So You Want to be an Instructional Designer?
- Veronica Thomas
- Apr 25, 2022
- 3 min read
If you want to be an instructional designer, stop hiding behind theory. —Veronica Thomas
When I began my career under the official title of "Instructional Designer," I thought I knew what it would take. I had a Master’s degree in Instructional Technology and Media. I could recite instructional design theories. I was designing online courses for executive education, graduate degree programs, and continuing professional studies programs. I even had an impressive title. :-)
With each course, however, I discovered that designing effective online learning experiences would require far more than what I had been taught. Beyond the rubrics, beyond the theories, beyond the technology—online teaching and learning is both science and art.
As an instructional designer you don't just need skills in technology and media-making, you also need skills at negotiating, persuading, marketing, managing, leading, coaching, empathizing, and mentoring. I have found that those who seem to struggle the most with designing and teaching online courses have a few things in common beyond anxiety about the technology:
They never had the responsibility for teaching.
They never had an interest in teaching.
They didn't understand who they were teaching.
If you want to be a complete instructional designer, you should first teach. If you want to design courses for the K-12 audience, teach K-12. If you want to design courses for undergraduate, graduate, or professional learners, find opportunities to teach, co-teach, or assist an instructor who is teaching these audiences.
You will find that designing a course for a K-12 audience is not the same as designing a course for an undergraduate audience. Likewise, designing a course for graduate students is not the same as designing for executives. In fact, many organizations do not want to work with instructional designers who have never designed courses for the "real world." You may find it difficult to convince organizations that experience in designing online academic programs will translate to corporate training and development, because, although the language of learning has a common alphabet, it also has nuances, idioms, accents, and techniques that will vary depending on the context of instruction.
Let’s say that you obtain a position at an academic institution or corporation. Your role as an instructional designer will be both defined and constrained by the organizations at which you work. Instructional designers working in a higher education context face entirely different challenges than instructional designers working for a local start-up, global corporation, or online program management provider. Therefore, the suggestions you make and the technologies you use must be guided by fully understanding the particular needs, concerns, and priorities of the organization's stakeholders, decision-makers, and audience of learners. What about all those rubrics, theories, and frameworks you learned at school. Yes, you should be familiar with them, however, bear in mind that while these standards can tell you what you should do in an online course, they never tell you how to do it. The how will come with experience, exposure, and experimentation, nevertheless, no matter how much you learn about instructional design, there's always more to learn.
If you're trying to break into instructional design, use this time to design a module or course for the audience you'd like to teach. Volunteer to help a teacher learn how to use an instructional technology. Keep up with trends in instructional design. A few of my go-to resources include:
As an instructional designer, you have a responsibility not only to the learners but also to the instructor/subject matter expert, practitioner, and the organization. In brief, I'm saying that instructional design is very much context-dependent. Know your context. Know who you're designing for and with.
As the pandemic has taught us, teaching and learning require a human touch. So, if you want to be an instructional designer, stop hiding behind theory, and get in touch with your empathy.
