Have you noticed that in our industry, we spend a lot of time discussing the “right” way to go about designing and developing learning experiences? It can be difficult to make confident design recommendations when faced with a broad range of input from your stakeholders, peers, and opinions from social media groups and channels. Do you ever find yourself wondering how can you use research to support, inform, and possibly even defend your design decisions? As instructional designers, we want to know what it looks like to apply research in practice day-to-day, or whether we can apply it in a practical way at all.

In this session we will discuss practical ways to apply evidence-based research. We will begin by exploring some common myths that lead instructional designers astray, replacing each with an evidence-based alternative in a “choose this, not that” approach. You’ll leave this session with effective, research-based design approaches in areas such as commitment and motivation, visual design, accessibility, practice activities, and assessments.