Themes in IDT

(R/D 10)
What a range of settings IDT professionals span! It is not surprising that many of these contexts were new to me, as it was also conveyed by the authors of the chapters that in general people are unfamiliar with what it is IDT professionals do. There are two themes that initially stand out upon reflecting on what IDT looks like in business, P-12 education and higher ed. These themes are actually attributes of the IDT professional themselves- flexibility and thoroughness. I also think it would be appropriate to add in another trait which ties in directly to the first two… PATIENCE.

I have already mentioned the broad scope which the profession covers, which would require a job-seeker in this industry to certainly be flexible with their skills. In more specific settings, however, the IDT professional must be flexible as they work through the ID process no matter which industry they are working in. It reminds me of teaching in that the work is almost never the same every day. For teachers, the students are the independent factor that is never constant- working with students will create situations and dynamics that cannot be predicted, but must be planned for, and may never occur in the same way again. From an Instructional Designers perspective, the problems, settings of those problems, and solutions for those problems seem to be almost exclusively unique to the individual situation. Flexibility and patience for both the teacher and the IDT professional are therefore extremely important. Working in IDT, whether in business or education, will require you to have a solid set of skills that can be adapted to the scenario for which you have been hired. You will also need to be flexible because IDT deals with people, and people-teachers or businesspersons- are like students in that they all have different needs, attitudes and levels of proficiency.

The next asset for someone working in IDT that I noticed commonly across all settings was that of thoroughness. The ID process is not a “piecemeal solution”, as was pointed out in Ch. 21. It is systematic in nature and requires a thoroughness and diligence in order to produce the desired results. During this process, the IDT professional must again exercise patience, as those who they are working with may likely not be familiar with the design process. It then becomes a thin like to walk as they continue with effective design steps while keeping the “interface” of the process friendly to others involved-because those others involved are themselves key to the process.

This attention to detail is not something that you see consistently in teaching, and I think my profession could benefit from the success of IDT. Because IDT professionals are so thorough and systematic, the results seem to be more predictable than for say, teachers planning a lesson. Their instruction may not be thoroughly planned and therefore the results may vary from what the original desired outcomes may have been. This is different than having to be flexible when interacting with and teaching young students. The design of instruction happens prior to this interaction, and I think teachers would be wise to look at the ID process and how it can be a tool to reaching learning goals. The reality of a teacher’s world, however, deals with many constraints- namely time. As a teacher I often realizing that I will have to teach X number of lessons and a week, and planning each lesson with the attention to detail that would increase likelihood of student success is not humanly possible while trying to juggle all the other responsibilities that come with the position. So it is interesting to think that when a person takes on an IDT role, the diligence require to obtain favorable results could be that person’s main job- and those results could very well be more in reach than they would be for a teacher. So it makes sense that school districts, universities and businesses alike would want people trained in IDT working alongside their Subject Matter Experts.