As the instructional design field grows, so does the confusion around what "instructional design" actually means. Today, I'll talk about the current trends, job postings, the essence of instructional design, and what you should be thinking about with your future.
out with your future.
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Transcript:
Luke Hobson 00:00
Hello learning nerd nation and welcome on in to the nerdiest podcast you are going to hear today. My name is Dr. Luke Hobson. I am the host for this show. And I'm a senior instructional designer and program manager at MIT. I'm also the author of the book called What I wish I knew before becoming an instructional designer, my passion and my purpose is to help you learn more about instructional design. And everyone is welcome on into the show whether you are brand new into the instructional design field or you have been doing this for years, all are welcomed on in, turn nerd out together. That's kind of the whole point of the show, we have a very strong learning nerd community. And it's absolutely awesome to be a part of. And of course, if you wanted to learn more about myself the show or anything else, you can head on over to Dr. Luke hobson.com. Today's episode comes out of the vault of YouTube. You may have already seen it from the post yesterday, but I shared on LinkedIn and Facebook but I created a new video called why the instructional design field is so confusing. And I thought that this would make an incredible podcast episode as well, because this is a topic that keeps on repeatedly being brought to my attention about how the field and itself well, it's kind of tricky to figure out and I've been getting a bunch of questions from you just trying to help and figure out like navigate this world and decipher exactly what some organizations are looking for within an instructional designer.
Sometimes you see one list of skill sets and other times you see a completely different type of qualifications or responsibilities and years like what what exactly is this person looking for? What is this organization looking for from me and what's the best path to take. So if you have been reading job postings lately, and wondering why organizations are asking for such radically different types of skills, this episode is for you, it is going to help clear up a few things. And I hope it's going to point you in the right direction. Now if you would rather watch the video instead of listening to the podcast episode, obviously you can head on over into YouTube. I'll include the link down below into the show notes. I did want to mention though and just kind of point out one funny thing if you do head on over to YouTube, and you're looking at a thumbnail, you might really you know, kind of see but I'm a little bit different looking and why well it's because I finally got rid of the beard. Yes, it was time it grew to a foot. So at that point in time it's like well, I think it makes sense. Didn't change things up a bit so I look a little bit different so just an FYI I don't match the pictures on the thumbnail compared to the video because how I record YouTube videos is that I do them in a batch recording. I'll record like for videos one day and then over time I'll do the editing and the marketing and all whatever different types of good stuff. So the video I look a little bit different, just FYI and also Thank you for all the comments. By the way, on the new look, many of you were extremely kind on LinkedIn and Facebook and saying how much you'd like to new look. So I really do appreciate that. But anyway, with all that being said, I just wanted to give you a heads up.
So now let's dive on into the episode that's talking oh, about the instructional design field. And this kind of confusion, the instructional design field is currently evolving right in front of our eyes. And while that is wonderful that the world has kind of taken notice about instructional designers. And it's so fascinating to see all the different types of organizations who are hiring for instructional designers like how we infiltrated the NFL folks, there is an instructional designer on the Denver Broncos, that is mind blowing to me, as somebody who had to go and constantly explain about what he did for a living with every single person he talked to. And now I'm reading articles about the Denver Broncos hiring an instructional designer, we are in wild yet kind of amazing and awesome times for our field specifically. But with that being said, because of our growth, that has also made instructional design really confusing for folks just coming into the field, or trying to hire an instructional designer. And all of this is kind of like, I need some help here. I'm kind of lost.
And what I'll keep on seeing on my LinkedIn, I'll get a message about every couple of days or so or somebody will just message me to saying like, Hey, Dr. Luke, I'm super confused. I am looking at researching job postings. And so far, I have seen this one. And it's basically talking about how I need to know every single authoring tool under the sun. And then I see this other one. And it's talking about how I really need to know every form of learning theory and model and strategies, and everything else pertaining to that. And then I see this one in the middle. And it basically combines both of them. And it's asking about some kind of super learning nerd wizard, what what should I be doing? What were shoes like, what do I begin this entire process? And the thing is, is that I get it, I understand why it's so confusing from an outside perspective, looking in. Yeah, I bet instructional design is absolutely wild. And some people have many, many questions. So let's do a bit of a deep dive into this, shall we, I kind of have a theory that I want to unpack with you over this video about why I think this keeps on becoming more and more confusing. First and foremost, the term instructional design is now this umbrella term. And what I mean by that is that if you go onto LinkedIn jobs and type in instructional design, that is going to be the main focal points, but then from there, all of these other jobs are going to be stemming off from there, that some of them are certainly relatable, there are overlapping different types of parts of the skills of being an instructional designer or qualifications. And then other times you're looking at a job title, and you're like, I don't really know, like, that's not that close, I guess, if I Yeah, you know, and it's just really kind of confusing from there. So the other day to kind of highlight these, I made a list about roughly 50 or so names within the learning and development space.
That's kind of in my opinion, if you go on Google instructional design jobs, these very well might be coming about. Now, the point was to not confuse you, I just wanted some people to see about how there's, you don't need to just become an instructional designer, if you care about learning and design and like this entire nerdy world that we are living in, if you really love this, but you want to go and dive into other aspects of design. There are certainly other fields that are related, but a little bit different. And that's what I was really trying to highlight with a post like that. But also I want to highlight a very important note as well, too, that an instructional designer is not a learning scientist, or a learning engineer, an instructional designer is not an elearning developer or a curriculum developer or a technologist or there's many other different types of phrases that I mentioned inside of that status. But where this all stems from is that if there was one particular area of instructional design that you find really fascinating, you can actually make a entire career out of just one area. Now to me, there are five different areas of instructional design to consider. First and foremost, learning how adults learn. For adults, we're talking about andragogy for K through 12. We're talking more about pedagogy but the core foundational knowledge about an instructional design position. Is this talking more about how folks learn. The second part is project management. You are going to be managing multiple projects on any given day. And we need to think about our due dates, deliverables, deadlines and trying to make sure that we are within budgets. The next part of instructional design to me is collaborating with subject matter experts, we partner with subject matter experts, or as we call them in the field sneeze. And we work with these people, because we are not the experts when it comes to a particular area. Sometimes we are, but usually, though we're not. And we need to partner with another person to have that right balance of both having the insights of an instructional designer and a subject matter expert at the same time.
The next is research, we need to know quite a bit about research actually, first and foremost thinking about how we need to be able to research more about our intended target audience for whatever product we are creating, think about a course of training, a program, a workshop, a webinar, whatever it is, Who is the intended target audience? What are their pain points? Where are they coming from? What problems? Are they really trying to be able to solve a training and education, that's probably why they came to us over into the first place. So we need to know more about our learners and our students themselves. We also need to know about the latest and greatest of research when it comes to anything that is new. But as being talked about, whether that is something like say researching more about Cohort Based Learning, or Project Based Learning, or UDL, or wherever the research is taking us that says that this is becoming more effective within our type of learning space, we need to be aware about what the research is saying. And also speaking of research, we need to know was our overall design effective? Using both quantitative qualitative, whatever you want to be able to use? Was everything that you created for the learning experience, it wasn't relevant, was it meaningful was a gauging did it hit home with your students and with your learners? And of course, how can we make it better you there's no such thing as a perfect type of product, there is always some way to make something better at the end of the day, and that comes with feedback. And that stems back into research. And then finally comes technology.
When a lot of people think about instructional design, they think about authoring tools, learning platforms, learning management systems, technology is a part of what it is that we do. Those are the five key areas. Now with that being said, this is why things get confusing, because for some organizations, they ask their instructional designers to say focus on three out of the five areas, or maybe they really, really hit home one area compared to the others. However, both of these different types of people, let's say the person of the three out of five of the person and one out of the five, they're both called instructional designers. So let me give you an example. Let's say when it comes to my work, I have to if I'm Mike ranking them for a hierarchy, if you will, technology is probably at the bottom, if I had to be honest with that. Yeah, technology is at the bottom. Certainly I use a learning platform that I build my courses and my programs and things of that nature. But the biggest part of my job is focused around how adults learn, properly, designing and building and implementing and all that good stuff when it comes to the learning experience. And also, when it comes to working with subject matter experts, especially with what I do within the higher education space, I need to develop amazing relationships with folks, or else things aren't going to go exactly as I have planned.
So I'm focused more on those areas. For other folks with an instructional design, perhaps their day to day is focused around authoring tools, that's what they use. That is what they're being asked to do. That's how they are evaluated. So for them, instructional design and authoring tools go hand in hand. And this is how for those now looking at the outside looking in where they're like, Ah, I see. So there's different areas of instructional design. And that's why it can be confusing. And yeah, that is definitely why now to also illustrate this point with stories, because I tell a lot of stories is that my friend Heidi Kirby shared a mazing blog the other day all about different types of interview questions to ask of an instructional designer. And of course, by reading that, which you should read that I will definitely link that into this video. It's going to help you to prepare for instructional design interviews. So I shared that on LinkedIn. And most people said, Thank you for sharing. This is so great. This is so insightful, blah, blah, blah, because yeah, it's a fantastic article. But then one person commented, and I'm paraphrasing here, but they mentioned why do we need to interview instructional designers? I read that I was like, what he's like, Oh, I just, you know, just tell them what you want them to be able to build and then see how it looks. What? No, no, not No, not at all. That is the last I would respectfully disagree. That's the last thing I would do when it comes to instructional design. I'm trying to be able to evaluate the human skills, I want to see about your communication. I want to know how you work with other people. I want to know about your problem solving methods. What do you do? If you face something that you have no idea on how to fix? How are you going to be able to figure that out?
I also want to learn more about you, the person for you to be able to describe your design methodology, your process, what do you use to make learning effective and engaging and fun? Well, what is it that you love about instructional design? Those are definitely more things that I want to know about. And then sure, I'm going to ask and perhaps see within a portfolio about what you have built, but I can train someone to use a learning management system. That's not an issue, it is much harder to teach somebody about proper communication skills, working with subject matter experts, building those relationships, and identifying key stakeholders and everything else, I have a sword that is way harder to train. But for this person who commented on that post, they have been in instructional design for years. And this is how they have done things when it comes to interviewing their instructional designers that is like their kind of test, if you will. So with that said, it's like, yeah, that's not helping when it comes to the confusion around the instructional design field, because those two interviews if you were essentially handed. And this kind of goes back to one of the conversations that Heidi Kirby and I we actually had around a podcast before about being talked about with not being an order taker.
And that's kind of what this other person's response reminded me of is that an instructional designer should not be an order taker, it should not be that you give somebody a sheet and say, go build this. And then there we go. There's no design, that's building that's developing that is not design in itself, because there's no interaction with the subject matter expert or the stakeholders, there's no going back and trying to revise and make something better with proper different forms of learning strategies or anything like that is just build the product. There you go. So it would be a really, really different interview, from going from one style of being asked to essentially be an order taker, and another style when it comes to doing literally everything else within the instructional design field. So with that all being said, what is my final piece of advice for you here now that I probably just made things even more confusing, which probably wasn't very helpful. So let me be helpful for a second. My advice for you would be to I'm going to ask you a question here.
What kind of instructional designer Do you want to be when you grow up? Think about that for a second, what excites you about the instructional design field? Do you love the learning aspect side? Is that something where if you read a book on learning science, you could read that all day all night, that really excites you? Well, there are certainly instructional designers who lean more towards going through different types of things when it comes to andragogy. And pedagogy, for sure. And some organizations absolutely value that. And that is like the number one bullet point on a job posting is knowing more about learning. Now, let's say does data interest you? Do you find that fascinating? If you were to go through and download all these different forms of data and dive on into the learning analytics, is that something that you love, there are certainly design positions and learning analytics positions that revolve around that so you can go down that rabbit hole if you wish. There's also these different types of I'm gonna mess up the name of course, now is some type of portfolio manager role I keep on seeing like learning design a portfolio manager or something along those lines, which is basically saying that you are now responsible for having a portfolio of different types of courses and programs, you are managing those you are in charge of those, how are you going to revise them? How are you going to be able to work with subject matter experts to bring in their insights and student feedback and learner feedback and try to be able to see how you can make this better every single time around it.
Perhaps you are responsible for the operations, the logistics a day to day and things of that nature. That's is also a part. If you want it to be of instructional design. Some organizations will actually ask you to do everything and that is not you impossible that really is my job, in a nutshell is that my official title is senior instructional designer and program manager. And I remember when I first started working at MIT, and I saw the program manager part of that, and I was like, why is it a program manager? That's kind of interesting. But what I learned about afterwards, as I started to work there was that, oh, I am responsible for everything. So once I go through all the stages and all the process when it comes to doing the research, and the design and building out the entire thing, and then putting it into the LMS, and then conducting the pilot programs, using the learner feedback, revising it, making it better keep on going back to the drawing board, with course mapping with other different types of things, when it comes to really making learning experiences, awesome. Once all that is done, then I own that course I own that program.
And I'm going to be working and communicating with marketing and customer service and engineering and making sure that this is always going to run on time that it's going to go well. But it's going to be staffed, that there are no questions or anything else of a sort. So I am involved in the entire product development lifecycle from the very start all the way until the end. And those types of instructional design jobs, those do exist as well, folks, I hope you found this video helpful. I really, really, really hope you found this video helpful. Because it was a topic that's been on my mind for a while now. And it's just so interesting to see how our field is evolving, how jobs are changing how more and more titles keep on coming about. And it's kind of like you're being an investigator here to say like, what is this job actually looking for? What am I really doing?
So please find your passion, please follow that I guarantee there is a job out there that does harp on any of the domains that I mentioned about within the instructional design land. So please follow your passions. And I know it is going to help you folks, I hope you enjoyed today's episode, if you did share it with a friend, a colleague, share it with your network and be able to discuss around the confusion with the instructional design field. And tell me feel free to tag me to about what is one thing that you found confusing when you first heard about instructional design, been seeing some comments on YouTube already. And I've noticed some variety of confusion actually, which is really interesting to hear lots of different perspectives. And of course, the more conversations a weekend have, the more it's going to be able to enlighten people and help out others when we're thinking about the instructional design field as well. Of course, if you want to find anything else about myself and the show, you can go to Dr. Luke hobson.com. And by the way, if you want to leave this show a rating wherever you are listening, that is always appreciated, whether it's apple, podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or anything else. Always appreciate your ratings and seeing about what you think around the show. And Hey, folks, that's all I have for you today. Stay nerdy out there. Now talk to you next time.
