational Networking).
28. SyberWorks e-Learning Podcast Series: This has over 40 episodes including "10 Instructional Design Tips for e-Learning Development." Each of the episodes come with a transcript and a description of the author.
29. Systematic Process to Instructional Design: This 3-part video series features Kevin Brake from the eLearningShow.com. He takes us through his PowerPoint presentation, explaining and expanding on each of his slides. Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
30. Tacoma Community College Distance Learning: This podcast is published by the college's distance learning department. It has 9 episodes on distance education. The first two focus specifically on instructional design and all of them offer useful information.

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Blogs

31. Experiencing E-Learning: Christy Tucker, an instructional designer, keeps up this blog focusing on e-learning. She has some great posts like "What does an instructional designer do?"
32. IDEAS: Instructional Design for Elearning ApproacheS: This blog is run by Professor Ferdinand Krauss and offers information on class design. He has posts like "Online Course Design and Faculty Development."
33. Instructional Design & Development Blog: This blog is part of the instructional design department at DePaul University. Contributors are all members of the DePaul community—students, employees, consultants, administrators, designers, and teachers.
34. The Learning Circuits Blog: This blog focuses on learning and technology. It features a Question of the Month. One of our favorite posts is "Instructional Design - If - When - How Much."
35. The Learning Space: This blog is written by a professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. He writes about teaching resources, instructional design, digital media, and more. Examples of posts include "Merging Learning Space with Web 2.0" and "Educational Technologies in a Challenging Economy."
36. Making Change: Cathy Moore, an instructional designer and writer keeps up this blog that focuses on "ideas for lively elearning." She includes seminar information, helpful videos, and more.
37. The Rapid E-Learning Blog: This blog offers "Practical, real-world tips for e-learning success." Posts include free tools to help you build your online courses and 10 things to consider before your class goes live.

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