A Reading List of Instructional Designers

I wanted to point out this article from Cammy Bean’s post. She added to her blog mid-February a wonderful collection of “Essential Reading for Instructional Designers”.

I’m going to capture her post here in it’s entirety for my own future reference and book list of things to read.

Thanks for this Cammy.

Essential Reading for Instructional Design?
from Learning Visions by Cammy Bean

As an instructional designer/eLearning professional, what books are the essential tools in your reference library?I’m not looking for the obtuse theory books. I prefer the get-down-and-dirty variety.These are my current faves. Easy-readers (a term of praise, in this case). Practical books with lots of real examples. They might refer to theory, but they don’t get bogged down in it:

• e-Learning and the Science of Instruction by Ruth Clark and Richard Mayer
• Michael Allen’s Guide to E-Learning by Michael Allen
• Gadgets, Games & Gizmos for Learning by Karl Kapp
  

Last May, I started a bit of a list in this post: Beginning Instructional Designer’s Toolkit. Dr. John Curry was kind enough to post a really detailed reading list in his post How to Get an Instructional Design Education Without Paying Tuition (gotta love that title!)

After my appeal for something a little more pared down that I might actually be able to read, Dr. John came up with these essentials:

• The Conditions of Learning and Theory of Instruction, by Robert Gagné
• Training Complex Cognitive Skills, by Jeroen J.G. van Merriënboer [currently unavailable on Amazon]
• The First Principles of Instruction, by M. David Merrill [I couldn’t find that listing on Amazon, but there are a number of results for M. David Merrill]
• The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald Norman
  

Other ID books of note that have been recently recommended to me:

• e-Learning by Design by William Horton (recommended by Christy Tucker)
• What Every Manager Should Know About Training by Robert Mager (recommended by Dave Ferguson)
• The Non-Designers Design Book by Robin Williams (not the comedian) (this was recently recommended to me by someone who asked the same question on LinkedIn.