From After-School to Higher Ed: My Transition to Instructional Design

2016. What a year, huh? Last I wrote, I had just returned from an exciting trip in South Africa where I presented at Ed Tech South Africa. Since then, I led a game design workshop on culturally relevant pedagogy at the 2016 Scratch Conference, my band played our third gig at Sidewalk Cafe, and I transitioned from Online Leadership Program Associate at Global Kids, Inc. to Instructional Design Coordinator at New York University Rory Meyers College of Nursing (Meyers for short). That last one was a big move for me, which means more new experiences and more new challenges are ahead (this seems to be a recurring theme in my blog posts). Here’s a sort of self-ingratiating post about what career move has been like, what I’m working on now, and a few specific things I’ve learned along the way about being an instructional designer at a higher ed institution.

Me posing with Scratch Cat at the 2016 Scratch Conference at MIT.

The Change

At Global Kids, I learned a lot about how to help middle and high schoolers in NYC to engage in design thinking and assist them in discovering creative uses of technology, including video game design, image editing, and podcasting. My goal was for the kids to become active producers of media and technology rather than just passive consumers of it. I even spent over 150 hours leading professional development workshops for K-12 educators who were interested in working with their students to make multimedia projects about a given topic. 
 
Since joining NYU, I’ve taken on the role of multimedia producer. I’m contracted by Meyers to design online educational materials that will be used by adult learners in clinical settings and collaborate with Nursing professors to create interactive online learning modules. The learners are nurse practitioners will do these modules as part of the HRSA grant-funded Primary Care Nurse Practitioner Preceptor Development Program (PC-NP-PDP). Read more about HRSA here.  I also get to work with the College of Nursing’s web development team to design the website for the project, so look out for that later this month! So far, instructional design has given me room to be a little creative and interact with subject matter experts (SMEs) to create some really interesting learning content.

Posing as "Dad" with a mannequin baby - outtake from a photo shoot I coordinated to include clinical photos in our courseware.

Collaborating with SMEs

My main duty is to work with Meyers Nursing faculty to figure out what kind of media and technology will best enhance the content they’re putting together for online courses we are developing. Over the past few months, I’ve learned how important it is to build individual relationships with each faculty member that I work with. Getting to know them on both a personal and professional level has helped build trust between us so that we can establish a safe space in which we explore the content together. This process involves setting a shared vision of the content, making a schedule, outlining the content, and then building the content out. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to work with educators who so knowledgeable in their field and dedicated to their work because together we are able to create meaningful education.

E-Learning Authoring

Outside of meeting with faculty, I spend most of my time actually designing and producing the content. Mastery of e-learning authoring tools has been a critical, even if meticulous, part of my job as an instructional designer to the point where I’ve even dreamt about it. Riveting, right? While there are a number of e-learning authoring software programs out there, I use Adobe Captivate 9 because it integrates well with other Adobe design applications and has been a big player in the industry for years. I’m on Captivate almost everyday, taking content given to me by faculty and using Captivate to make the content into the online learning modules I mentioned earlier. This is where some of that little bit of creativity comes in. On Captivate, I integrate graphic design, user experience design, audio/video production, and very basic programming to make the learning experience interactive and engaging for the learner. The modules don’t usually come out perfect the first time, but rapid prototyping and designing rough mock-ups before going into Captivate helps to expedite the design process such that learning content is planned out and fewer changes need to be made later on. 

Screenshot of the Adobe Captivate 9 interface.

An important part, if not THE most important part, of e-learning authoring is getting the actual e-learning content to the learner. I was responsible for purchasing a learning management system (LMS) package that I now use to manage the e-learning content I produce. That was quite the process. I spent hours communicating with sales reps from different LMS companies and demo-ing their products. With all these LMS companies trying to get me to buy their product, I felt like I was on a really nerdy version of The Bachelor. In the end, the rose went to  Adobe Captivate Prime, Adobe’s new LMS (not to be confused with their e-learning authoring software), because it integrates seamlessly with Adobe Captivate and they offer relatively cheap individual learner licenses at just a couple of bucks per learner per month with no installation fee. My relationship with Captivate Prime is blossoming but I see room for growth, so I’ll report back about the quality of the product later.

Going Forward...

Given what I’ve learned so far, I could write entire articles about tips and tricks for working with faculty, using Adobe Captivate 9, and shopping around for an LMS (I will probably write one in the near future). In early April, I launched the first set of learning modules that I mentioned earlier and sent instructions for using the LMS to the learners. I’m both excited and a little nervous to see how the content is received and I hope my LMS instructions are clear enough, because if they aren’t, the content may not be received at all (insert nervous face emoji here). Nonetheless, I’m confident in the quality of the content the faculty has put together. ​