When Is ID Not ID?

When it’s administration.

Instructional Design is the job buzz word of 2021. There are hundreds of jobs being advertised as “Instructional Design” … but read the small print. Some jobs are just admin-based, online hosting, data entry roles. Some job ads hide this better than others.

The world is going through a period of major change in so many areas of our civilization. We’re in the middle of the Great Resignation (Cook, 2021). Some people are leaving jobs, some people are taking new jobs, some people don’t want to work at all, some people want to work but wages are falling. It’s a struggle for employers and employees. Some employers are making real efforts to modify their culture to be more supportive and encouraging, but some employers still don’t fully appreciate their individual employees.

As with anything, making generalizations about things doesn’t help you find the right job (or to help the right job find you). You have to closely look into every job and every company to decide if their version of ID is aligned with yours.

Training Hosting

Regardless of where it’s mentioned in a job ad, if there’s a discussion about training hosting, it’s likely that that you will spend a significant amount of time doing this on the job. Whether it’s Teams, Zoom, WebEx, etc., the process is pretty much the same (though the functionality is not!). There is really nothing about being an Instructional Designer that uniquely qualifies you to host training.

It’s not necessarily a bad thing to have an ID as your training host, they can ensure customer satisfaction, consistency of materials (sometimes), respond positively to learner questions and connection issues and likely do so within the corporate structure and guidance that they create course materials with. However, there’s not much that an ID can do in hosting training that an administrative worker could not also do just as easily.

When looking for new positions, be sure to thoroughly read the ad a couple of times, get a feel for what they’re really looking for the position to do. Some IDs might not find this type of work particularly stimulating.

SME Researcher

In an effort to work to employees’ strengths and keep work flowing, some ID jobs are more focused on collecting information from SMEs and at least drafting or outlining/organizing the content from this research.

In my experience, this is just a glorified technical writer. You need to have good writing skills to be an ID, but you don’t have to be an ID to have good writing skills. If what an organization is really looking for is a technical writer to gather this information and draft content, then advertise for that! (You’ll likely find an amazing writer.)

Again, paying attention to the exact words that are used in an ad can help you decide if it’s what you want to spend time applying for. Make a list of ID words you would use to describe your perfect job and look for those in prospective job descriptions.

Instructional Design

So, then, what should you look for if you want to be an ID? It can be a challenge to find a job where the only thing you will do is work in Storyline or similar and physically create the courses. There’s definitely going to need to be some more interactions with the organization (and not just information about the organization). This involves creating strategies for individual courses and overall programs, talking with SMEs about what they know best, creating content and delivery mechanisms that meet organizational needs while adhering to corporate standards, adult learning theories, and process techniques (i.e., ADDIE).

If this is the type of job that you’re looking for, sometimes a giveaway of this level of involvement is made in an ad by referring to something like Bloom’s Taxonomy or Kirkpatrick’s four levels. The chances are much stronger that there is “real” ID work going on at this organization and not just use of PowerPoints and online sessions.

(To be covered in another post: is PowerPoint really an ID tool?)

References

Cook, I. (2021). Who Is Driving the Great Resignation? Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2021/09/who-is-driving-the-great-resignation.

Islandworks. (n.d.). ADDIE diagram. https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-wearing-teal-dress-sitting-on-chair-talking-to-man-2422280/.

Jopwell. (n.d.). Two people talking image. https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-wearing-teal-dress-sitting-on-chair-talking-to-man-2422280/.

Koch, A. (n.d.). Video conference image. https://pixabay.com/illustrations/video-conference-webinar-skype-5363856/.