Week 1: Journey Through The Doorway to Professional Learning

Journey Through The Doorway to Professional Learning

Employed as a corporate training specialist for over 20 years, I’ve never had any real training on how to do the work.  Looking back now, I never really asked what a training specialist was or what they were supposed to do.  Trained by fellow specialists, I proceeded to follow the given process without question.  Over time, I felt that there was more that I should’ve been doing, more than just scheduling courses and setting up rooms for instructor-led classroom sessions.  I sensed that the course catalog was stale and stagnated, but none of my peers expressed the same concerns.  Finding myself in the same situation 20 years, I searched for and found a master’s program in Instructional Design. 

It’s only now that I’m learning that, referencing the ADDIE model, I was skilled only in delivering the I (Implementation) and the E (Evaluation) as a training specialist.  I was utterly lost when it came to the A (Analysis), the D (Design), and the D (Development).  An assignment to research blogs on instructional design and share a reflection on what I learned opened my eyes to a vast source of hidden information that I was overlooking; Blogs. 

In my search, I found three blogs that offered useful foundational articles on ID models, the value of ID to organizations, and what to ask before starting an ID project. These articles offered some clarity and perspective as I continue building a strong foundation in ID theories, frameworks, and principles.

Although there are many models related to instructional design, in the article, A Quick Guide to Four Instructional Design Models, the author focuses on the four basic models most commonly used.  This article offers a breakdown of the framework for each model with recommendations of additional reading, tips, and videos.  For my stage of learning, this article provided a useful summary of concepts that seem easy to explain but, in reality, hard to do.  

In the blog, How Do I Get My Company to Take Instructional Design Seriously?, I learned helpful tips to show leaders the value of working with an instructional designer.  In my experience, often the person requesting training thinks that the process is merely populating information on PowerPoint slides and presenting a presentation in a classroom.  However, the article shares that through collaboration and analysis with an SME, IDers offer a broader perspective on problems and options for targeted solutions.  This blog post explains the importance of knowing the learning audience and ensuring that learning activities are relevant and appealing. 

The last blog I found interesting was 7 things to check before you design training by Cathy Moore.  I’m somewhat familiar with Cathy Moore because she is the author of a book I recently purchased entitled Map It: The hands-on guide to strategic training design.  This book is a guide to action mapping as a strategic ID approach.  The blog, however, talks about seven questions to ask before starting the ID or action mapping process steps.  Moore shares that answering these questions will help the IDer determine if training is the best fit to resolve the identified performance problems (Moore, n.d.).

I often think to myself that I wish that I would’ve learned how to be an instructional designer 20 years ago, but then I realize that some of the things that I’m learning today were not available 20 years ago.  Now is the right time, and I am on the right track, with what I already know blended with all that I’m currently learning to be a fantastic Instructional Designer. 

Thanks for joining me on this journey.

 References 

Gutierrez, K. (2015, December 22). How Do I Get My Company to Take Instructional Design Seriously? SHIFT's eLearning Blog.  https://www.shiftelearning.com/blog/how-do-i-get-my-company-to-take-instructional-design-seriously

Gutierrez, K. (2018, May 18). A Quick Guide to Four Instructional Design Models. SHIFT's eLearning Blog.  https://www.shiftelearning.com/blog/top-instructional-design-models-explained

Moore, C. (n.d.). 7 things to check before you design training. Action @Work. https://blog.cathy-moore.com/2020/06/7-things-to-check-before-you-design-training/?doing_wp_cron=1600023728.1188158988952636718750