As I commonly said in the instructional design field, I kind of fell into instructional design—although I also simultaneously sought it out.
Entering college in 2019, I was fairly set on seeking out a clinical psychology career, eventually setting on the Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience major, which combined psychology and cognitive science. It was when COVID hit that I began to rethink my goals, which was a painful blow, as I’d developed such a detailed mental plan. I actually ended up simply Googling careers related to my skills and interests—writing, education, cognitive science—and stumbled upon instructional design. It seemed too good to be true, as it was built upon cognitive science principles, incorporated storytelling into some of the educational processes, and even encouraged some artistic talent—which I’d long since dropped. With this information, I searched up my university’s instructional design team and cold-emailed them, asking tentatively if they would appreciate any extra help. After this, I interviewed and landed an internship. Believe it or not, after I graduated in 2023, I still work for this team! It all started with a Google search and an email sent into the void.
I learned pretty quickly that people needed a Master’s degree to progress in Higher Ed, so I took the plunge and joined UGA’s Learning, Design, & Technology M.Ed program. My objectives for the program were to improve my foundational and theoretical knowledge, as well as learn and master commonly used ID technologies. I made several complicated projects within Articulate Storyline, so I feel very comfortable with this authoring tool (as well as Articulate Rise), and the amount of time I spent editing this portfolio’s video project in Premiere Pro has granted me a solid proficiency. As for improving my instructional design foundation, every single project contributed at least something to my “database,” so to speak. It was absolutely the EDIT 6400E Healthcare Demonstration and Final Report in this portfolio that grounded my perspective in constructivism and situated learning, as this process required a significant amount of research. It was the EDIT 7350E Accessibility Review I completed in this portfolio that sparked my interest in continuing further into accessibility, which is now a large part of my workflow. The Needs Analysis project in EDIT 7150E drastically changed my instructional design world view and made me realize how many assumptions go into clients simply asking for training, as often the needs they identified are not the ones that need to be “fixed,” and instruction may not be the solution.
My professional objectives for the future are to hopefully continue in my current workplace and cement myself as the “media” person on the team, as well as getting more involved in projects from the beginning to stretch my needs analysis skills. In the future, I would like to enter the non-profit sector to create accessible education. The program fully met my objectives when it comes to developing multimedia skills—I’m incredibly thankful at the practice I got in Articulate Storyline and Premiere Pro specifically. I’m also grateful that I have a much deeper grasp of learning theories that I can now apply to my work projects. I do wish there had been more opportunities for individual projects, as while it can be incredibly beneficial to work with others (as Vygotsky says), I found that since I didn’t get to tackle every single part of a project or a design/development process, there were some holes in my learning or areas where I feel less confident about. I plan to practice these skills on my own, however.
My personal vision and philosophy of the field involve the importance of centering the learner and their needs over our own preferences; designing education so it’s authentic and relevant to the learner’s real life goals (or as much as is possible); encouraging learners to bring in their own experiences and construct knowledge through scaffolding, frequent small assessments, and reflection opportunities; and prioritizing accessibility proactively from the ground up vs. having to fix previous media and force students to reach out to have their learning needs met.
As an even more personal vision, I love writing and storytelling (as seen by several of my projects), so I try to add my personal spin into both my school and work projects, establishing a narrative where I can. Since I’m equally obsessed with history and I amuse my friends with wacky anecdotes, It’s my dream to create an extensive online history or storytelling series. I believe storytelling and narratives can be applied to almost all types of learning to make them more personal and memorable to the learner—also more fun to create!