Help Me Help You Help Me: Implementing an Instructional Design Internship Program

Streamed Session Leadership

Session Materials

Brief Abstract

We recently implemented an Instructional Design Internship program to hire current graduate students for approximately 20-week terms. In this session, we will share our initial goals, our lessons learned, and the data we’ve collected so far on the effectiveness of the internship program for both our interns and our department.

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Sara Ombres, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Sara has over ten years of teaching, training, and instructional design experience in the online, blended, and face-to-face modalities. This includes two Blackboard Exemplary Course Awards for excellence in instructional design, and extensive experience teaching and working with college students as well as facilitating professional development offerings to faculty. She holds an M.Ed. in Educational Technology and an M.S. in Management and currently works as an instructional designer and adjunct online instructor.

Co-presenter: Felix Brito, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University - Worldwide

Dr. Felix Brito works as the Executive Director for the Instructional Design and Development Department. In that position, he leads four teams of instructional designers, digital media specialists, and media producers who collaborate with Embry-Riddle faculty members in the design and development of the university's online courses. He also works as an online instructor for the College of Aviation, where he teaches aviation/aerospace education courses. Dr. Brito has a PhD in Education with specialization in Instructional Design for Online Learning from Capella University. He also has a Masters degree in Aeronautics with specialization in Aviation/Aerospace Education and Aviation/Aerospace Management from Embry-Riddle - Daytona Beach Campus.

Extended Abstract

Our institution recently implemented an instructional design internship program for current graduate students working toward degrees in online education and/or instructional design. Our goals for this program were two-fold: 

  • First, we wanted to be able to contribute to the instructional design community as a whole based on our experiences, process, and high-quality course design process. 

  • Second, we wanted to increase our hiring pool by training up and interacting with students preparing to embark on careers in instructional design. 
     

We began by reviewing our current Instructional Designer job description/recruitment posting and considered the requirements and responsibilities for that position. What could/should we expect of someone who is a student in the field but may not possibly have any direct experience working in higher education or in instructional design? Based on these considerations, we adjusted the job description to focus less on direct experience and more on a willingness to learn, attention to detail, and an interest in/passion for the field. 
 
We also conducted research on graduate-student internships and how other institutions addressed offering this sort of program; we found a dearth in the literature on this particular area of internships, with most research focusing on the undergraduate student. Because of the lack of current research on graduate internships, we also began pursuing research approval through our Institutional Review Board to collect and potentially disseminate research and data collected during our program experience.  

 

In our first rounds of interns, we interviewed approximately ten candidates and ultimately hired three of them. Each intern was hired as a remote employee on a term-based employment agreement of 20 weeks. Each intern was able to develop a schedule that worked best for them with the agreement that all hours worked would be within our business hours.  

 

The first week of the internship involved intensive training on instructional design, our learning management system, and our processes and procedures. All three interns trained together with a Senior Instructional Designer during training week. Then, each intern was assigned to a specific team within our overall department to work with for the duration of the internship. This allowed each intern to become immersed with a team and also to experience the teamwork and communication/collaboration necessary to complete instructional design projects. The specific tasks and projects varied from intern to intern and across teams, but generally focused on working with faculty on course developments and redevelopments, updating course templates as needed, and completing course quality reviews to ensure newly designed and redesigned courses followed our institutional standards and best practices. Interns were also encouraged to share their own professional interests and goals for the internship so that projects and assignments could be aligned with these interests and goals. We have collected data and research along the way from both the interns and our permanent, full-time staff on the team. At the time of the presentation, we will be in the middle of the third round of our interns and will be able to share our experiences and research from all three rounds. 

As a result of this information and our experiences, we propose the following agenda for our conference presentation: 

  • Introduction to our campus/university, why we chose to implement an internship program, and the current research on graduate internships and their impact (10 minutes) 

  • Our process for hiring, training, and selecting projects for our interns (15 minutes) 

  • Our challenges/successes/research data gained from the internship experience (15 minutes) 

  • Next Steps/Questions from the Audience (5 minutes) 

Throughout the presentation, we will be utilizing NearPod for participants to interact with us via their computers/mobile devices to share their thoughts along the way through the use of polls, whiteboards, and Q&A. 

 

The main takeaways for participants who attend our session are that participants will be able to: 

  • Identify the possible challenges and benefits to implementing an internship program. 

  • Discuss ways to prepare an internship program for success. 

  • Generate ideas for how an internship program could possibly be utilized at their own institution.