Thiagi Instructional Design Guru on Video

I just spent an hour and forty minutes watching Thiagi on a YouTube video. That’s a lot of time, but it was worth it.

Thiagi (whose last name is too long to spell, and like Prince or Madonna it’s not really necessary) is not only one of our fields’ foremost personalities and presenters, but he is also a brilliantly creative instructional designer. I may not agree with each and every one of his assertions, but every time I hear him speak I am compelled to listen for wisdom that I myself don’t yet own. I am challenged to new ways of thinking. I am humbled by his encyclopedic knowledge of learning-design methods and his ability to pair learning needs with that encyclopedia.

If I was a learning executive with a tough learning-design problem, he would be one of the people I’d call to get useful original ideas on the issue.

As you watch the video, you might want to skip forward to 0:05:40 to get through the introductory comments about the program at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.