Why did you pursue a career in the instructional design and technology field?
I actually pivoted and am pursuing a career in academia, studying organizational behavior. However, the principles and skills learned in IP&T have been tremendously influential in my preparation, particularly in preparing and teaching coursework. What are some of your day-to-day responsibilities in your roles? Instructional Designer: Strategy meetings to discuss learning goals, utilizing tools (e.g., Captivate, Qualtrics, PowerPoint, LMS [Canvas]) to prepare and deliver asynchronous and synchronous course content, sales meetings to pitch efficacy of training modules, problem solving on bugs and issues, etc. Current: Reading & digesting academic articles, crafting revisions to academic papers, discussing research projects, preparing course content for instruction, etc. How have you found your jobs? What advice do you have for someone trying to find a job in the instructional design and technology field? Make friends in different circles. Growing the reach of your network will allow you to see opportunities you didn't know existed before. In what ways did your graduate program prepare you for your career? 1. Clarity in Purpose. I now know that, while I'm no longer pursuing a full-time career as an instructional designer, I can leverage my experience in IP&T to pursue my current goals (e.g., develop meaningful and captivating learning opportunities for business students). 2. Project Management. So much of design is about the ability to break tasks down into their smaller constituents, and to tackle each piece in turn. I *seek to* use this skill every day. 3. Injecting Excellence into Education. I have experienced education from a variety of professors in various fields, and can confidently say that much of higher education is filled with well-meaning but generally undertrained and overwhelmed, busy academics, some of which lack practical experience in their fields. I felt that my time in IP&T opened my eyes to the possibilities available to teachers who are eager to improve their classrooms and their students' learning abilities. It's perhaps a blessing and a curse, as it makes poor instruction painful to receive. (And I realize that the last two sentences border on rude, and possibly unfair.) 4. Hope. Never once did my relatively unorthodox career goals faze my professors in IP&T, who consistently and energetically urged me forward toward whatever end. I am in their debt and hope to pay it forward to another generation of learners. |
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Learn more about the career paths and day-to-day responsibilities of people working in the Higher Education and K-12 sectors of the IDT field! Respondents are students and alumni of the BYU IP&T program.
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