Once a Teacher, Now a Designer
Brief Abstract
When teachers enter the world of fully online instructional design, it’s easy to feel our training and love for teaching is a thing of the past. With time, we can learn otherwise. Let’s discuss the transferable skills teachers bring to online instructional design and how we can still teach.
Extended Abstract
A. Recently, I mentored two new instructional designers. I was thrilled because they were teachers new to the field. Having been a teacher myself, I knew the world they came from and the one they were entering. Teachers recognize each other, our struggles, our journeys, but maybe not so much how we can use those experiences to become incredible instructional designers. I was thrilled to do just that – to ensure them that everything they had practiced and all they loved about teaching would be used in fully online instructional design.
So, we talked, and I assured them they were in the right place. I recall saying, “Guess what? You’re still a teacher.” They were delighted and by the end of my spiel, the anxiety dropped. Deep breaths were taken, and smiles were everywhere. It’s that feeling that I aim to share with OLC attendees.
Teachers love sharing and they appreciate people. Great ones are skillful at creating and maintaining engagement, flexible in their methods, and experts at nudging learners to meet goals. Often, it is these extraordinary people who leave the classroom and enter the world of instructional design. Transitioning from teacher to designer can feel like the carefully honed craft of educating is a thing of the past. Sure, she’ll pick up new technical skills and build learning interactions in an LMS, but when does she get a chance to use her superpower again? It’s when she realizes that she’s a subject matter expert, the instructor is her student, and the LMS is her classroom.
The Teacher Turned Designer is a Subject Matter Expert
Teachers usually work with youth, not with adult authorities. As designers, they find themselves in strange territory working with subject matter experts (SMEs) to build online courses. It can be intimidating but it is essential for the teacher turned designer to realize that the SME may be an expert in his/her field, but not so much in how to teach it. The truth is, there are two subject matter experts in this scenario: the instructor in the course topic and the designer in teaching.
Most SMEs/instructors rarely have the background required to teach effectively and don’t use the many instructional methods available. They may know physics, for instance, but getting others to learn it is a separate competence. The teacher turned designer fills the gap because he knows what methods work to make learning happen. He knows, for instance, that students often lose focus after a few minutes and that chunking information is more effective than posting long lecture videos because he had to keep students engaged when he taught Brave New World to 35 high school seniors. He knows that making videos interactive is imperative because immediate feedback lets students self-assess their learning, confirms their grasp of concepts, and provides scaffolding for the next concept. He knows because he remembers sprinkling questions into his lectures about the Ego and the Id when he taught Of Mice and Men to keep ninth graders engaged at 7:20 a.m.
The SME/Instructor is Your Student
While the relationship between the designer and SME is an equal partnership, it’s helpful for each to recognize the teacher turned designer has transferable skills that the SME may not. To start, the teacher turned designer envisions a learning module as a lesson plan. Each requires learning objectives written according to what the student will exhibit, assessments aligned with objectives, and learning activities to help students learn the content. Since the teacher turned designer would have written dozens of lesson plans, he/she is poised to explain and use the concept with the SME.
When it comes to a variety of instructional material and assessment types, the teacher turned designer can recall where this made all the difference in the classroom. She can remember when an example worked for one class, but not for another and she had to think of another way to teach the same thing. She can recall when a group presentation was the perfect way to assess the outgoing students in one period, but an essay worked better for students in another. The teacher turned designer knows from experience that variety in courses matters and she is expertly positioned to convey this to the SME as a result.
It can be difficult to create human connection in fully online courses, so when students need accommodations for extended time, it may be challenging for the SME to imagine the “why” behind the accommodation. But not for the teacher who saw what extended time meant for his student with dysgraphia. Not for the teacher who helped students use the JAWS screen reader to take his midterm exam. When SMEs question accommodations, he can relay the classroom experience with the students as the “why”.
The LMS is the Classroom
There’s nothing like walking into an empty classroom. It’s silent, but soon, it will be buzzing. The board is pristine, but soon it will be an Expo-colored exercise. The desks are empty, but soon they’ll contain the future. Not so much with an LMS. The quiz is empty, but soon it will be a bunch of multiple-choice questions? Not the same.
But who says we need a quiz at all? What if that quiz transformed into a Perusall activity where students annotate text and answer each other’s questions? What if it were a Playposit video where students are presented with a concept and answer related questions before continuing?
Like the classroom, the LMS is what we make it. It provides endless options for creative, engaging, and rigorous learning activities.
The SME and designer can work together to review the data analytics of the course and see where students are struggling. They can develop low stakes learning activities to help students grasp concepts before moving on to more rigorous topics. Maybe gamifying the course will result in motivated learning. Perhaps a classroom discussion can be built with Yellowdig instead. Tools like these can be designed so well that they can feel like fun…and teachers know that some of the best learning happens when students enjoy the process.
Why This Matters
When I left teaching to be an instructional designer, I was disillusioned and intimidated. I’d spent my college years focusing on education and I loved my career. When I entered the world of instructional design, I wanted to learn new skills, work with technology, and remain in the field of education, but it was unclear how my experience would remain relevant. Never again would I connect with a student. I couldn’t see a tenth grader who struggled with citing evidence mature into a senior submitting his/her college essay. I couldn’t be part of the future. Or so I thought.
Gradually, I realized that I brought incredible value to the working relationships developed with SMEs precisely because I had the experience they did not. Because I had written curricula and developed lesson plans, creating alignment according to a set of learning objectives was just a few meetings away. Since data chats were a staple in teaching, I saw how reviewing quiz statistics fit in the “Evaluate” stage of the ADDIE process. It was easy to share data with a SME and revise quiz questions accordingly.
Most fulfilling, however, has been seeing the instructors I support grow as teachers. The relationships I’ve built resulted in fully online instructors who are excited about interactive tools. They’re proud to quality certify courses and urge their peers to certify too. SMEs have transformed from mimicking previous teachers to learners who want to do better.
Instructors and I don’t work in a classroom and there are no markers on white boards. Each of us sit at our own desks and gone are the college essays, but I still teach. I teach how to empathize with students we don’t see. I demonstrate how to build a variety of learning activities. I teach why alignment matters and I model solid learning objectives. Every teacher turned designer can do the same. We can remain creative in our methods. We can witness the light bulbs glow, even if it is over graying hair. And we can partner with those we support to help them, and their students meet their potential.
It’s important for the community of teachers turned designers to know that their teaching career isn’t over, but transformed so they are encouraged to capitalize on relevant skills to help SMEs. It’s also beneficial for those who hire instructional designers to consider candidates with a strong background in teaching and learn how to guide them towards using those abilities with SMEs they support.
B.
- raise your hand if you were a teacher.
- word cloud activity to generate responses on the question, “How did it feel to transition from teaching to instructional design?”
- drag/drop Venn-diagram comparing the skills of a teacher and a designer to highlight how many land in the middle
C. Attendees will learn about some of the transferable skills teachers bring to the SME/designer partnership and the field of fully online instructional design.