Transitioning from Teacher to Instructional Designer
I was recently reading an article that mentioned how one out of every five teachers will pursue a new career in 2021. The comment section was filled with baffled readers, but I wasn’t surprised. Over the winter break, I actually talked to five teachers who wanted to become instructional designers. Each conversation revolved around what piece of advice I would give them for trying to make this transition a reality. Now, of course, the challenging thing is that I could talk all day about instructional design so trying to pick one piece of advice wasn’t going to cut it. Instead, I came up with five recommendations on how to make this transition. Is it a complete list? Absolutely not. Will this list change depending upon what industry you want to work in? You bet. For now, it’s a starting point to help you learn the fundamentals and prep you for a few interview questions. If you are looking for something more in-depth about what I wish I knew before becoming an instructional designer, I have a video that covers several different areas and will help to give you a full perspective of the role.
So, with that said, here are five tips on transitioning into our learning nerd world.
Deciding the Right Path for You
When you were a kid, were you ever asked the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Well, it’s time to ask yourself that question, but rephrase it to say, “What kind of instructional designer do I want to be when I grow up?” The instructional design field is rapidly growing every day and while that’s fantastic, it’s also confusing. Instructional designers are in every sector from higher education, corporate, non-profit organizations, government agencies, and even the free-lance field. Just saying that you want to be an instructional designer is like saying that you want to be a physician, but not saying what type of physician. Every call I have with a new instructional designer covers this topic because the skill sets of an instructional designer working at a university could be entirely different from an ID working for a corporation. This isn’t to say that one is right and one is wrong, but more of I want you to find meaning in your work and be fulfilled. For me, it’s been working in higher education and knowing that I’m providing skills for my students that will transition to the real-world. For you, it could be more about leading trainings and changing the workforce. It completely all depends. To give you more of a perspective on this, do a job search for “instructional designer” on LinkedIn Jobs and compare and contrast what you find. You’ll notice that the job responsibilities and skill set requirements are vastly different from one field to another. If you really get into the tiny details, you’ll notice too that the size of organization even in the same field will be different such as working for a university with thousands of students compared to a smaller community college.
Talk to instructional designers in their fields and see what they like and dislike about their roles. You can also listen to my podcast episode with Heidi Kirby as we explored the differences between working as IDs in higher education vs corporate. It was incredibly insightful to talk about our experiences with technical skills, salary expectations, benefits, perks, and other duties assigned to us. This was a two-part episode so you can listen to them here and here.
Updating Your Resume/CV
I hate to put something so cliché on this list, but it’s a necessity. The reality is that we still live in a world where your resume is going to be looked at first before anything else. I’ve seen quite a few resumes from teachers lately and I noticed a common theme and that’s underselling the power of being a teacher. Being a teacher isn’t easy and I’ve seen resumes that basically say, “taught courses” as an accomplishment. There are so many accomplishments to unpack from those words. The issue, and this can be with any job, is that when you have been in the trenches for the same role for so long, all responsibilities are perceived as common and normal. When you have an outsider looking in though, that’s when you’ll hear about the differences with your accomplishments. For instance, I had a call with a friend the other day who’s looking to transition to the ID field. As we talked more about her current role and how she designed her curriculum, several words popped out to me that any hiring manager for an instructional design role will be thrilled to hear more. These included Universal Design for Learning (UDL), competency-based education (CBE), project-based learning (PBL), designing lesson plans with the outcomes first aka Backwards Design, how she transformed her remote learning experience to be effective and then teaching this to others, improving achievement rates, and more. All of these are major points in instructional design! Be as specific as possible with your accomplishments and don’t be afraid to throw in some metrics. Numbers stand out in particular from all of the text. Whether you improved retention rates or were responsible for a budget, document these points. Dr. Papaioannou Lugara wrote a great article about this as well that you should definitely read.
Knowing How We Learn
Instructional designers are problem solvers. How do we solve problems? We know how to identify gaps in knowledge and build the right steps to create a meaningful learning experience. This all starts with the basics of how human beings learn. As teachers, I’m sure you know how students learn, and probably had training or exposure to cognitive load theory, behaviorism, constructivism, humanism, or connectivism. You may also know about the tried and true theories like Bloom’s Taxonomy, Gagne’s 9 Levels of Learning, etc. If you are searching for an ID role, I would suggest to dive into a bit of andragogy (the science behind how adults learn). The reason being is because designing courses for adults, who have several barriers to learning pertaining to time, energy, self-efficacy, prior knowledge, etc., is different compared to designing courses for the younger generation. Are there similarities between adults and children? Absolutely, yet you’ll notice you will design courses activities differently when you are cognizant of what adult learners face. There are times when you will only have a few hours to grab students’ attention. The content must be engaging and transparent to show the purpose behind why you are asking the students to participate in the assignments. If you lose the clarity and reasoning, chances are that you’ll see a drop-in student participation. Thinking about these barriers will make you become a better instructional designer.
If you are looking for a book on learning, I’d recommend either Make it Stick or How Learning Works.
Explaining an Instructional Design Model
Instructional designers like processes, models, and frameworks. I find this slightly ironic as most IDs will have a story or two about a time when all of the rules went out the window in order to launch a course on time. Projects are usually not as linear as one would think and that’s why learning engineering is really fascinating to me. Anyway, I digress.
Most organizations use one instructional design model in particular like Backward Design, Dick and Carey, agile, or SAM. The important part here is not to learn every single model, but to focus on one that you find effective and then learn everything about it. Think about courses you’ve designed in the past and see how your design process aligns with the known ID models. I mentioned above about how my friend used Backward Design, but didn’t know the technical name of the process and I’m sure you’ll have a similar experience. If you don’t have experience with any of these models in particular, find the one that you like the best and dive into the research. There will without a doubt be a question in an instructional design interview about walking the interviewers through a design process. This could be specific or be something generic as in “Tell me about how you would design a course on architecture.” My best piece of advice here is to learn one model and then practice trying to teach it. Use your creativity and make a speech about it, draw the steps on a white board, use a Google sheet, or however you would like. You need to become so comfortable with this that it’s a natural process.
Working with SMEs (Subject Matter Experts)
SMEs are vital to projects and chances are, you’ll be asked in an interview about how you collaborate with them. Working with SMEs is a delicate balance and it’s essentially an entire part of instructional design. If I had to categorize what we do, I would say that we design learning experiences, manage projects, and manage relationships. Many new instructional designers worry that they aren’t knowledgeable enough in every area to design a course. They are thinking about trying to be the SME themselves. Luckily for all of us, that’s not the case. What you do need to learn about though and is becoming comfortable with learning how to negotiate, to influence, and to persuade others. Instructional designers are often in this position where we know what’s best for the students and the SME isn’t aligning with the course’s intention. How do you manage someone when you don’t have the power? The SME doesn’t report to you and you may not have the final say on the project. That is when these people skills are crucial to guiding the project back on track. For instance, most SMEs will want students to learn literally everything on one topic, but the course is only intended to be 8 weeks long. You have to make that judgement call on the right amount of information for students to learn and to prevent them from burning out.
You also need to keep an open mind about what the SME is saying and their feelings behind their words. I remember working with a SME years ago and he was resistant to any suggestion I mentioned. It was frustrating and it started to eat away at me because I knew we were in for a long and bumpy road if kept on arguing. I managed to have a phone call with him one day and just asked about his perspective on the design process. He opened up to me about how he’s been teaching this course content the same way for 20 years and he felt as if this online course would replace him. I honestly had never thought about this perspective before. Most people are resistant to change for stubborn reasons, but his resistance stemmed from the fear of losing his job. That conversation changed the way how I approached talking about instructional design with SMEs to explaining more about the purpose of why working together can enhance their courses and their teachings. For him, I was able to provide data from surveys and student testimonials about how much they loved his course and his fears slipped away.
Working with SMEs is an equal partnership and when there is mutual respect and you are on the same page, that’s when the magic happens. If you are looking to learn more about collaborating and building relationships with SMEs, I run a cohort-based course each month on Eduflow. This course is an opportunity to network and meet other aspiring instructional designers and you’ll learn about my best tips for working with SMEs.
Since I wrote this blog post over a year ago, I published a full book on instructional design career guidance called, What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming an Instructional Designer. If you liked the format of this blog, it’s pretty identical to providing clear information to help you on your instructional design journey.
What I Wish I Knew Before Becoming an Instructional Designer
Well my friends, that’s it for now. Are there more things to know about this field? Yes, but I don’t want to overwhelm you so the above tips are the basics with trying to become an ID. Overall, the instructional design field has given my work a sense of purpose that I never had before.
Whether you are looking to change the lives of students or looking to transform the workforce, there is an instructional design job out there for you.
