Instructional Design Stress

I have to confess that although I call myself an instructional designer, it's been quite awhile since I've done anything like that.

If you've read my current job description, you know that I do a lot of other things for this small company. Over the past year, I've been focused on sales and marketing activities, project management, and content conversions -- "No ID needed, thank you." I've thought about instructional design as we've been building eLearning Templates and certainly made a lot of recommendations.

But I haven't "done" a course in ages. I haven't worked with a SME and thought about appropriate learning activities and chunked out the content. In fact, it's been almost two years since I've written a storyboard and gone through the whole process.

And now I've got a two-hour custom course on my plate. With a whole bunch of other custom projects cued up right behind it.

I'm excited. I'm eager. I'm nervous.

I've spent a lot of time in the past year thinking about ID, connecting with other training and eLearning professionals, reading books, learning about better ways of doing eLearning. I've blogged about much of what I've learned, right here.

And now I've actually got to do some better eLearning myself.

I feel some procrastination coming on. I feel the need to review a lot of books. I was delighted to see Cathy Moore's post with examples of good eLearning -- much needed inspiration.

It's time to put the pedal to the metal. Wish me luck!