Books for Instructional Designers

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Anybody who designs and develops training should have a library of books and reference materials at their disposal. Creating a personal library of reference books allows you to have an instant resource to go back to when you need to re-learn or remind you of a training concept or model. It also is serves as a repository of new ideas that you can develop based on proven techniques published in these books.

Over the years I have created my own personal reference library. Here are the books that I think all instructional designers or training developers should include their their own library:

• ISD From the Ground Up: A No-Nonsense Approach to Instructional Design (3rd Edition) by Chuck Hodell. This is a comprehensive, step-by-step guide to designing and developing effective training.
• Telling Ain’t Training (2nd Edition) by Harold D. Stolovitch, Erica J. Keeps. Teaches you how to design training that is learner-centered and performance-based.
• A Practical Guide to Needs Assessment by Kavita Gupta, Catherine M. Sleezer and Darlene F. Russ-Eft. A great book that teaches you how to “look before you leap”. It is important to identify true needs and the root cause to problems in the workplace before you commit to training. Includes worksheets to help guide you through the needs assessment process.
• A Teacher’s Guide to Cognitive Type Theory & Learning Style by Carolyn Mamchur. If you want to understand how people learn, this book will make you a better trainer by teaching you how to design training based on the learning styles of your learners.
• The Conditions of Learning: Training Applications by Robert M. Gagne. As the title implies, this book makes you aware of the conditions under which people learn and how you can develop training around it.

Even though we live in a digital age where we can download books to our desktop, laptop, or tablet computers, there’s still nothing like the actual thing that you can hold, turn the pages, highlight the text and annotate. A personal library of books doesn’t have to be grand, it simply needs to be a reflection of you. It’s about what you are interested in and what is useful to you as a training developer.

The books listed here are what I have found useful over the years. What about you? Are there training or instructional design books you have in your library that are useful to you that you would like to share?

Related articles

• Leading Instructional Designer Tracy Bissette and Weejee Media Create Social Learning and e-Learning Venture (prweb.com)
• Top 10 Blogs for Corporate Trainers (edubrite.com)

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