Is Everyone an Instructional Designer?

This is a re-post of writing that appeared here: https://idigontario.ca/2018/10/28/is-everyone-an-instructional-designer/ as part of the 9x9x25 challenge. Admittedly, I’m not an Instructional Designer, but I am. Here’s the post:

Am I an instructional designer? I work in educational technology, talk to people about using tools and help people design better learning, but does that make me an instructional designer? Educational technology is a place that can often drive pedagogical change, and it’s strange how often it goes unacknowledged as an accomplice in converting people to better pedagogy. How often do you as an instructional designer have a conversation about a piece of technology that forces the person you’re working with to rethink what they’re doing, and how they’re doing it? It may not be the great revelatory exclamation of “Oh my, this is going to change my life!” – but sometimes drastically, sometimes subtly, a change is made.

EdTech forces change.

It’s change that is opted into, by selecting the tool or technology, but it is change nonetheless. I can hear the counter arguments; “that’s not change, it’s choice!” I’d counter, that it’s a choice to change. Often in the adoption of a new tool, you have an opportunity to make large scale changes; most people don’t do that, but they make a smaller, incremental change. Sometimes change stops there. Sometimes, it pushes further, changing assessment strategies, approaches to instruction, facilitation techniques. That’s where you (or I) are able to help.

My role has been traditionally to help people with the how of things; how to set up a gradebook in the LMS, how to use classroom response tools to do things in the classroom – and early on I realized that lots of people really were looking for how-to, but never thought much about the why they were doing things. Sometimes the answer to why was simply, “the department asked me to go online” – but the people who did think about the why ended up much more satisfied. Looking to help in a more productive way I’ve become somewhat annoying in consultations, asking things like “why are you doing this?” and “what do you hope to accomplish with this change?” Those questions are less about technical details, and more about design of learning. It’s been interesting to note how instructional design intersects with media development, technical support, systems administration and of course, teaching. Each of those intersections can be opportunities to talk about how that particular learning experience can be improved. Creating a video? Why, what can that help you accomplish? The questions open up a rich conversation filled with the proverbial box of chocolates. In some ways, that make me, a (looking at my work badge) Learning Technologies Analyst, an Instructional Designer.

It’s unfortunate, that I didn’t know that until six or seven years ago. Honestly, it would’ve made my early career make a lot more sense. So those of you who are working in educational technology, supporting the use of a tool and putting in tickets to bug vendors to fix things, you might be an Instructional Designer.

Jon Kruithof is a Learning Technologies Analyst at McMaster University

Digital Marginalia

A collection of links, notes, and things I’ve seen in the last little while that are too long for a tweet but too short for a full blog post unto themselves…

First, and most importantly to me, the soundtrack to this update the brilliant 13th Floor Elevators (and particularly, Roky Erikson’s great solo version of Two Headed Dog):

I updated my laptop to Windows 10 – I primarily use the laptop for checking e-mail, writing more than a tweet, constructing a drum beat or using Word 2007. The process was smooth for a laptop that’s close to 6 years old and has 4 gig RAM and 320 gig hard drive. However, here’s a series of Windows 10 related links that will be of benefit to those who wish to better understand what this upgrade means. The first outlines the new features of the OS. The second has to do with blocking auto-updates. The third has to do with privacy settings, which we all should be interested in.

http://fieldguide.gizmodo.com/14-things-you-can-do-in-windows-10-that-you-couldnt-do-1721271379

http://www.slashgear.com/microsoft-has-a-tool-for-blocking-windows-10-auto-updates-27394432/

http://lifehacker.com/what-windows-10s-privacy-nightmare-settings-actually-1722267229

I’ve been working off and on over the summer with our student centre trying to think of ways badging could work as a co-curricular record for students. I don’t know that we’re much further, but we are going to try some things over the next year and see how they work. I’m interested in ways that we can empower students to grant badges to other students, especially when those badges might contain institutional imagery. How can we ensure that people don’t misunderstand what the badge means and that it’s a peer issued badge? Lots and lots of stuff to unpack there.

http://chromatrope.co.uk/open-badges-for-training-and-development-2/

http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/technology/mapping-digital-skills-in-he/

http://huxleypiguk.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/free-open-badge-e-book.html

http://higheredstrategy.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Intelligence-Brief-9-Career-Services-Offices-3.pdf

http://literaci.es/privacy-badges

While in training this week, Carpe Diem learning design was mentioned. I didn’t inquire further, but I did some looking further into it. It strikes me as neat, but prone to my faulty brain labelling it Caveat Emptor learning design, which has a whole separate implication. I would recommend not using Caveat Emptor learning design, if it exists.

http://www.ld-grid.org/resources/methods-and-methodologies/carpe-diem

I didn’t go to Brightspace Fusion/User Conference this year because a) I hate Orlando, and b) the hotel was not within public transportation/walking distance of anything nearby. I did however have my twitter feed blow up for a couple hours when I got mentioned by my good friend Barry. I’m actually speechless about this still (almost two months later!) – it’s honoring and humbling to have others say such nice things about me.  Thank you to you all.