In this blog post, I’m thinking about the question: What is the role of an instructional designer in my field? To answer this, I’m going to consider both my background in teaching dance in higher education, at the community level, my current role as an Administrative Coordinator in a Learning Technologies department, and potential future positions that I am leaving relatively open.
When I was in graduate school in my M.F.A. program, we had a specific pedagogy course where we focused on online education within higher education. We even met with an instructional designer at TWU! At this time, the idea of online learning in dance was relatively new, however through that experience I learned how to craft learning objectives and course modules that would guide a student to learn more about dance from their home. There was a lot of outside-the-box thinking like using Second Life to create worlds in which students could interact and dance, responding to dance videos of the student’s creation, taking in opportunities like life performances and social dance events for the students to then craft online discussion posts. I really loved and thrived in creating and organizing dynamic and out-of-the-box course content in online course shells.
In my current role as a staff member in higher education, I see how instructional designers help maintain standards across all departments that offer online courses. They help instructors learn more about how to make online courses accessible to all students, and keep instructors accountable to this important compliance policy. I am definitely curious about this role, as I think it would blend my experience as an educator, creative artist, and problem solver together in a unique way.
I’m also curious about future potential jobs outside of higher education. To be honest, I’ve been relatively narrow minded regarding the fields in which learning happens. I typically think of K-12 education and higher education when I think of the word “learning.” However, I realize that learning, good training, and employee development takes place everywhere. From our reading, I can see that good training also saves employers money in the long run, because it’s more effective, and thus more efficient. I can see how instructional designers are a blend of science and art, and operate in cycles or webs based on the outcomes and feedback they receive from their instructional design products. The ADDIE model is an example of this cycle, and it reminds me a lot of other creative process models that involve a lot of coming back to the beginning and reevaluation.
Piskurich, G. M. (2015). Rapid instructional design: Learning ID fast and right (3rd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer.
Lily Sloan 