There is a version of the future where AI handles the heavy lifting in instructional design. It drafts the storyboard. It generates the scenarios. It writes the scripts and builds the first version of the course. That version of the future is not as far away as it sounds.
And yet, when Dr. Luke Hobson, Assistant Director of Instructional Design for MITxPro and author of What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming an Instructional Designer, sits down to think about what makes a learning professional truly indispensable, he does not reach for a software tool. He reaches for something older and considerably harder to automate.
“If you can get better at your people skills, negotiating, communication, leadership,” Hobson says, “that doesn’t get the attention now, and it really, really should.”
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The Problem With Chasing the Next Thing
Hobson has watched the field cycle through its share of revolutions. The metaverse was going to change everything. Then emergency remote learning. Then competency-based education. The flip classroom. Each arrival came with a wave of breathless posts and a fresh round of declarations that something else was officially dead.
He is skeptical of the cycle, and honest about why it keeps repeating. LinkedIn rewards certainty, and certainty rewards exaggeration.
“Everyone makes it seem like they’re all incredible experts at AI because that’s what generates attention,” he says. “But gen AI in our field has not been around that long. Whenever someone says ‘I know everything about AI,’ I don’t believe you.”
That skepticism is not cynicism. It is calibration. Hobson experiments constantly. He pilots everything he designs. He follows the tools closely. But he is careful not to let the noise of what is new drown out what is proven.
What Cold Calling Taught Him That School Never Did
Hobson’s path into instructional design was not linear. He studied graphic design. He worked in sales. His first real salary job had him cold-calling small business owners for a discount program they had already been given and were not using.
“I grew thick skin after having a thousand people say the meanest things ever to me,” he says, laughing. “When they just hung up, I was like, what a nice person.”
He draws a direct line from that experience to the work he does now. When a subject matter expert says no, or dismisses a recommendation, or steers the conversation somewhere inconvenient, the instinct he developed on those calls kicks in. Not to push harder, but to find a way through. To understand the resistance before trying to resolve it.
That instinct, it turns out, is the foundation of one of the most common failure modes in L&D.
“When a project fails,” says Jason Gorman on the episode, “98% of the time the reason is communication. Not technology.”
Budget overruns. Blown timelines. Content that misses the mark. Almost all of it traces back to a conversation that did not happen clearly enough, early enough.
Hobson is writing a book about exactly this. A framework for working with subject matter experts, built from everything he has gotten wrong. How to build trust. How to redirect without alienating. How to give a tenured professor honest feedback on camera when every instinct says to say it was fine.
Advice That Actually Holds Up
When people come to Hobson asking how to break into instructional design, he gives them three things.
Build your network before you need it.
“Dig the well before you’re thirsty,” he says.
Not networking as a transaction, not asking for something immediately, but genuine conversation: where are you struggling, how can I help? A 15-minute Zoom call is more accessible than most people realize, and the relationships built that way compound over time.
Build a portfolio. Not a nice-to-have anymore. Required. With so many people entering the field, a demonstration of actual work is one of the only ways to rise above a pile of otherwise similar applications.
Invest in learning the learning science. Hobson finds it remarkable, and a little ironic, that the field built on research into how people learn is often slow to apply that research to its own practitioners’ development. Reading, noting, synthesizing, and being able to speak intelligently about it in an interview, is a meaningful edge.
For mid-career professionals, the advice shifts. The question is not just what skill to add, but what direction to move. Individual contributor or leader? Those paths diverge in meaningful ways, and the skills required for each are genuinely different. Leadership, Hobson is clear, is not something AI is coming for anytime soon.
“Someone always needs to be the one spearheading the charge. Someone has to be the one to talk you off a cliff when you’re panicking.”
The Future He Is Actually Watching
Hobson’s predictions are grounded rather than dramatic. He is curious about whether more teams will adopt MVP approaches, shipping something, collecting real data, and iterating, rather than spending months in design before any learner ever touches the work. He is watching synthetic data as a potential tool for evaluation when sample sizes are too small to be reliable.
He is also watching, with some frustration, the way AI is being embedded into tools without asking for permission. His description of opening his desktop to battle AI assistants that will not stay out of the way, “Clippy on steroids,” landed as one of the most relatable moments of the conversation.
And he is watching, with genuine unease, the world his six-month-old daughter is growing up into. Generation Beta. He does not know what learning will look like for her. The dark paths of AI worry him, especially as safety structures are increasingly bypassed. The anxiety is real. So is the commitment to keeping the human side of this work intact.
What Stays When Everything Changes
Near the end of the conversation, Hobson comes back to something he learned at the very beginning of his career. Universal Design for Learning. Designing for all people, not just the assumed default learner. Not because it is mandated or because the research is airtight on every dimension, but because it asks the right foundational question: who is actually taking this, and what do they actually need?
That question, he says, has never left him. It is the anchor under everything else.
The tools will keep changing. The job titles will shift. The LinkedIn posts will keep declaring things dead. But the work of understanding another person well enough to design something that genuinely serves them: that is not going anywhere.
And neither, if you are paying attention, is the person who has learned to do it well.
Listen to the full conversation with Luke Hobson on The LX Ops Show or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Podcast Transcript– Jason Gorman with Luke Hobson
Jason Gorman (00:00)
Welcome to the Learning Experience Operations Show, where we talk about making learning better that’s also future ready. I’m Jason Gorman, the founder and CEO of Jackrabbit Learning Experience. I am recording this the beginning of 2026, and it feels like right now we’re in the middle of an enormous pivot for learning professionals. I hate to say this a little bit, but it’s been 25 years since I earned my master’s degree in instructional design. And looking back, I’d say that maybe
Two-thirds of what I’ve learned no longer applies to what I actually do today I mean some things have held up like educational research or some of the relational things that we do in our jobs how we talk to other people but Almost everything related to the day-to-day design and development has just gone through major revisions more than once I don’t know we’re on v3 or 4 at this point
And of course, the latest shift over past couple of years has brought a different level of uncertainty. And of course, I’m talking about AI. ⁓
And I know over the last couple of years from these conversations and private conversations that I’ve been having with people is that we have all been asking, what does the future look like for learning professionals, for instructional designers? What will our work look like? And what does AI really mean for our work? And as I have gotten going this year in 2026, my focus has really been less about the AI and more about getting grounded, getting grounded
in my own fundamentals, the fundamentals of what makes this work good when it’s good, getting clear on what we do well, ⁓ and then being thoughtful and creative about where AI might fit. And I think this also means cycling intentionally between innovation, thinking about what could be, and optimization, taking what’s already working and making it better. So just not chasing every new tool, but really getting grounded.
In this context, at the beginning of 2026, makes today’s conversation especially timely and something I’m particularly looking forward to. I’m really excited to talk to today’s guest. He is a practitioner and educator and an important voice in our field. He teaches this work. He does the work. He prepares people for the future of this profession. And as someone who’s been in the field for a long time, I also learn a lot from his content, as I know.
having people coming into the field do. ⁓ So here he is. Dr. Luke Hobson is the Assistant Director of Instructional Design for MITxPro. He’s an instructor for the University of Miami School of Education and Human Development and the instructor for the Instructional Design Institute. He’s also the author of the book, What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming an Instructional Designer.
He was named one of the top learning influencers of 2022 and a top e-learning expert in 2023. Dr. Luke Hobson, welcome to the show.
Luke Hobson (03:10)
Hey Jason, thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it.
Jason Gorman (03:13)
Awesome. All right, well, let’s jump in with a couple of lightning round questions. What do think?
Luke Hobson (03:17)
Amen. Let’s do it.
Jason Gorman (03:18)
All right, you do a lot of things. I kind of alluded to those things at the top. what is, sometimes I like to think of it this way. Let’s say you’re at a party and you meet somebody who knows zero things about anything that you do. They’re just, they’re an accountant. They’ve never, this is totally unfamiliar field to them. What is your 30 second elevator pitch version about what you do?
Luke Hobson (03:45)
Sure. So for a living, I get to care about designing learning experiences. So if you’ve ever taken a type of a course or a training or a program before, whether going to be in higher education or for your own training at your job, someone like me has to be able to design that. And I lead a team who gets to be able to actually do that. And I also get to teach about it and I write books about it I’m a learning nerd. So I post stuff online about it too, if a blog and a podcast and a YouTube channel, because my focus is on thinking about how do people learn and how do I get the most impact.
out of what I am designing to make sure it’s going to be beneficial for them.
Jason Gorman (04:17)
Man, that’s really good. People hate that question, but you have it. You have a real actual elevator pitch. Congratulations. And I can hear from your voice the obvious enthusiasm, and this is true for everything that I hear that you do, your obvious enthusiasm for this work. You love this work. And the next question is, what do you love the most about your work?
Luke Hobson (04:19)
30 seconds? I think it was under 30 seconds.
Thank you. I’ve top mad.
I mean, my favorite thing is to actually see that what you do makes a difference, which if you’re someone is going to be tagging a course that I taught on LinkedIn and sharing about what they learned, or if they took something and then three months down the road, I get a message saying that like, my gosh, I talked about inside of this course, I’m now actually using it on the job is making a big difference, I got promoted or to get an email, of course, from people who are trying to learn about how to become an instructional designer. And then when you get that message,
saying, hey, I accepted the job offer. I wanted to let you know first before I share it online is this like, that’s the greatest thing ever. I will take that 10 times out of 10 all day, every day.
Jason Gorman (05:21)
That’s wonderful. You can interpret this next one any way you want because you do all kinds of work. But when you are absolutely dialed in at work, what are you most likely to be doing?
Luke Hobson (05:32)
If I am really dialed in and I actually have like the candles going and I’m on my third cup of coffee and I got the music in the background and I’m just like super, you know, in that workflow state, usually I’m writing because of whatever I’m going to be scripting could be helping out from inside the actual course or for writing for the newsletter or right now I’m writing a new book. Just trying to be able to just like, I’m always writing. So usually that’s, and then that will in turn be produced somewhere and shared online.
Jason Gorman (06:02)
Would you be willing to say something about what your new book is about or is it too soon?
Luke Hobson (06:06)
No, it’s I literally just started working on it last week. So why not talk about it? I have realized that I needed to write down this framework that I’ve been using for how to work with subject matter experts. It’s something that I’ve learned about over the years. And I put together a framework of essentially all the ways that I have screwed up and what it has taught me in order to do kind of like, you know, step A, B and C in order to really try to work with me and to get the most out of that relationship. So I’m writing a book on
Jason Gorman (06:10)
Sure.
Luke Hobson (06:36)
How do you work with other people? That’s pretty much it.
Jason Gorman (06:39)
That’s wonderful. That’s great. I don’t know if that’s breaking news in this podcast, but anyway, that is that’s exciting.
Luke Hobson (06:45)
Haven’t shared with anybody, so you’re the first. It is, man.
Jason Gorman (06:47)
⁓ it is breaking news. Amazing.
And also thank you for making my intro relevant because like I said, I think one of the things that has remained true in our profession is we have to be good with people, especially subject matter experts, but we do, we have to be able to read situations. We have to be able to navigate them carefully. Very often we don’t have the most power in the conversations that we’re in and that creates
a certain kind of responsibility and difficulty in how we communicate. I’m really looking forward to your book. I’m glad you’re writing that book.
Luke Hobson (07:22)
Hey, I’ll let you know how it progresses.
Jason Gorman (07:24)
All right, ⁓ next lightning round question. What event or moment inspired you to do what you do?
Luke Hobson (07:31)
It was the fact that I worked at a university. worked at Southern New Hampshire University many years ago and there was a ton of employees that worked there. And I was like, what do all of you people do? Cause you can’t all be professors. It was like, I, I know all the academic advisors and I kept on seeing all these other people. And what happened was I ended up just deciding that this was going to be my time to start networking and just talking to random people. So I literally was the guy who would go to cubicle to cubicle.
being like, Hey, like, I just wanted to introduce myself. I seen you around the office, but we never had a chance to talk about before. Like my name is Luke. I’m an academic advisor. What do you do? Evan? Sure enough, one of those people was someone who says, Hey, I’m Bruce. I’m an instructional designer. Like, what is that? He’s like, I designed the courses our students take. He’s like, no, you don’t. That’s the professors. He’s like, no, it’s not entirely anyway. They’re a part of it, but there’s a whole team. And I was like, what? Like that’s a job. So that was the moment.
that made me say, ⁓ okay, I can make a living out of designing learning experiences. Like, how do I get that job? And that’s, that conversation started this whole path.
Jason Gorman (08:39)
That’s pretty cool. Are you still in touch with Bruce?
Luke Hobson (08:41)
I, so I, I messaged Bruce
not that long ago and he was just like, boy, I never thought our conversation would lead to what you do now. Like, dude, me either. It was, was, I never thought that one convo with leads, ⁓ making this my career and then trying to share with, with so many different learning nerds online. So that’s been cool. Yeah.
Jason Gorman (09:00)
That’s pretty cool. I hope
Bruce feels the same ⁓ pride in that as you feel when somebody you’ve talked to goes and gets a job, a new job in instructional design. It’s like a…
Luke Hobson (09:10)
Yeah.
I had to be like, man, you made that ripple effect. It was all you. If I didn’t meet you that day, I don’t know if I’d be doing this. So yeah.
Jason Gorman (09:13)
Indeed.
Right, that’s amazing. All right, well, tone change here, what are you most anxious about for the future?
Luke Hobson (09:28)
Being that I am now a newer dad, that my daughter is six months old, I cannot fathom what the future of AI and learning looks like for her. That really worries me because there’s a lot of dark paths of AI. Maybe we’ll talk about them today. I don’t know. There’s a lot of dark pathways of AI. Then I’m like, ⁓ it’s not going to go well unless if we really figure out how to put in the proper structure and guidelines and safety nets and protocols and
Jason Gorman (09:31)
Mmm.
Luke Hobson (09:56)
Many of these are just getting completely bypassed nowadays. So I really fear where will that go for generation beta? think it’s generation beta is her, is her, ⁓ generation. So, yep, that, that terrifies me.
Jason Gorman (10:12)
Fair enough. All right, last lightning round question. What’s the skill you’re trying to pick up right now?
Luke Hobson (10:18)
I want to learn Muay Thai. Yeah, right. Nothing instructional design related. I’ve always wanted to learn Muay Thai. I found it fascinating and I found a gym that teaches it near me. I was like, all right, doing it. Very little, very little boxing, major to speak. So it will be a whole new world that I know like nada about.
Jason Gorman (10:21)
⁓ wow, didn’t see that. Didn’t see that coming. Tell me about that.
That’s cool. Have you done any combat sports before?
Wow, that’s ambitious. That is not a mild goal.
Luke Hobson (10:51)
Worst case scenario,
I get a concussion and I’m done. Best case, I have a new fitness hobby and it goes well. hey.
Jason Gorman (10:58)
Yeah, yeah,
I studied taekwondo with my kid, actually, it was great. had a, when my oldest was about eight, we started taekwondo together and then I broke my toe and that was it for me. I did, it was great while it lasted, exactly, ⁓
Luke Hobson (11:10)
At ⁓ least you got to do it together. I’m sure that was fun and rewarding and yeah.
Jason Gorman (11:20)
All right, so we’ll get into the bigger questions here. ⁓ As you mentioned, or as I guess I mentioned and you mentioned, as we’ve mentioned so far in this conversation, you do a lot of things. And I’m wondering if, just to kind of give us a little narrative for all of those things, can you walk us through a typical week in your work
Luke Hobson (11:40)
Sure. So it’s, odd because as you said, I have a whole bunch of jobs, some that I feel like I just keep on picking up a new thing along the way. And before someone does wonder, like, does he only work 40 hours a week? No, I work way more and that’s not to be having pride in that. It’s just more about like, that is now what’s kind of become my life. Or it’s just like, I do like to enjoy.
Jason Gorman (12:00)
Mm-hmm.
Luke Hobson (12:03)
doing more from, if you want to guess from like nights and weekends, trying to be able to do more from the teaching side with the university of Miami and my EdD students or for my students within IDI and trying to be able to coach them on the best instructional design practices and such. Of course, the typical day of the nine to five for MIT, which is just like a lot of Zoom meetings, trying to be able to help out my team members navigate many different types of circumstances and situations, some of which I’m like, have.
never dealt with that before in my life. Okay, let’s figure out how do we deal with this? So a lot of communication with them also with other different types of variety of teams, whether it’s going to be from TAs or engineering or faculty or from the customer support team or a variety of different types. A lot of communication to be honest with you is really what I do from that. And then of course, as I talked about previously, I love to write. So trying to be able to focus on the podcast on the newsletter.
and trying to carve out time each day to write like anywhere from least 30 minutes to an hour per day is something that I strive to be able to do. So I’m always working on that as well. So it’s just it’s a lot of that work and then some days I’m doing a ton and I am full throttle and I’m you know, I’ve already had like my third cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee and I am just going for it. And then other days.
I’m not, I don’t have it. It’s just, it’s not there. ⁓ I’ll have like a severe migraine and I’m like, I, I am basically dead to the world. I will try to be there, but I’m just, you know, it’s not there. So it, kind of has like ebbs and flows where some days I am incredibly busy and other days maybe not as much, but that’s a usual nine to five of what I do. Yesh. Relatively speaking.
Jason Gorman (13:26)
Mm-hmm.
That’s a lot of things. And the being a parent on top of all of that, not small. And the most important thing, you left out the most important thing, which is the parenting. Gotta be a good husband. Absolutely. Priorities, man, 100%. 100%. So you mentioned Bruce and your conversation with Bruce. And I’m kind of curious to go from there. Maybe this is a good
Luke Hobson (13:48)
Yeah, of course. ⁓ always have to be the parent.
Now, parenting, you gotta be a good husband. gotta have hope for those things. That’s always there.
Jason Gorman (14:13)
place to start with this question. The question is what ignited your interest and passion in this work? I what was it in that conversation with Bruce and whatever happened after that that made you realize, okay, this is the direction.
Luke Hobson (14:26)
mean, to be honest, it was taking so many online courses that were awful and figuring out how do I make them better? That truly was the thing. I’m speak, I was the academic advisor at this time. And I’m speaking of all these wonderful and amazing students. And it’s not to say that their courses were bad, but having gone through so many different online courses where I’ve seen some memories that have come up on Facebook that I’ve shared things where I saw one.
Jason Gorman (14:32)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha
Yeah.
Luke Hobson (14:52)
that I mentioned about why do I have 16 discussion board posts due in one week? And it’s stuff like that. It’s just like, what did I go through? What did I pay for? And there was so many of those courses that were just truly the worst. And then coming to find out from speaking with him and then buying more books and then talking with more instructional designers and then realizing there is this amazing way of doing things right.
that I did not know existed until speaking with more people and then getting to actually have the opportunity of taking really good courses and then saying, there is, there is this whole approach that I don’t know enough yet. How do I dive in deeper? And I think that was one of the things that going down the rabbit hole is that when you read one book and you talk to an instructional designer and they say, that’s a good book. Have you then read this one? And then that led me down to being like, okay, like what’s
Jason Gorman (15:42)
Mm-hmm.
Luke Hobson (15:44)
what’s next and what’s next. And then eventually just that’s where I found myself now. And I was just all these books behind me of just finding all of these resources and trying to figure out where do I spend my time to learn more. And that truly, once I started to actually then do it was of course the next thing is finally becoming an instructional designer, acting upon everything that I learned about and getting a chance to build and design in my own. And it’s just so interesting.
being able to literally like think back to all the days of building of Lego blocks and how much I love them. And then last thing I get to do with education and to build like learning activities into this. Like, is this so fascinating to think about? Like, well, if I put this here at this sequence, does that then make a bigger difference down the line? And then if I ask them to be able to think about something back from week one, but now we’re in week three, like, what does that look like? How much do they remember? And then all of that is just fascinating to me and getting to do that. And someone pays me to do that. Sweet. I’m in.
Like this is like, I’m in, can’t wait to do this. So yeah, that’s, that’s the start of this all.
Jason Gorman (16:44)
Did you get your first ID job at Southern New Hampshire University or was it somewhere else? How did that happen?
Luke Hobson (16:49)
I had
a weird hybrid ID job. So when you look at my LinkedIn, it’s called Creative Resources Manager, which meant that I designed the different forms of online courses and resources for the writing center, the peer tutoring center, the learning communities. So I was building out all these different types of online services that would engage and help out different types of students and faculty and whatnot. But it wasn’t
a true ID title, if you will, but there was a lot of ID components that really made sense. Now I think about it, you know, 10 years later.
Jason Gorman (17:24)
kind of curious. Well, let’s rewind a little bit too, because ⁓ you were clearly searching for interesting things, right? Places to bring your, to direct your life. And I know that you had a whole career, whole, you trained yourself as a graphic designer, is that right? Before that?
Luke Hobson (17:47)
Matt, my degree is in graphic design and I was a graphic designer for clients. Yeah.
Jason Gorman (17:48)
Yeah, you’re a graphic designer.
Well, I’m curious whether it’s from graphic design or something else. One of the things that I like to do ⁓ on this show is to think about the things that we have learned that will endure into the future and the things that are new that we need to be picking up. And I’m kind of reflecting back on important things that you picked up as a
as a professional, before you ever found instructional design, what is something that you learned and you picked it up and you carried it forward into your instructional design work that you still use now?
Luke Hobson (18:31)
So I don’t talk about this that much. It’s a great question. So I’m so glad you brought it up for a living. I’ll ask you, have you ever done cold calling for sales before as a job? Yeah. So that was my, my very, very first job and I was 14. was a janitor, but if we fast forward 14, Hey, 14 New Hampshire, they let you work. Uh, but for my real first salary role,
Jason Gorman (18:42)
yeah, yeah, sure have.
14?
Yeah.
Luke Hobson (19:00)
I
worked at a company that was called Biz Unite, and we got to call different organizations within the NFIB and we had to get them to essentially use a discount program that they were given and they were not currently using it. So I’m literally picking up the phone and I had a CRM that was just here are your hundred companies you’re going to call today and to make them buy something.
That was my job for a year. And man, I grew thick skin after having a thousand people say the meanest things ever to me. No, I only say no. I wish they just said no. my God. When they hung up and they said no, I was like, what a nice person. no. It was more about, Hey, this jerk is calling me and interrupting my day. What do you want? You’re taking money away from me because you’re making me like leave my shop to go talk to you. And I was like, ⁓ so I had a lot of really great conversations with people.
Jason Gorman (19:33)
Yeah.
Say no.
That was so kind.
Luke Hobson (19:58)
⁓ that’s, know, that, but that learning how to be able to speak with people from all kinds of background and realizing that when someone says, no, how do I get around? No. And that’s kind of fascinating, especially for what we do as an instructional designers is that when you’re working with subject matter expert, and if someone is like, no, I don’t think so. And you’re like, great, I’m going to find a way to get around that because that’s what I have to do. So that’s that, that all, I still use that to this day.
Jason Gorman (20:18)
Hahaha
Luke Hobson (20:25)
that I’m trying to be able to work with others and those communication skills are still here many years later.
Jason Gorman (20:32)
I love that. And I think we might have just written a chapter of your book here. But it’s got to be in there somewhere. Well, it’s funny. I don’t actually don’t really make that connection often. But I had sales jobs in high school. And I dropped out of college at one point. And I had a sales job when that happened. And that stuff did come in handy. I never really thought of it that way. So thank you for.
Luke Hobson (20:38)
It’s gotta be in there somewhere. How to get around though.
Jason Gorman (21:02)
framing it like that, because that’s really interesting. ⁓
Luke Hobson (21:05)
I mean, especially for
you as an entrepreneur and a CEO for everything. I’m sure if you, if you dug back there, you’d be like, yeah. Like maybe not to the scale, obviously, but like there’s, there’s some nuggets you learned along the way, but I’m sure you still use.
Jason Gorman (21:08)
Right.
Yeah,
we’re kind of funny about the word sales. I think in general, this is a little bit of a, ⁓ this is a thing that’s true in general, but I think in places like higher ed, where you work and where I worked for very long time, ⁓ people will kind of associate sales with something that’s kind of oily or dishonest or not transparent. And that’s certainly the case, right? Those things happen all the time.
But the reality is, I think a lot of times sales is what you describe, which is you, if you are really honestly trying to help somebody as a salesperson and you have something that that person needs, the job is just about helping understand what that fit is and whether or not it’s the right fit. And I think if you can do that and you can talk to somebody on their terms and you’re not brow-beating them, that is sales also. That’s usually when sales works.
And I think thinking about a subject matter expert conversation is one in which you have to help them understand where you are mutually aligned and use language to ⁓ help them understand that you care about them, that you’re seeing things from their perspective and so forth, which are all things that a good salesperson does. That makes sense to me.
Luke Hobson (22:41)
Yeah, it’s all on what you’re actually selling. Cause if I was selling something just for the sake of selling something, then you’re like, ⁓ it’s like, no, but it’s like, no, if it’s actually for the transformation, if it’s for the real value, if you actually do mean what you say and you’re, you’re backing this idea, then that’s something entirely differently that, you know, now we’re selling the idea of the most phenomenal online course that I can create with you. Let’s talk about how to get there. And then so it’s
Jason Gorman (22:54)
Yeah. Right.
yet.
Luke Hobson (23:08)
It’s all, and we’re always selling, selling ourselves right now. As far as we’re like, we’re talking, we’re conveying information. We want you to listen and be like, that was a good idea because we like being able to build up our community and to get people to want to listen more, to say, Hey, they, they might know what they’re talking about. What else do have to say? And it’s like, yeah, cause I want to find better ways of serving you. let’s, know, yeah, that’s all that’s life. It’s life in a nutshell.
Jason Gorman (23:11)
It’s just, it’s true.
Indeed, it’s very fair. So that’s a really good one from life before you started as an instructional designer. Now I’m curious about early years as an instructional designer. What is something that you learned you started doing early on, but that has remained, my voice is going perfect, that has remained foundational to your work that you are still using now.
Luke Hobson (24:02)
So the first book that I ever read was on universal design for learning. And at the time that seems like a I wasn’t too sure about this kind of a topic. And I know now that some people have different feelings around UDL for more of like the scientific purposes of it all and blah, blah. But it’s like at the end of the day, if I can try to be able to design a learning experience is going to meet the needs of all people. How do I actually do that? That’s really hard trying to think about it. And I, you know, I’ve designed different types of learning experiences for literally
Jason Gorman (24:06)
Hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Luke Hobson (24:32)
all people from trying to be able to create programs that serve veterans of the military is completely different compared to me designing different types of courses for traditional 18 year olds who are going to college. It’s just, it’s a completely different feel and that skillset of knowing how to be able to channel that and to be able to focus on, okay, I’m going to be designing this for military folks, potentially what
It could cause like PTSD for something, but I don’t know what I’m talking about I think a word’s fine and then it’s like nope So I need to be able to have like a smee who is a veteran who can review to say yes This makes sense or even from trying to be able to understand the jargon of things I mean that was one thing where I have not served before so I don’t know the jargon where I’m like Would you say it like this especially drafting up scenario problems, and I’m like would you say it like this and they’re like
No, we would never say it like that. was like, well, help me, man. Like, I’m kind of there, but I need your input to be able to make this sound authentic, review it with me, and teach me about how to make it seem more like it’s coming from the right type of place. So all of that is still in play. And that was the very first thing that I learned about. And then now it’s something that I always think about, is that whenever I’m designing an experience, I think of my audience first.
Jason Gorman (25:27)
Hahaha
Luke Hobson (25:53)
And when I think about how to make sure it’s going to be impactful and meaningful and relevant for them, and I don’t just think about it from my perspective or the faculty’s or the institutions, but more about it from if someone’s taking this, what are they really getting out of it? And that’s, that’s never left me.
Jason Gorman (26:09)
I always felt like one of the great pleasures of instructional design work is the opportunity to learn about things that probably we would have never learned anything about or what we learned would be relatively superficial. Not only that, in the process of learning, we have access to a true expert. mean, this is amazing. I’ve found myself learning new topics from people who are
Luke Hobson (26:21)
Yeah.
Jason Gorman (26:36)
The best in the world or one of the best in the world many many times and it has become An incredible feature of my life that i’m just so grateful to have So I appreciate you ⁓ You kind of pointing that out and speaking of your audience For the content that you create when you are out Talking to people when i’m reading your posts on like dinner. I’m listening to your podcast
I do hear you talking to people who are coming in or who are newer to the field that often you are addressing, you’re kind of answering questions for folks who are curious about this world. And I would imagine that you have always, but now you are, people are asking you advice about the future. No, people are dummies. They know what’s happening. They see what’s happening with technology. They see what’s happening with the job market.
and other things that are going on in our field. And I am curious if somebody, if a new person who wants to come into instructional design asks you, what advice do you have for me as I’m starting out? What do you tell people these days?
Luke Hobson (27:49)
The first thing I say is how much time do you have? Because then we go into everything. when I think about it, man, the very first thing that I would say, regardless of where you’re currently coming from, is to dig the well before you’re thirsty. You have to build up that network first. That is absolutely key before doing anything else. There is, of course, always the chance that you might be able to apply to land your dream job at a place and not know anybody. That does happen. That’s how I got at MIT.
I didn’t know a soul here. It worked out. But what I would say is that for going forwards, it is so much easier to be able to find different types of opportunities by building out your network and being able to really try to find these people first, where you’re not trying to say like, I need something from you immediately. That’s why I’m connecting with you. But it’s trying to figure out like, Hey, where are you currently struggling? And how can I help you if at all?
And sometimes it’s just going to be no, I’m all set, I don’t need anything. But other times you might actually find a project here or there that can give you a sneak peek around perhaps what this field is entirely all about. And either way, just having a 15 minute conversation with somebody, many people are giving like that and they will do a 15 minute zoom call with you. And that has been something that when you have that real incredible network, even to this day,
Jason Gorman (28:54)
Mm-hmm.
Luke Hobson (29:06)
I still tap into my network that maybe I haven’t talked to somebody in three or four or five years, but if I do say hi, it’s not weird. It’s not strange. It’s just like, yeah, I can pick up the phone and call a friend. That’s, that’s totally fine to be able to do. So focusing on the network piece is going to be one from there, trying to figure out more about what you have already done in the past and what you can actually use to then design that into a type of a portfolio. Those are required now in my opinion, before I was kind of like, they’re like a nice to have and nope.
Jason Gorman (29:14)
Yeah.
Luke Hobson (29:36)
That’s gone. You have to have one now. There are so many people who are entering into the space and need to be able to have something that is a demonstration of your work is really going to be key to trying to be able to get you to float on top over the other applicants. And that’s already something that you’re going to be doing that already does have a type of a head start for you from that type of perspective. And of course, what are you currently doing right now to upskill and to get better, whether you’re going to be reading books or listening to podcasts or trying to be able to do more from
Jason Gorman (30:00)
Mm-hmm.
Luke Hobson (30:05)
watching videos on YouTube or following along people’s posts on LinkedIn or whatever it is, trying to be able to take in this information and to also just write things down along the way and to not just kind of forget about everything. There is so much of our field, which is actually based all around learning and learning sciences that we really don’t use as a society and trying to be able to capitalize on that and to talk about it and to give you more information to then be able to use it to share during your interview process is really going to be helpful.
So trying to start off with those three things. And then of course you can do more from different types of perspectives around education, certificates, professional development and things like that. But really it’s a try to be able to do some of these things early on to give you a head start. And then before you spend your hard earned money, this is like what I want you to do first.
Jason Gorman (30:53)
That’s terrific. I’m gonna ask the same question except, let’s say the person is seven years into their career. ⁓ And they say, what do you think’s coming for us? What should I be thinking about as a mid-career professional? What you say to that person?
Luke Hobson (31:12)
Sure.
So I’d say, and I’d approach it in a couple of different ways. If you’re asking about it from a career advice perspective, I would be asking you around, do you want to stay as an individual contributor? Do you want to move into leadership? Do you want to do something adjacent? What exactly do you want to be able to do? Depending upon that answer, that’s really going to give me a different type of a starting point to be able to help out folks because leadership is so much different compared to being an individual contributor.
especially for instructional designers. And I’ve been talking about that more lately with folks who want to now move into management. And maybe they never thought about that before, but it seems like the next logical step for everything. So that will never also go away. You’re always going to have a leader of a team who’s trying to be able to coach and to guide and to make their team actually grow and all that sort like that cannot get replaced by the way. So
Jason Gorman (31:52)
Mm-hmm.
Luke Hobson (32:03)
Of course, then when you were talking about people, which I’m assuming with your question too, is that everyone, course, is like, ⁓ AI. And you’re like, yes, but also let’s talk about this in different types of circumstances because it’s what we’re currently talking about now. But I know that any seasoned veteran will also tell you too, that we have been introduced to something every single year that’s going to revolutionize our field. And then maybe it actually does, or maybe it does not. Thinking about it from the metaverse, which is what all we were talking about previously.
It’s a course, emergency learning, remote learning, high-flex learning. The emergency, basically, it’s like an emergency learning, if you will, but then thinking about it from the flip classroom perspective, competency-based education, there’s a number of things we’re always introduced to that are great, but place and time circumstances and things of that nature. If you do want to be able to think about more like future-proofing your career and trying to be able to think about what is going to be coming next, there are so many folks who truly
haven’t dabbled with AI to the extent that you think. And I know on LinkedIn, everyone, of course, makes it seem like they’re all incredible experts at AI because that’s what generates attention. But it’s like AI truly AI has been around for a long time. Let me be clear about that. But the usage of gen AI in our field has not been around that long. So whenever someone is this like, I know everything about AI. I’m like, I don’t believe you because
Jason Gorman (33:07)
Sure. Yeah.
Yeah.
You
Luke Hobson (33:28)
You
learn something new every day and it’s just from experimenting and trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. So trying to just have a sense around that. And that way of people within your organization actually sees you as the leader who is trying to be able to talk more about it from this AI perspective, whether going to be making impact, whether helping from analysis or from evaluation, whether from video generation or from voice translations or from image generation or from creating a simulation, whatever it is.
having more of that knowledge and then being able to articulate about it and to speak about it is incredibly helpful that many people haven’t done. And organizations are seeking out those people to say, can we do? have we, where can we go? And if you become that beacon of hope, if you will, that’s going to be making it even better for you in the long run of things. So that’s a mouthful of where we’re at and what I would give to someone who’s been doing this for seven years.
Jason Gorman (34:27)
Well, let me just actually, this is you kind of got into the territory, the next thing that I wanted to ask, which is for somebody who is just a, right there just in a job, right there working as an instructional designer or they’re a learning professional somewhere doing this or similar work, from your perspective, from all the people that you talk, from your own work, what do you think is,
Luke Hobson (34:32)
great.
Jason Gorman (34:52)
are one of or what are some of the most common challenges that people who are doing our work are facing right now? So if somebody’s looking to grow, what are the challenges to that growth or what are practical challenges at work?
Luke Hobson (35:09)
sure. I mean, there’s there’s plenty. And some of the things that you wouldn’t even think about as far as just someone like unexpectedly quitting on a project, getting your budget slashed, having your timeline accelerated. Truly, what to be able to work on and to get better at is project management. It’s it will never go away. It’s always something that we do, especially designing learning experiences.
The better you can get at project management and at people management, AKA working with SMEs, trying to be able to influence without power, trying to be able to be seen as that, that go-to person within your organization. That’s what you should be working on. And that’s never going to go away. Someone always needs to be the one who is spearheading the charge. Someone has to be the one to make sure that you’re talking with me off of a cliff when they’re panicking and they don’t know what to do and they’re, freaking out and you’re like, let me help you with that.
or to be able to guide the rest of your team members, whatever it is, those are the things that we should be thinking about and getting better at, which I don’t think people try to get better at people skills. Cause right now it’s all like, how do I get better with AI? Like, sure, we can talk about that, but also it’s still not clearly impacting the way that organizations are making it out to be.
Cause if you go and I’m sure you’ve seen it on LinkedIn for many different posts and such that people are saying like this thing is dead. LMS is are dead. That chat GPT is dead. It’s all it’s just like, I mean, it’s not dead. Like it’s this, you’re talking about using it in a different way and you found a thing that maybe you could do it better than the original thing, but LMS is aren’t dead.
Jason Gorman (36:39)
⁓ sure. Yeah.
Luke Hobson (36:53)
They’re not going away. Like we’re all still using open AIs products as far as I can tell, at least the timing of this recording, you know, it’s just like, but no matter what, what’s not going to go away is that if you can get better at your people skills, negotiating, communication, leadership, man, that’s so helpful. That’s just, it doesn’t get the attention now and it really, really should.
Jason Gorman (37:01)
Mm-hmm.
Man, I love that answer so much. When I start a new project, so very often our work, we’re working with, just like you are, just like with the sub, you know, if you’re working with a faculty person, they haven’t done this very often, right? Like this is new. Let’s say if somebody’s making a new online course and they’ve never made an online course, it is actually a new thing. It is not like making, it’s not like preparing for delivering a course in face-to-face class. We work with organizations that do all kinds of things. And when,
both in the process of talking to them about what they need and explaining what the process is and also starting a project, the one thing we hammer home, we just talk about all the time is when a project fails, if a project were to fail, the reason 98 % of the time is communication. It’s not technology, right? So if the budget gets blown up, it’s because there was a communication problem. If the content’s wrong,
It’s because there was a communication problem. If the timeline gets messed up, communication problem, right? If you’re working on a Saturday at 10 and you’re exhausted, communication problem, right? So I so appreciate you saying that because it is, I mean, literally we quantify, we have to quantify it in dollars for our clients, right? Like this will take X amount more hours.
and Y amount of dollars more if this kind of issue persists. ⁓ So I have to get very specific about it. But I saw it’s just to say that I hear you, I agree with you. We do not talk about this stuff enough. Apparently, I just heard today that somebody’s writing a book about this. I can’t remember who said that to me. It might’ve been you. ⁓ So I’m very excited about that.
Luke Hobson (39:04)
Peace mate.
Yeah, I mean, even thinking back to one of the first things I had to learn about was how to give someone coaching and feedback when they’re on camera. wouldn’t train me how to do that, but here I am in the filming studio with a faculty member and he’s looking at me and he does a take and he’s like, how was that? And in my head, I’m like, not very good. But of course, out loud, I was like, hey, you did great. And then, you know, he keeps on recording it and then like he looks at me afterwards and he’s just like,
Jason Gorman (39:18)
Mm. Yeah.
Luke Hobson (39:39)
Yeah, you’re not really telling me the truth. Are you? And I was like, uh, is I actually like, if we use a hook for this video? What if we ended it like this? What if we said, you know, I’ve been all the creativity starts to be able to come out, but, knowing how to give coaching and feedback to someone. And of course, for anyone who is an ID like me, like I’m a, know, I’m an instructional designer working at this massive institution where I’m trying to be able to coach a tenured faculty member who’s been here for 30 years.
Yeah, it’s weird for me on the, then thinking of the hierarchy where I’m like, I’m way down here and this person’s been here for a long time. But yeah, it’s a bit strange to say, let me give you some advice because I know it will help and I can bring out the best of you. Like, let me work with you on this. And that’s something that, man, I wish I knew about that early on event to be able to just do all these various things about, as you were saying, it’s a communication problem with everything that the timeline’s wrong.
when we messed up the dates because it took too long because we didn’t communicate effectively or because of it’s it is never going to take you and to blow up your project because you drafted a scenario for too long of a time. That’s never that’s never the case as far as for that. So yeah, yeah.
Jason Gorman (40:52)
Sure. No. No.
That’s right. So just to kind of get into the weeds, I’m curious if somebody came to you and said, I am having a hard time getting on the same page or getting the attention of the subject matter expert that I’m working with. I just feel like we’re not on the same page. And it is scaring me because I am worried about my timeline now. I am worried about the deadlines. ⁓
Well, how would you start to coach that person?
Luke Hobson (41:32)
Sure. First, it’s just a simple three things. Tell me more. I want to hear more. So it’s you’re not the same page of person. Tell me more. Why? Why do you feel that way? Well, I feel that way because when I asked this, they seem to dismiss my my question and instead they guide the conversation towards this way. Okay, why do think that they’re doing that? Well, it’s because they really want to be able to talk about their video because they know what they have to get this done in this period of time.
Okay, you would probably feel that same way too. If you feel like that’s going to be a looming deadline over your shoulders and that’s currently all that you’re focusing and thinking about. Let’s think about it from their perspective. How can we do a job of better supporting them to feel comfortable for that video session while at the same time, then redirecting that and thinking about what else that you need their approval on before you start working on this process. And it’s just thinking about different perspectives, which is something that is really hard to do is taking yourself out of your shoes.
Jason Gorman (42:20)
Mm-hmm.
Luke Hobson (42:26)
I’ve been saying, okay, if I was this person and they have a really tight deadline, they’re busy nonstop 24 seven and I’m expecting them to magically do something going into a filming session. What would I be thinking about? Like, I’d be super stressed. I don’t have time. I’m trying to be able to been wing it. And then I hope that not just thinking about it from that perspective of like, what are you going to talk about on camera? But then also just thinking about two of just like what’s happening that day? Do I actually look good on camera? Did I pick out the right outfit?
Jason Gorman (42:41)
Yeah.
Luke Hobson (42:54)
There’s always little stuff as well. And if you can try to be able to reduce any of those frictions and what they’re currently dealing with, it just makes it better. Which goes back to your point about that clear communication skills to say, can we help you with writing out a script for that day or for bullet points? Let’s talk about what you should be wearing. Let’s make sure you know exactly where the studio is and what time. Let’s talk about the process. How does this actually look? It’s more of that oversharing and try to make sure that they’re feeling so comfortable.
that by the time you actually do get to work with them and you’re really there face to face or zoom to zoom, screen to screen, whatever, you’re not focusing on those other efforts and you’re focusing on what matters. So it’s a lot of that understanding and diving in and drilling more into that. And that’s when you get to have that moment of clarity to say, that’s the real problem. It looks like this, but it’s actually this other thing that they’re worried about. And that’s what’s causing all these pain points.
Jason Gorman (43:50)
That’s great. I have two more questions for you. I think we have time. We’ll try to do these quickly. I have to ask you, we’ve been talking about what remains the same, but things are going to keep changing in our field. And I’m curious, what are your predictions for what’s going to change? Could be short term, long term, your choice.
Luke Hobson (43:53)
Sure.
Yeah.
Hmm. So from a long-term perspective, one of the things that I’m curious about if they will change is that I do pilot programs of every single thing that I design. No matter what, we have a beta version. It goes out. We collect feedback. We collect data, which had to be able to incorporate student voice back into the next design of things. I really do wonder that now that we do have some accelerated ways of thinking about things from a design perspective, could we put something more
together but is serving as an MVP, then more people would then actually do a pilot. Because right now, very far and few between try to be able to do that, especially within my field of higher education, which is shocking from that perspective. So I’m kind of curious if more folks will actually go about with that. I’m curious if people will be thinking more along the lines of synthetic data as far as we’re trying to be able to take an existing sample of data and then to be able to have AI then create
more of a surplus of that data and then to be able to use that to inform your decision on what you’re going to be doing, which oftentimes we don’t have a large sample of data and we’re trying to be able to say like, ⁓ it’s helpful, but it’s only like five people who took this. Can I really use it? And then with thinking about trying to be able to use that form of a process to then say like, Hey, AI, you’re going to be expanding this from the five people and using the same information to an expanded.
to 500 with your best predictions, what does that look like? And then maybe that’s going to inform your process from things. So trying to do more from that manipulation perspective around data and analysis, I’m really curious about as well of how much will that actually change? And of course, what things will change that we have no control over and we have to figure it out. So I mean, one of them, which is still mind boggling to me is that YouTube is now just said, it’s going to just dub videos in whatever language and you don’t have to say, you just go,
Jason Gorman (45:52)
Sure.
Luke Hobson (46:03)
boom. I just want this video in Japanese and it will start doing that. You’re like, okay, how does that work? And I kind of wonder more about that, especially if in our field is that we keep on having AI get embedded into different tools and you’re like, but I don’t want it there. And the company’s like, too bad. You’re like, no, that’s not where I want to help with things. And so I keep on seeing more and more of that and different types of authoring tools and LMSs and whatnot is that they’ll, they’ll use an AI tool.
Jason Gorman (46:10)
Wow.
Luke Hobson (46:31)
and maybe it’s great and it’s awesome, it’s wonderful, or maybe now it’s like you have that issue and I said this in a webinar the other day, that I feel like when I open up my desktop, I’m fighting Clippy on steroids because every single thing I use now has AI and it won’t let me just do it. I have to dismiss something and say like, no, no, no, don’t do this for me. I want to do it myself. And it’s, it’s certainly getting frustrating. So, ⁓ I bet we’ll deal with that more in the future.
Jason Gorman (46:58)
I hear you. All right, last question. This is from Diane Weaver. She’s past guest. ⁓ So here’s her question. What challenge in L &D, it doesn’t have to be L &D, it could be just instructional design and what you do, can be solved by humans who embrace AI and fully augment themselves in how they think and work? So what challenge? What’s a specific challenge?
Luke Hobson (47:03)
Sure.
Jason Gorman (47:21)
that can only be solved by humans who embrace AI and fully augment themselves.
Luke Hobson (47:26)
When you have an organization that is extremely gung-ho and is going to want things produced at a rapid rate, or the quantity is just going to be so outrageous for things, or they want to do more from an experimentation perspective, there’s only so much that one person can do. So whether that’s going to be from drafting up so many different types of outlines or from topics or from different forms of ideas around what the learning experience would actually look like at the end of a day,
I’m curious from a speed perspective, could we be doing more from training different types of custom GPTs or from gems with Gemini to being able to have something that serves as a go-to point ⁓ first and then to be able to have it create a series of drafts and then to be able to move down the chains from there, which we’re already there. But what I’m curious about is like an acceleration factor that AI, but only someone who actually knows how to be able to do that.
can actually do it. we’ll see. Speed to market is something that higher education is not good at. And when you look at the state of higher education, it’s really interesting to see which different types of universities out there are offering these new forms of programs and courses and whatnot, especially about Gen. AI, because of course they’re like, we want to get it out faster. And I’m like, we’re using AI to produce the AI thing faster. So I’m kind of curious to see where that goes. That will be fascinating to see if that
Jason Gorman (48:44)
Mm-hmm.
Luke Hobson (48:53)
will become something that we could use and not just to, course, create something that is like garbage speed where you’re like, ⁓ I’m just producing garbage and garbage out, but to actually produce something of like qualitative substance. That’s something that if you’re only a team of one, you’re going to need help somewhere in the design process. So yeah, I wonder about that.
Jason Gorman (49:17)
Thank you for coming on the podcast. This has been an amazing conversation. There are lots of places for people to find you, but if somebody wants to find you, where should they look?
Luke Hobson (49:25)
Yeah. Awesome, man. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. And they can go to, ⁓ go to drlukehobson.com You can find me there. You can write to me, luke@ drlukehobson.com is my email. And of course, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook. I’m, I’m somewhere. They can find me. It’s Google and I’ll, I’ll show up somewhere. I’m not the swimmer. If you Google me, I’m not the Luke Hobson swimmer who’s becoming the next Michael Phelps. He’s yeah, I’m terrified of that kid. If he gets his doctorate, I’m done. He’ll never find me again online.
Jason Gorman (49:44)
Okay.
He’s the Muay
Thai fighter, actually. ⁓ It has been great. Thank you so much again for coming on. Really appreciate it. Great conversation.
Luke Hobson (49:56)
There you go. Most of us.
Hey, my pleasure.
Thank you.