Welcome to Instructional Design Insiders! This is a community of practice for Instructional Designers. Whether you're new to the instructional design, or you've been practicing in the field for longer than you'd like to disclose, I hope you'll find something useful here. As a community of practice, I invite you to come here to ask questions, share your knowledge, ask for a brainstorm, bring new tools and frameworks to light. This is your space. I'll be sharing some of my own tools and helping you work through existing tools and navigating the new world of AI. To get started: 1️⃣ Please introduce yourself so that we can all get to know you better. There’s an Introductions category at the top of the IDI Community tab. Tap that and start a new post. Share what you are comfortable with - suggestions include your background/experience, what you love, what you are good at, what you have challenges with, and what you hope to see in this community. Maybe a fun fact or two. 😊 2️⃣ Read some of the other introductions, and add a like to some of the posts. You’ll notice that everyone has a “Level” associated with their membership (you can see it on their profile pic). You level up by earning point when other members like your posts or comments. Tap the Leaderboard tab to see how many points you need to level up. 3️⃣ Review the Community Guidelines (https://www.skool.com/instructional-design-insiders-8292/idi-community-guidelines?p=ab5bfdbe) to ensure that we keep IDI a safe place for everyone to share and learn. It’s the second pinned post on the Community tab. 4️⃣ Explore the Classroom tab. The first course in the Classroom highlights my AI Partner Framework - a tool to help you determine when you should leverage AI for a task, whether it's one you should take on yourself, or if it a collaborative effort. The second course introduces my 20-Minute Arc methodology to teach one skill in 20-minutes. This meets our learners where their cognitive load and workplace attention sit.

These Community Guidelines are designed to promote trust, honest debate, and genuine professional exchange. IDI is a place to test ideas, share real work, and get feedback that actually makes it better, not just louder. That means disagreement is welcome here. Instructional design is full of judgment calls, and the best thinking usually comes from people willing to push on each other’s assumptions. What’s not welcome is anything that makes this feel unsafe to do: personal attacks, bad-faith piling on, or self-promotion dressed up as conversation. The guidelines below aren’t a rulebook so much as a description of the kind of community we’re building together. Read them, hold each other to them, and reach out to the admin if something feels off. 1️⃣ Debate ideas, not people. Disagreement is welcome and often useful — that’s how good instructional design gets sharper. Challenge the framework, the approach, the data. Keep it aimed at the work, not the person who shared it. 2️⃣ Share your work freely — pitch sparingly. Course plans, frameworks, prototypes, half-finished ideas, “does this make sense” posts — all encouraged. What’s not welcome: posting purely to drive traffic to your own paid offer, service, or affiliate link with no real discussion attached. If you’re sharing something you built or sell, add context and be ready to engage with feedback, not just drop a link and go. 3️⃣ Give feedback you’d want to receive. If you’re critiquing someone’s approach, be specific and constructive. “This won’t work” isn’t useful. “Here’s where I think the objectives and the assessment don’t line up, and why” is. 4️⃣ Respect confidentiality. Don’t share proprietary client materials, NDA-protected content, or anything that could identify a client or employer without permission. Anonymize or generalize when in doubt. 5️⃣ Stay on topic. This is a space for instructional design, learning theory, AI-in-ID practice, and the craft itself. Let’s keep politics, religion, and unrelated promotions out of the main feed.

Hi everyone! I'm Jennifer Gildea, your host. I’m currently finishing a long-planned trip in Scotland, but when I return to the U.S., I’ll be starting a new, exciting role (more details on that later). My background: I've got more than 30 years of learning & development and instructional design experience, having worked in both IT Training and HR L&D over the years. I have a B.S. in CIS (Computer Information Systems), so data, systems, and software have always been an important part of my skill set and tool box. As a learning professional, I have expertise in instructional design, learning systems management & strategy, and facilitation. I've also worked with help desks and IT, which has added some change management and customer support skills to my resume. What I love: I'm passionate about helping people to be successful at what they do. So much so that I've created another Skool community (Level Up Life Skills) to help people of all ages learn things they may not learn in school (financial literacy, career readiness, AI, parenting, home maintenance, etc.). When it comes to instructional design - AI is changing everything. Regardless of how you feel about AI, I'm certain it's a bell we can't unring and it's here to stay. So I'm advocating for the human as an irreplaceable asset and AI as a tool that we use to get the job done. What I find challenging: Throughout my career, I have struggled with clients who don't understand the role and are looking for an order-taker as opposed to a problem-solving partner. I crave access to data to help identify where the gaps are and to show if what we're putting out there is working. What I hope to build here: I’m hoping to build a community of practice for new or experienced instructional designers to talk about current trends and challenges, share knowledge, and help each other learn and grow our skills together.