I recently attended an Instructional Design event on Devlin Peck’s community platform where Isabella Maldonado showed us how to build a music player through Storyline 360. I have quite a bit of experience incorporating my own music and albums into Storyline projects, so I was excited to participate in this event. It gave me great insight on how to program a player interface to mimic what would be typically seen in a digital music player. Here are the results:
Another Year, Another Album
The purpose of this is to draw parallels between instructional design (ID) and digital recording practices and to show that ID goes way beyond technological appeal. This is an attempt at my own metacognition which delves into music and visual design concepts. When you are learning two or more related concepts or skills, you are interleaving. The very idea of this album was to interleave similar approaches from two different arts.
Richard Mayer encourages us to include human figures when designing learning experiences. His studies clearly show that learners improve when another humanlike presence is involved in the process. Instructional design can incorporate characters, guides, or avatars into scripts and storyboards in ways that are beneficial to the learner. This is where Mayer’s embodiment principle plays a unique and important role.
The 12 Principles of Multimedia Learning help to reduce cognitive load from the learning experience. As Mayer’s studies demonstrate, background music and volume can certainly contribute to extraneous load. Metal music , by long tradition and nature, is mixed to sound very loud. Modern virtual instruments (VSTs) and digital audio workstations (DAWs) make it possible to combine separate recordings into perceptible ensembles, even when there’s a lot of noise involved. One of the biggest challenges in making this album was the mastering process and removal of extraneous elements in a highly compressed soundstage. The multimedia principles from ID gave me new insight into musical modailities.
ID has instilled in me the utmost appreciation for design principles. With Metacognition, my intent is to apply such principles towards music production. A great acronym from multimedia design is CRAP. It stands for Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, and Proximity.
When applying CRAP to this album, I followed these principles:
Contrast the distinctive elements among the instruments without one eclipsing another. Repetition is spaced by revisiting various melodic moments of a song. Alignment is making sure each recorded piece provides scaffolding to the overall musical theme. Proximity in how the instrumentation is perceived throughout an organic and abstract soundstage.
As in ID: Contrast for clarifying communication. Repetition for strengthening unity. Alignment for visual connection. Proximity for clear structure.
The role of white spaces, also known as ”negative space”, in visual communication is to let your design breathe. There are ambient shelves throughout the recorded tracks that help carry the melody, yet faint enough to not distract from what the other instruments are conveying. Additionally, the album is instrumental to reduce the extraneous effects of discernable vocals. This may seem counterintuitive to ID, where narration plays a key role if used properly. However, the premise of this project is to reduce cognitive load in a musical sense. Ultimately, I hope others could use this medium to reimagine design concepts from ID and home studio recording.
Somewhat ID Inspired Music
My new album, Metacognition, will include thirty minutes of uplifting instrumental prog-metal ballads. I wanted to apply Mayer’s Principles of Multimedia Learning into an audible experience. In the spirit of reducing cognitive load, I decided to keep it instrumental, at least for its initial release. My idea is that vocals could easily distract if one were wanting to use this as background music while focusing on other tasks. Though there is a progressive construction to the music, it does employ a spaced repetition of familiar elements in contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity (CRAP) as ID’s may be familiar with in terms of visual design principles. Finally, I wanted to mix this in a way so that there is enough white space (another visual design element) to distinguish each of the instruments. What I think I ended up with is music that doesn’t distract, but rather encourages focus and energetic drive. So far, I’m looking to release this album next month and it will be made free to listen to.
From Teacher to Instructional Designer
Once in a while, I will get a message from someone wanting to transition from teaching to the world of Instructional Design. I’m always glad to help others in this pursuit. I love the world of education, but I lost the energy for in-class teaching after so many years. After searching for other options, I was able to find ID and I haven’t looked back since.
At first, I was intrigued about the eLearning tech aspect, but I really fell in love with the cognitive theories and practices that come with it as well. There’s a lot of interesting psychology behind ID. My advice to anyone would be to build a portfolio, but do it in a way as to show that your modules can solve some kind of real-life problem or knowledge gap. Storyline is the gold standard in ID, followed by Adobe Captivate, so I would suggest brushing up on any of those authoring tools and start building your portfolio. There are trial versions of both. Later on, you can add additional things like video learning software such as Camtasia. But always keep in mind that technology isn’t always necessary, and that tech should not drive pedagogy, but pedagogy should drive the technology.
Richard Mayer is a big name in ID. His 12 principles of multimedia learning are very simple yet very important and effective. Also, follow these people on LinkedIn and Youtube as they have the best content for aspiring ID’s: Devlin Peck, Jeff Batt, Sara Stevick, Tim Slade, and Dave McAlinden.
If you are interested in great books for ID and eLearning development, then I would suggest Map It by Cathy Moore, The Non-Designer’s Design Book, and Design for How People Learn. However, you can get the same information from the people I listed above.
Don’t ever underestimate yourself in this field. No matter your background, you will only become better from it as many professions can be complemented by ID. You will find that it is a field you will gladly become obsessed with.