Welcome to the Instructional Architect (or, the IA).

Click on the following topics for more in-depth information on how you can use the IA and online resources in your teaching.
overview my resources my projects my profile show all (to print)

Overview of this project


The Instructional Architect (IA) is a tool that enables educators to easily access and acquire online resources, organize and adapt those resources into activities for their students, and make those new activities available to a variety of audiences.

What's New?

We are always trying to improve the IA. Some recent changes can be see on:If you have any suggestions for improvements, new features, or general feedback, please contact us at the email address at the bottom of the page.


To use the IA, please log in using one of the following methods

A note about the links on this page

The links will do two things:
  1. open new windows, remember to close windows when done;
  2. automatically turn on the help feature in the IA pages, to turn it off click "close help" in the menu at the top.


The IA was developed with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF)
and is maintained by the "Digital Libraries Connect" and "Digital Libraries go to School" grants.

The IA is a service of the NSDL logo

My Resources

The my resources part of the IA offers three ways for finding and one way to organize your instructional resources. (Read more at selecting quality resources.)

Finding resources

To add stuff to your my resources page follow these steps:
  1. Access one of the finding pages
  2. Select the items you want (not in 'add own resource').
  3. Choose a folder in which to add the resource.
  4. Click on 'ok' next to where you chose the folder (or 'save' in 'add own resources')

Deleting resources

If you find that you would like to remove a resource from your list, simply click 'delete' on the far right of the line.

Organizing resources

You can also separate your saved resources in folders on the my resources page. (Read more at Organizing your resources.)

Creating a folder

  1. Type in the new folder name
  2. Click 'create'

The new folder should be created and show up in your resource list as being 'empty'.

Moving resources between folders

  1. Select the resource(s) you want to move
  2. Choose the destination folder
  3. Click 'move resource'

It's that simple!

My Projects

The authoring part of the IA is where your saved resources come together to create an online learning activity (or project). Read more at Projects: from start to finish.

To work on a project just do one of the following:

Authoring projects in 5 easy steps!

  1. Click to choose a 'look and feel' on the Change theme page.
  2. Type a title, overview, and body of your project on the Edit content page. (This is where you will integrate the resources you have saved.)
  3. Look at a Preview
  4. Describe your project with Publishing Options so that others can find and use it (if you choose to let them).
  5. Share your project with others or download it on the Finish page.

Organizing, viewing, and editing/publishing projects ("managing projects")

On my projects, you can do the following:
  • organize your projects
  • view information about each project
  • jump to an editing or publishing page (from the 5 steps above)
(Read more at Managing your projects.)

My Profile


The my profile page is where you tell us about you. This is the same page that you used for registration, so if you have already filled that out the you can skip this part.