Collaborate, Consult, Coach: The Winning Formula for Instructional Design Client Relationships

Concurrent Session 3

Session Materials

Brief Abstract

You know that moment when both you and a client leave a meeting angry and you’re convinced you’ve blown the whole thing? In this gamified session we’ll experience and discuss some crazy consultations and work to improve the 3 C’s of ID/client relationships: collaboration, consulting, and coaching.

 

Presenters

Lead Presenter: Lynn Wahl, University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Lynn leads the Online Course Production Team and the Media Production Team in the Center for Teaching and Learning at UNC Charlotte in their work with faculty in redesigning and developing blended and online courses and developing high-quality, engaging media. Lynn is passionate about working with faculty to use technology, learning theory, and national design standards to create innovative and successful faculty and student learning experiences. Lynn received her M.Ed. in Instructional Technology from Idaho State University and her M.A. and B.A. in English Literature from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. With over 15 years of experience in higher education, Lynn is an award-winning instructional design thought leader and a graduate of the Online Learning Consortium's Institute for Emerging Leadership in Online Learning.

Extended Abstract

Introduction: 

There’s a lot of conversation on LinkedIn and other sites related to instructional design competencies that talk about necessary skills, design models, writing application materials, eLearning, moving from teaching to designing, and the list goes on. What few of these posts discuss and what many instructional design education programs struggle to adequately prepare designers for is the heart of what makes an instructional designer successful: consultancy and collaboration skills. 

Instructional design programs and resources that do require the hands-on application of skills can’t ensure exposure to the breadth of experiences an instructional designer may face in their work with clients. As with any professional field, instructional designers develop these skills on the job. They learn from their mistakes, adjust their approach and language, and plan for difficulties ahead of time. 

Depending on the context of the organization or institution, ID consultations with clients can include high stakes, emotional conversations with overworked, untrusting, reluctant, combative, disengaged, or [insert your preferred negative adjective here] clients. It is easy to see that these types of interactions, repeating across projects, can significantly contribute to burnout and disengagement with work. 

Even when relationships are not strained and clients are happy to be collaborating with an instructional designer, persuading others to change their approaches and mindset around online learning can still be a daunting task.

This session will explore principles of effective collaboration, consulting, and coaching with different types of instructional design clients. 

The session will provide a number of gamified “choose your own adventure” scenarios demonstrating consultancy choices by showing what’s going on behind the curtain from both the ID and client perspective, and provide the audience with an opportunity to discuss consulting and collaboration strategies and how they might have handled specific situations. It will provide a number of resources for improving consultancy skills and a values exercise to identify those preferences and behaviors that would most benefit from improvement in order to grow in consulting skills.

The primary purpose of the session is to help both new and experienced instructional designers examine their existing skills in collaboration and consultation for areas of improvement. 

Takeaways: 

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

  1. Identify consultancy competencies for working with subject-matter experts

  2. Identify coaching and self-management strategies to improve consultancy and collaboration skills

  3. Apply problem solving skills in conflict and high emotion scenarios with subject-matter experts

  4. Reflect on areas of strength and areas for improvement for consultancy skills

 

Plan for Interactivity: 

  1. Participants will complete a number of online short gamified interactive scenario activities of sample consultations between an instructional designer and subject-matter expert independently or in small groups - then convene as a whole group to discuss outcomes between each scenario. [The scenarios will be built in Articulate Storyline and allow for participants to click through different responses to challenges to unique outcomes based on their choices. The interactive scenarios will be annotated with ID and client “thoughts”, showing underlying biases, hurt feelings, etc. that can contribute to what is spoken. Based on their choices, participants will collect badges such as “empathy, compassion, insight, etc.] 

  2. Participants will complete a values and skills exercise at the end of the session to determine areas of strength and growth for consultancy skills