What I want to do as an instructional designer

by Vicky Lim | May 28, 2022 | Aspirations | 0 comments

Once in a while, I look up the question “what does an instructional designer do,” even though I have already looked it up before. I have opened up many tabs with answers that reference “architecture” and “learning experiences.” I have also completed the “Become an Instructional Designer” learning path on LinkedIn.

What usually throws off my understanding is when I read a new pet peeve shared by instructional design ~influencers~ who take pride in their profession and therefore want to make sure that the “is” and “isn’ts” of the work are very clear.

To me, at the most basic level, an instructional designer is someone who takes raw training content and reshapes it into digestible training content, while following a model like ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation).

However, observationally, it seems like “instructional design” is used as an umbrella term to capture a wider range of work, from things I find harder, like producing videos for medical school students in collaboration with a film crew, to things I find easier, like supporting professors with their remote courses by managing tools like Canvas and Zoom. Somewhere in between is what I’m currently doing, which is supporting the implementation of Salesforce with training.

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To reframe my original question, I will now ask: what do I want to do as an instructional designer? 

1. I want to learn new technologies + topics
I like that my title, Learning Technology Specialist, is ambiguous. I could be a specialist in learning technologies, or I could be a specialist in learning about technology.

Example: exploring + experimenting along the lines of YACHT (Young Americans Challenging High Technology) and how they wrote their album, Chain Tripping, with machine learning.

2. I want to build learning pathways
I can get obsessed when it comes to researching how to organize a series of learning materials into the “best” sequence + experience. Would like to put that hobby to use.

Example: wishing to lay out something along the lines of this Refold roadmap toward fluency in a language (the ability to structure a clear start-to-finish for information that used to be all over the place). 

3. I want to translate complex language into simple language
Since I won’t be able to translate Chinese <> English literature any time soon, I would like to begin practicing the art of translation here with Technical Jargon <> Everyday English.

Example: imagining a future idea of doing the kind of learner-centric work that Mandarin Companion is doing with their graded readers, which is fun + creative within each level’s vocabulary constraints. 

4. I want to motivate others to study / learn

Example: interested in sharing similar energy like James Scholz who would livestream 12-hour “study with me” sessions, inspiring many to do their homework + me, when I resize his video into a corner of my desktop to keep me company while I’m at work.

5. I want to connect with people and feel helpful
Part of me is in denial that this is something I want to do, but I suppose it is. . .

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Wow I did not mean to write a listicle. It turned into an answer more for “what excites me most about instructional design.” This looks long, but I wanted to document what I want my work to be + to become. Here is a flashback to a moment when I was headed in this direction but had no idea how I would arrive here.

Screenshot of an email to the advisor of the Ed.M. Foundations of eLearning in Higher Education at the University of Illinois, in which I ask for guidance on instructional design on September 28, 2014. Around this time, I realized I may have made the wrong choice to enroll in this program since I would not leave with the skills I expected. So I decided to drop out, then returned to complete the last two courses I needed to graduate, then almost wrote a one-star review for the school on Yelp 😆. In hindsight, the program delivered what it promised: to enable the understanding of eLearning development in organizations.