5 Myths About Instructional Design in Higher Education

If you are curious about what it’s like to be an instructional designer for the corporate sector or the free-lance sector, the internet has you covered. There are plenty of resources from knowledgable people who share what the day in the life of an ID is like from corporate and free-lance perspectives. And then…there is higher education. You can go down a rabbit hole of twists and turns that will yield some bizarre results. Truthfully, higher education is extremely different depending upon where you work. A major university vs a small community college both fall into the higher education category, but chances are, those ID positions will have different responsibilities. Today, I’d like to debunk some of the myths I’ve found online about what it’s actually like to be an instructional designer in higher education.

Your SMEs Are Always Professors

I can see where this myth originates from. If you work at a university and you are developing online courses, who better to turn to as subject matter experts than your faculty? I get it. It’s entirely likely your SMEs are professors, but always? That’s a bit of a stretch. The best learning experiences I’ve designed have been when I combined the academic and the industry perspectives. When you can back the theories with practical applications in the real-world, that’s where the magic happens. The more outside voices, the better. The other item I wanted to add to this bullet point is that there are more academic perspectives to bring in than solely professors. Here are some of my past SMEs:

Deans
Associate Deans
Adjunct Instructors
Lecturers
Scientists
Researchers
Associate Directors
Directors
Grad Assistants
Industry Experts
Retired Industry Experts
Consultants

It’s safe to say that SMEs come from all walks of life and while it’s likely an ID in higher education would collaborate with a professor, there are other possibilities.

The Main Role of an ID in HE is to Convert a F2F Class into an Online Version

I’ll blame the pandemic for this one. It’s no secret that the pandemic forced everyone to turn to technology to continue education. Now to be clear, this was an emergency kind of situation so dubbing this as emergency learning makes sense. From speaking with several colleagues in various universities, the resounding message from students were that they enjoyed the flexibility of learning online and requested to have more options when enrolling in courses. This led to hiring instructional designers at a rapid rate. Now that we are in 2023, it’s time to shine some more light into how online courses are properly developed.

If you have never been a part of this process before, I’ll tell you that there is an enormous amount of research and work that goes into creating new online courses, programs, and degrees. It’s normal for research to be conducted with market testing, interviewing potential students, interviewing those currently in the field, speaking to instructors about what they are hearing, using Google SEO results, etc. The idea that this could be done quickly with flipping an existing product into an online version just doesn’t happen. Additionally, now that designers have more time to develop proper learning experiences, the goal is to never take a F2F course as is and then place it online. There has to be a transformative process to turn something from good to great. Whenever you see an advertisement for a new program, know that this wasn’t done overnight.

Your Entire Job is Online Learning

I’m going to take an L for this one, because I think I may have contributed to this myth. Oops! When I first started to share my instructional design experiences online, I talked about how I introduced myself to my SMEs. In this introduction, I mentioned the phrase, “I understand how people learn online.” Many veteran instructional designers, rightfully so, called mr out and said that we do way more than just online learning. I think a bit of background story here can help with this, especially if you are an aspiring instructional designer in higher education.

When I first started to dabble in instructional design, I was in my mid 20s. The way that I was advised on how to introduce myself on projects was to talk about my expertise in learning. I wasn’t comfortable with calling myself an expert in anything and my SMEs could see right through me. Keep in mind that I have always worked in higher education so when I would introduce myself to a professor and say that I’m a “learning expert,” I could see the wheels turning inside of their heads like, I’ve been teaching for longer than you’ve been alive. I know more about learning than you. Fair point!

After miserably failing time and time again with trying to explain my role on projects, I needed an ace up my sleeve. I needed to find a way to make them open up to me. My trump card became online learning. Up until that point, everything I accomplished was in the online space. I had an entire degree from online learning. I taught students in online courses. I advised students going through online programs. It was safe to say that my bread and butter was online learning. It finally dawned upon me that most of my SMEs knew the bare minimum of online learning and it made them nervous. When I introduced myself as being the guy who could make their online courses enjoyable, all of a sudden, everyone had a different tone when working with me. So, I continued that trend and began to share this terminology with other instructional designers in hopes that they could break down those same barriers I faced.

Now with all of that being said, there is much more to instructional design than online formatting. It’s entirely possible in your role that you will be leading in-person trainings, workshops, residencies, summits, and more. I’ve held training sessions for faculty and staff on how to create rubrics, design a syllabus, give proper feedback on assignments, design more meaningful assessments, establish communities, and more. Your world won’t only be online. It’s possible, but not likely.

Your Students Are All From Gen Z

I’m sure there is a better way of phrasing this, but when higher education comes to mind, there is a myth that the students are always young adults. I remember reading article after article talking about emergency learning and the images that circulated the internet were screenshots from Zoom with thirty 18-year-olds looking lost and bored. Once again, your students could very well be from Gen Z, but for the courses and programs you design in higher education, chances are that your target audience will be much wider, especially if you are creating online programs. Most online students are actually Millennials and Gen Xers (surprise!). These are also the students who will be enrolling in professional development courses and programs. Yes, within the higher education space, professional education exists. When a student enrolls into an online course, program, or certificate, they aren’t applying for an entire degree. They want to learn the skills that will assist them immediately with their work, obtaining a promotion, standing out from other applicants, etc. So, with that being said, as a designer, you need to account for this within your designs and support systems. This is why taking andragogy into consideration with your learning experiences is absolutely crucial.

You Do Everything By Yourself

If you Google image search “instructional designers,” your screen will be filled with cartoon drawings of super hero like corporate employees. These are to represent the many hats that instructional designers wear and how often times, you are asked to go above and beyond your normal job description. Now, this isn’t wrong. Actually, I think this is fairly common among designers to be asked to be the learning experts, project managers, researchers, technologists, etc. Where this becomes a myth though is that there is a lack of representation with working as a team. I’ve been on a number of projects where there are multiple team members and each one of us have an assigned role. For instance, there could be a junior and senior instructional designer, a project manager, an LMS administrator, a marketer, and a multimedia team for filming and graphics. When it comes to more significant programs, it’s common to have a fairly sized team to help with accomplishing the design and development process on time. Have there been times when I did literally everything by myself? Yes. For most projects though, there is a huge emphasis on collaboration and communication among team members to get the job done. This will absolutely vary depending upon the institution and the size, scope, budget, resources, etc. dedicated to the project, but for all the reasons mentioned above, human skills will always be valuable to an instructional designer.

I hope this helps to provide another perspective in the higher education world!

What do you think? Are there any other myths I didn’t mention? Feel free to share your own experiences!

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