Welcome to my April 2023 Great and Powerful Blogging from A to Z Challenge!

I’ve revealed my theme (My life in first drafts), but this year, instead of pretending there were ever plans, I am unashamedly blogging my theme letters on the fly.  So, here goes nothing!

So, without further ado, I is for Instructional Designer.

It’s what I do for work. I was going to say what I am, but it is definitely not what I am, just what I have been doing for work for the past almost 30 years. Sometimes officially called an instructional designer, sometimes just called that as describing the work I do while holding another institutional title that doesn’t mean a lot.

What is an instructional designer, or ID as we call it? Well, we help faculty design their instruction. Many faculty at post-secondary institutions are well versed in their subject area and not so well versed in how to teach it or how to assess it. That’s where we come in. In my case, the kind of work I do is with faculty using technology to support their teaching, right up to faculty teaching completely online. And I am not just talking about emergency remote teaching, which is what happened in March of 2020, but actual well planned purposeful online teaching which has been going on since the 1990s.

I became an ID in 1998 after working as a language lab tech for 7 years developing and designing language lab computer lessons. The Internet was fairly new and the Internet browser had become a thing and there was this online course platform called WebCT which was developed out of the University of British Columbia that my institution adopted. Now, when I applied for and got the job of ID in the distance learning unit at my institution, I did not just work with online courses, but also with televised courses as the main kind of distance learning going on was televised – an instructor would teach in Regina to a small group of students and be broadcast live to groups of students at colleges across the province (Saskatchewan). We ran classes this way for years – probably still do (it’s been awhile since I worked there). But as time went on I worked more and more with online classes, mostly asynchronous, but as technology advanced, also with synchronous (or like live web conferencing).

I worked there until 2007 when Kevin became an optometrist and we moved to BC. In Victoria, I found a job at the University of Victoria (never underestimate sending emails to everyone asking if they need an ID contractor…). I worked there for five years, a couple as a contractor and then as an actual employee. When the wind started to shift (political assholery by the institution), a colleague and I jumped ship to our current institution where we have been since 2013.

One of the nice things about my current position is that we are considered faculty. This means many more perks (pay, professional development, vacation), but also more respect from teaching faculty because, yes you know it, being “faculty” puts you on equal footing in many of their eyes and not just a support person who can be stomped on. I won’t digress down that rabbit hole. Suffice it to say, I do like this new status in work life.

I still work with faculty to use tech to support their teaching and to teach online. But my current passion is Open Education, which I am hoping to devote more time to. After 30 years of supporting teaching with technology I am a bit sick of it. Tech is always changing and faculty do not like change. It often feels like an uphill battle every day, and if I hear one more time how online learning is not as good as in person learning I will do something drastic. It’s NOT the mode that’s the problem, it’s the way faculty teach. Period. I have, and I know you have, experienced in person learning that left you sleeping at your desk or skipping classes or just wondering what the point was. In person does not make better learning. And that is enough of that.

So there you have it. Instructional designer is my job (even though my Masters is in Linguistics), and likely will be until I retire. It pays the bills and is sometimes kind of interesting, and you do get to work with some great people.

Thanks for visiting my 2023 A to Z Challenge – Letter I.  You can find links to more blogs participating in this challenge at Letter A, A to Z 2023 Challenge Master List (Google Docs).

Guess I’m kind of a rebel too…although I do like using the “official” letters…