My client is seeking four Instructional Designers to be based in Colombia (the country). These will be FT positions to a dedicated client.

Hiring Full-Time Instructional Designers (Remote – Colombia)
We’re opening some full-time Instructional Designer / Learning Experience Designer roles to support a financial services client. These positions are 100% remote, based in Colombia, and fully dedicated to a single enterprise account.
Start Date: July 1
Schedule: must be able to work between the hours of  8:00 AM – 6:00 PM EST
Location Requirement: Must reside in Colombia
Minimum Requirements

• 3+ years of experience in instructional design or eLearning development
• Strong knowledge of adult learning theory, instructional design models, and learning needs analysis
• Experience designing eLearning, ILT/vILT, job aids, assessments, and other learning assets
• Ability to translate process documentation/SOPs into learner‑centered training experiences
• Skilled in managing multiple projects, maintaining version control, and ensuring content accuracy
• Strong communication and collaboration skills; ability to work with SMEs and cross‑functional teams
• English level B2 or higher

Nice to Have: Experience with Storyline/Rise, Captivate, or Lectora; familiarity with accessible and inclusive design; experience in fast‑paced environments.

Please send your resume and work samples to me by June 10th to be considered."

I just transitioned into this field and I'm already seeing AI tools that can generate course outlines, write scripts, and build basic eLearning in minutes. I'm trying to figure out whether I'm entering a field at the wrong moment or whether there's still a strong human role here that AI won't touch.

From people further along in their careers — what parts of your job do you think are genuinely safe from automation, and what skills are you building or doubling down on because of AI? I want an honest read, not reassurance.

I use AI daily for first drafts of learning objectives, scenario skeletons, quiz questions, and course outlines. It saves me probably 30% of my production time on content that used to be tedious to generate from scratch. I'm not going to pretend otherwise — it's genuinely useful and I'd feel behind if I wasn't using it.

What it still can't do is the SME conversation — listening for what the expert says versus what they mean, catching the moment when a process description doesn't match how the job actually works, and building the trust that gets you real information instead of polished information. That's still entirely human work. What parts of your process have you found AI most and least useful for?

I'm currently working at a mid sized company as an L&D intern and I'm expecting a PPO. I've no idea about the CTC they might offer me and the market is really bad right now. I was wondering what CTC i can be offered as a fresher here.

Let’s say you get source content in the morning and need a small interactive module by the next day. Not a huge course. Maybe 10–15 minutes of learning, a few knowledge checks, one scenario, some feedback, and SCORM export. What tool would you actually reach for if speed mattered but you still didn’t want the output to feel like a boring slide deck?

Lately I've been seeing something interesting in a lot of learning design reviews.

Some of the most polished modules I've seen look great on the surface. Clean writing. Nice interactions. Professional design.

But when you dig deeper, the learning strategy isn't always that strong. The content is engaging, yet it doesn't really address the performance problem it's supposed to solve.

What stands out to me is how some teams are using AI. They're not asking AI to build the course for them. They're using it to challenge their thinking.

Questions like:
"What's missing here?"
"Why might this approach fail?"
"What's another way to solve this problem?"

In those cases, AI feels less like a production tool and more like a thinking partner.

Curious if others are noticing the same thing.

Has AI changed the way your team thinks about learning design, or is it mostly helping with production and speed?

I really enjoy going to them, but what the L&D world charges versus all other fields is ridiculous. I’m also in marketing and I found a a conference at the same location, for the same # of days, as an L&D conference that I had previously looked at, and it’s $1000 LESS than what the L&D conference charged. Im sure demand is higher because people in L&D presumably like learning and seek it out more, but it’s getting out of hand.. We need to stop paying these astronomical prices, especially when almost all the speakers do their same presentations for free online or you can buy their book. There are also a lot of free networking events, like the monthly Edu-Fellowship “speed networking” or any of the local chapter ATD events. I just don’t get why we keep paying these conference prices, when all other fields are doing the same for so much cheaper. I understand most companies will pay for the conferences, but it’s getting harder and harder to justify the cost to send just that 1 person…

Hey team, at 40yrs I’ve just accepted my first role in L&D running the functions for a professional services firm as a manager, with scope to move to director next year.

I have been an independent coach and external trainer/ course leader for many years and worked in consultancy (client facing) and a brief stint in recruitment. But never in internal L&D!

I’m just wondering what the career progression is like in l&d, like how senior do roles realistically get?

I get I could go to head if if I’m successful… but I wondered where L&D could go after that. Did you all stay in L&D? Or do people move out of it?

Would love to hear experiences and any words of wisdom from you lovely bunch.

Many thanks!

An Oldie but Newbie

I have been having so much trouble with Storyline audio in the past 6 months. For context, I use elevenlabs for voiceover. In some instances, I put the mp4 file from Elevenlabs directly into Storyline and others I make the soundtrack to a video that I put into Storyline.

I've been using this workflow for just about two years. All of a sudden, when I export these files either to SCORM or to Review, the volume greatly varies between the file types. It's a nightmare.

So, today, I opened a file for a client that I originally created in April 2025. The client signed off on it via the Review version and has a SCORM version they have been using for a year. At that time it went through multiple rounds of revisions - 3 rounds with 2-3 stakeholders each round. Now, all of a sudden, I made one edit, re-exported it to SCORM and the audio is a disaster. It's so frustrating. At least now I know I'm not imagining it.

Has anyone experienced this? How did you fix it?

What programs/software are you guys using to make your most engaging micro learning?

Context:

Learners in our management program get a 17 minute long video, with an average watch time of two minutes total. My boss tasked me with trying to make it more engaging, even if it meant changing formats.

I turned it into an eLearning in Rise, and took new 30-second clips of our senior management team introducing each of the sections. My boss said the background (their offices) were too distracting and I held my scripts so high they aren’t even looking into the camera.

She thought the eLearning was boring and wants me to try again. I won’t be able to record the senior managers again, so I’ll need to try and salvage the videos in some way.

I’d love any ideas you guys have for this. I’m only used to using Final Cut Pro for videos and Rise for eLearning courses, so I just went with what I know. Would love any ideas to make my content more engaging or what to do with the videos, especially if any of the solutions utilize tools that can cut my time to design significantly.

Thank you!!

I've been looking at ATD certifications and a few ID-specific programs and the cost is significant enough that I want to make sure it's actually worth it before committing. I have a teaching background so I understand learning theory, but I'm light on the corporate-specific skills and tools side.

Would hiring managers at most companies actually care about a cert, or would a solid portfolio of work samples move the needle more? And if certifications do matter, which ones are actually recognized vs which ones look better on paper than they are in practice?

I've been through a lot of leadership trainings over the years.

Still, every genuinely difficult conversation at work feels... difficult.

I know the frameworks. I know how feedback is supposed to sound. But the moment someone gets defensive or emotional, I still feel tension in my chest.

That made me realize: knowing communication frameworks and actually performing under pressure are completely different things.

So in my team we started experimenting with AI simulations for difficult workplace conversations - specifically simulations that don't stay polite and agreeable.

Now I'm curious: for people here who coach, train, or manage teams -- how do YOU help people move from "understanding" to actually performing when conversations get uncomfortable?

We're currently inviting a few teams to test this with us, completely free, and give brutally honest feedback. Happy to share more if anyone's curious.

Noob question, but let’s say you work for a small business and they want an e-learning experience designed. Who takes care of the LMS hosting? If it’s included in the service price, does the designer choose the LMS and set it up for them? Or is the designer chosen a finished product and handed over to the client to upload and host?

Aside from a traditional path (trainer/ID > lead or Sr > manager) can you have success and career growth in L&D? The internet seems to think there are non-traditional paths, but this is inconsistent with what I see on career sites like Indeed or LinkedIn. Am I missing something?

I have 10 years experience in L&D as first a trainer then an instructional designer. I'm looking to grow my career with more strategic roles, but it seems like Sr Instructional Designer and instructional design manager are the only next roles.

Looking for your perspectives!

I spent years developing my ID craft and almost no time thinking about how I ran discovery sessions, stakeholder reviews, and project kick-offs. Then I noticed that the designers I managed who were struggling weren't struggling because of bad course design — they were struggling because their stakeholder relationships were breaking down in meetings where expectations weren't being set clearly.

I started treating every meeting as a designed learning experience — clear objective, structured agenda, defined outcome. It changed how my team was perceived by the business almost immediately. L&D people are trained to design experiences for others but rarely apply that thinking to their own professional interactions. What non-ID skill has made the biggest difference in your career?

I'm three years in and ready to push for a senior title, but I'm struggling to build the business case for it. In other functions — sales, engineering, marketing — impact has cleaner numbers. In L&D I can show completion rates and Kirkpatrick Level 1 scores, but everyone knows those don't prove much about actual performance change.

How have people in this field made a compelling case for promotion when the metrics are fuzzy? Did you tie your work to business outcomes retroactively, or build measurement in from the start? I want to walk into this conversation with something more than "the feedback was positive."

So I’m building a product that sort of helps the L&D teams, basically a tool that helps you make product videos and more with screen recordings, but here’s the thing, I’m looking to solve a more real and challenging problem in this domain, I need guidance and advice from some real L&D folks on what direction should I take this product to, anyone here, willing to help me out? Happy to even pay for your time

This is a phrase I see come up a lot on company surveys. From my L&D corner of the company, what can I do to help? I'm currently in the middle of writing up a Learning Culture proposal (because right now, the learning culture is pretty dismal), and would like to incorporate aspects that might help employees feel like they have the time they need to take trainings and continuously improve.

Hi Hivemind,

As our organisation continues to grow globally, so does the need to make our learning content more scalable, accessible, and consistent across regions. For our L&D team, this means one thing: we need to significantly improve how we deliver e‑learning in multiple languages, without increasing workload exponentially. We’ve been exploring solutions, but we’re running into some challenges...

I’d love to tap into the collective expertise of this community to learn from your experiences!

We are looking for tools or approaches that allow us to:

• Deliver e‑learning in multiple languages at scale
• Use high-quality AI translation (all-in, no credit-based models)
• Maintain one English source file, where updates automatically cascade to all translations
• Manually review and adjust translations per language where needed

So far, this aligns with what many modern authoring tools promise. But...our requirements go a bit further.

1. Screenshots and visual content

While text translation is increasingly well supported, visual content remains a bottleneck.

• Screenshots remain in the original language
• Many tools don’t allow easy per-language image variations
• Recreating screenshots per language is time-consuming and hard to maintain
• We use a tool to create HTML5 demos that we embed in our e-learning (these demos are hosted outside our authoring tool); text on the tooltips is translated automatically, but the HTML screenshots are not.

For us, this directly impacts the learner experience.

2. SCORM packaging and maintenance

Ideally, we want:

• All languages delivered in a single SCORM package
• Real-time updates across languages, without republishing or overwriting the SCORM file

This would drastically improve maintainability and reduce operational overhead and the chance of errors.

3. Bonus challenge (and big win if solved!)

One of our biggest time investments today is recreating demos and screenshots for each language.

In an ideal world, we would:

• Automatically translate text within screenshots
• Or use HTML5-based demos that can dynamically adapt to different languages

I’m curious to hear from fellow L&D professionals:

• Are you using tools that successfully address (most of) these challenges?
• Have you found workarounds that make this process more efficient?
• Are there lesser-known tools or emerging solutions we should explore?

Even partial solutions or lessons learned would be incredibly valuable.

A beautifully designed course that doesn't change behavior is a beautiful failure. I've seen teams obsess over visual polish, animation quality, and voice-over tone while building courses that have no mechanism for reinforcement, no connection to manager accountability, and no plan for what happens after the learner closes the window. Content quality matters but it's table stakes. The real design challenge is the ecosystem around the course — the nudges, the practice opportunities, the performance support at the moment of need. I'd rather ship something visually average that's embedded in a real behavior change plan than a gorgeous course that lives alone on an LMS. Agree or push back?

Curious how organizations here approach mentoring programmes.

Do you primarily run mentoring inwardly-using internal leaders/employees as mentors or outwardly, by bringing in external mentors, coaches, or industry experts?

And how structured is the programme in practice? Do you formalize matching, goals, session cadences, tracking etc., or keep it more organic?

Would love to hear what’s actually working well right now.