What's an instructional designer? Well, sometimes it depends on who you're
talking to,
but for me an instructional designer is a person who's involved
with all aspects of developing whatever
curriculum or courses is under consideration.
So sometimes an instructional designer knows about content and develops content.
Sometimes an instructional designer is a specialist in how an interaction will
work and they design that.
Sometimes an instructional designer is involved with developing media like
video or audio
or working with artists and programmers to create
the interactive pieces that you might see in a course.
My favorite part of being an instructional designer is that
We're right in the middle of all the action and involved with all those pieces.
I started out in college to be a teacher
and I went to school and got a degree in mathematics
and then I decided that I wanted to teach
computers and technology at the elementary school level. So I started
out
working in an elementary school as a classroom aide and then went into their
computer lab and worked with students of all grades
on learning how to use what was called logo, which was a programming language
designed to help younger and
middle school students learn how to program. I really enjoyed technology not
only
as a teacher but has a user of it. So
I sort of sidetracked my career in teaching and went back to school and got a
master's degree in instructional design
and all the while I was working for an educational software company developing
their elementary math curriculum and so
the convergence of my teaching background,
my work as an elementary school
teacher's aide, and my love of technology all came together
and that's how I got started in developing
educational software, mathematics and science content,
and as I'm doing for UC San Diego Extension,
developing courses for adult learners too. What I enjoy
especially about my work and instructional design is collaboration
and teamwork. When all the people who are developing a product or a course
or video work together and they bring their skills
and their expertise and their creative vision and
I get to be part of that. That's the best part about being an
instructional designer,
and for me probably working and collaborating with people
in any professional or personal thing I do
is what I think is my strength and what I enjoy most/
So my role in the climate change course started
when the course was being offered as a face to face course on the UC San Diego
campus.
I was fortunate to go to some of the lectures,
take notes, and learn more about the content of the course as it was
delivered
by the professors and their work with their graduate students.
And that was really helpful for me to start to understand
the content about climate change and a background in mathematics and I've
worked in elementary and middle school science department and the opportunity
to
learn about science at the graduate level was a real
exciting part of the class for me.
So I sat through some of the lectures and then started working on
the course pieces that were going to be delivered
online to students. And so I've worked on developing
the content for the activities, the texts that goes
along with all of the lectures
and I've worked with my dear friend and colleague Ilse Ortabasi
on developing
all of the instructional design touched pieces in the course
like the quizzes, the midterm, the video pieces,
and instructional design on this course has probably been responsible for
almost every aspect that students will see in the course.
Becoming an instructional designer can mean a lot of different things.
Some instructional designers work very directly with media
and are producing video or audio or
interactions. Some instructional designers like me enjoy wearing two hats:
instructional design,
and content development. The most important thing is to have a passion for learning.
Being a lifelong learner is probably one of those attributes that
most instructional designers have,
and getting to know about how media is put together
technically, but also from a creative point of view, what makes a good
piece of software. What makes a good video. What makes a good game or interaction.
So if you kind of have a sense for those things in your life. If you'v had any
experience developing that or you just
think it would be a really great thing to learn about, those are the kind of
paths that lead you to become an instructional designer.
I guess the things that make me most excited about our climate change course
are the diversity of the
backgrounds of the professors who are delivering the lectures
and the four different areas that they bring
to the study of climate change. And what I've learned in the development of the
course
is that no matter where you are in the world climate change
has somehow impacted your life, whether you're
in North America, South America, in Europe, anywhere in the world -
I think this is a really important course to learn more about the impacts of
climate change,
how it affects you locally, how to affects people maybe on the other side of the
world from you,
and what people need to know to be
informed and scientifically literate about the topic so that when you
read about it, when you
hear things in the news, you have a basis of understanding it
and then if you are a person who is really interested in the subject area
and you want to become maybe someone who's working in that field or maybe somebody
who's
studying and reach researching about climate change,
I think those would be the most exciting outcomes for our course,
if people have just a further understanding of the
impacts, what's going on in the world, and can
be informed to make good decisions in their life and influence the people
around them.