Xyleme Learning Blog

Manish Mohan recently wrote a post, in response to the monthly Learning Circuits question, describing resources on how to get started with instructional design. In it, he said the following about what he looks for in recruits:

… But honestly, as a manager who has had to recruit for ID, I look for prior experience, and if there is no prior experience, I look for their core writing skills and ability to learn. Having a diploma is good but not essential.

… Basically you need to have good writing skills. This is most critical to get into instructional design job. … [They are] typically what is tested by companies for taking on new IDs. …

Which suggests that instructional design hopefuls can also get a lot of use out of resources that help them with their writing quality. So you might want to check out recent posts at Dave’s Whiteboard and Making Change on the subject of how to write for readability …

From Making Change:

… When we talk about writing style, we can get bogged down in personal preferences that are hard to communicate. But if we use readability statistics to quantify style, it’s easier to guide writers.

I’m not talking about the nearly useless “ninth-grade reading level” requirement in your corporate style guide. Instead, let’s look at the Reading Ease measurement that’s part of Word’s readability check. It’s a much more practical guide, especially if you compare your score with that of familiar publications. …

From Dave’s Whiteboard:

… What is written without effort is generally read without pleasure.

… Here’s one approach to going editing your own work when you’re writing to guide others (training material, guides for independent learning, job aids). More than three steps, it’s three passes. Editing is complex; the idea is to have a focus for each pass. … [He goes on to outline a way to approach each pass.]

Writing your ideas down, like saying them aloud to someone else, forces your mind in new and beneficial directions. An editing process, even if it’s just a habit of internal review, can help make the most of those potential benefits.

And of course that’s what writing is, an expression of thinking, though with different qualities than our private thoughts. Ideas and explanations that seem bulletproof when we’re just thinking about them can suddenly be shown to be full of holes through the simple acts of writing or speaking about them. ‘Did I really think that through?’ we might ask ourselves, when we realize that our idea is missing something, or our analogy doesn’t make as much sense as we thought it did.

Writing also forces us to examine our supporting arguments, and if someone else is providing feedback, all the better. ‘How did I get there from here?’ An editing process that helps identify unspoken assumptions can keep your readers following along from beginning to end. It can ensure that instead of holding back because ‘Everybody knows that, right?’, you put all your best arguments in play.

Though in short, the best advice for writing is the advice to think clearly (via) …

… Flaccid language, Richard Mitchell’s “worm in the brain,” gnaws away at lucid thought, leaving only a quaggy labyrinth of vagueness that frustrates decisive action and obscures even success. The result is an inability to write anything useful, and it’s not pretty …

… and write as simply as you can …

… Say there’s a path through a forest, and a knight comes riding along. You, being the reader, are standing by the side of that path, maybe floating a few feet in the air so you can see better. You’re invisible, as readers always are. And you can hear the hoofbeats of the horse on the path as the knight approaches.

He comes into view. The horse is tall. The knight is also tall, and wears armor. He carries a shield, painted red, that has a shining gold star on it. This is good. You watch the knight to see what will happen next.

But wait! Did I mention that he wears a heavily embroidered surcote over his armor? He does. It’s embroidered all around with a dozen different knightly and heraldic emblems, one for each month in the year; and each symbolizes a different virtue. His horse isn’t just any horse; it’s a noble and fiery steed, with a curving neck, a flowing mane and tail, and an expressive eye that shows an almost human intelligence. The horse’s trappings—that’s the harness, the saddle, and all the bits of draped cloth—are made of fairest samite, richly ornamented, with deeply cut and scalloped edges; and from each pointy bit on the scalloping there hangs a tiny silver bell. Furthermore, it’s a magic horse. And there’s a noble hawk perched on the knight’s shoulder, and it’s a magic hawk. And the knight is magic too; in fact, he’s an elf from the planet Vulcan. And of course the knight’s sword is magic, and has twelve remarkable jewels set in its handle, each with a different magical power—

I’ll bet you’re starting to roll your eyes. Somewhere in there it will have occurred to you that it’s just as easy to type “magic horse” as “horse,” and no more expensive to write “fairest samite” than “rough woolen fabric.” It stopped being a story, and turned into nothing but words. Once you notice that the words are arbitrary, you stop believing and cease to care. This is the curse of the arbitrary, the unconsidered, the too-easily-had: it means nothing.

But say the man who comes riding down the path is just a tall knight on a tall horse. …

… so you have the best chance of keeping people interested long enough to get your message across.

Though that’s always easier said than done

One Response to “Clear Thinking -> Good Writing”

1. Ken Allan Says:
   October 25th, 2008 at 5:04 am

   Kia ora Dawn!

   I think you have got it right here.

   I am not an instructional designer, but I am a teacher. I have been preparing learning resources for juniors and adults for years.

   When any learning is done by reading text, there is no sense in presenting the first barrier to learning in the text itself. Kids and adults alike can be switched off before they get to the learning just by the look of an austere block of text.

   Ka kite
   from Middle-earth

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