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It was Father's Day today but I did not celebrate it. In fact, I don't think I would have remembered to call Papa and talk to him until he called to ask me about some bank papers. 

Did only a few push-ups at home today. Wanted to go to the gym or go out. Didn't happen.

Feeling a silent rage for some reason. That can't be good. 

Here are a few things if you are doing instructional design work on a technical project:

1. Understand the germ and essence of the domain and discipline. For law, it is justice and equality in representation. For medicine, it is physical and anatomical health primarily. For research, it is gaining knowledge through systematic investigation. Basically, for every discipline, there is an essence that you will need to know so that you can use it as a compass to guide all your learning design. This especially becomes your North Star for designing assessment, interactivities, stories or scenarios, checklists or performance support, and other learning interventions.

2. Use GenAI to understand the basic tenets of a discipline - what it is, what its not, major inventions in the last few years, whether it is a pure discipline or an applied one, major thinkers in the field, real-world applications, etc. Get the lay of the land. Sit in that information for a while.

3. When writing assessments for technical subjects (any subject, actually), only focusing on Blooms taxonomy is not enough. It is also important to factor in DOK - Depth of Knowledge. DOK like Blooms is a framework that maps out the cognitive processes outlined in learning. But DOK also covers the complexity with which a learner has to engage with the content. When you plot out both these things, the intersection will help you create a rich, deep assessment question.

4. Nowadays to understand a complex technical subject, I check out YouTube channels set up for IAS aspirants. I find those really good. For some ideas for interactivities, etc. I also use the 'Google + Reddit' prompt to get some fresh inputs. That's the interesting part of user-generated content. If you go to a credible source, then the ideas are not just by the content creator. They are also contributed by other people. That actually gives you a pulse of what kind of content on the subject will resonate and connect with your target audience.

5. Infuse joy. That just is the baseline for all good learning design. Make space for the smiles.