Have you ever been using your computer and suddenly had your software start crashing or had your connection to the internet disappear? What happened next? In my experience, once it was clear that issue was not going to resolve itself then that is when the troubleshooting began. Either I prompted the computer to troubleshoot the issue or the computer automatically starting troubleshooting without any prompting. If like me, you then sat and watched the screen, you would have seen a little dialog box come up in which you could watch the computer state what part of the troubleshooting process that it was on. If it found the issue in that part of the process then it stopped there and told you what the recommendations were to fix the issue. If not, it kept going through the troubleshooting process. The computer’s ultimate goal was to diagnose the issue and give you a recommended solution. In my opinion, this is a good analogy of what we do as instructional designers. According to Morrison et al. (2007), “The instructional design process starts by identifying an instructional problem” (p. 10). Therefore, I would say that the instructional design process truly is “troubleshooting” to diagnose the problem and then to identify and develop a learning solution.

If a computer’s troubleshooting process is written into its operating system, then where could we expect to find the troubleshooting process for instructional design? That answer lies with the many in our field who have worked to identify and disseminate various representations of the process for broader use within the instructional design community. We call these “models”. Models are intended to give a general description of what the instructional design troubleshooting process usually looks like no matter what the context or content of the intended learning (Branch, 2018, p. 27). These models are not rules. Rather they are more like guidelines. They give the instructional designer a good idea of where to start and what to do next. The instructional design process is a truly fluid one and it must be remembered that ‘instructional design activities are typically not completed in a linear step-by-step manner, although they may be portrayed that way for initial understanding and convenience” (Branch, 2018, p. 24). Models are used to ensure that all aspects of the learning and learning environment are considered and appropriately planned for (Dick et al., 2009, p.2).

As “the goal of instructional design is to make learning more efficient and effective” (Morrison et al., 2007, p. 2), then models themselves bring value because they establish an organized and efficient method for accomplishing that goal. Making effective use of time and energy during the process of designing instruction could pay off in the end product. For example, I attended a military space operations course last year. The goal of this course was to train military members who were going to be deploying to do a space operations job at various Air Operations Centers across the globe. The course went through a redesign to try and identify what exactly these service members were going to be doing in those jobs and align the entire course curriculum around preparing them as best as they could in a three-week course. They brought in a professional instructional designer who followed the ADDIE model in redesigning this course. The manager of the course told us that the feedback that they had gotten from the Air Operations Centers was that the servicemembers that came to them having gone through this newly designed three-week course needed three months less of on-the-job training than those that had come to them without going through it. The heavy frontload of intentional design and effort paid off in large dividends in the end result. I was actually allowed to attend the class even though I was not going to deploy to an Air Operations Center so even though I gained a lot of valuable learning in the class it was not as effective for me as it was for those for whom the course was designed. I wrote all of that to emphasize that models can help the design process be more efficient and effective and thus hopefully lead to learning that has those characteristics as well.

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Branch, R. M. (2018). Characteristics of instructional design models. In R. A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (4th Ed.), (pp. 23- 30). New York, NY: Pearson Education.

Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J. O. (2009). Introduction to instructional design. The systematic design of instruction (7th ed.) (pp. 1-13). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Morrison, G. R., Ross, S. M., & Kemp, J. E. (2007). Introduction to the instructional design process. Designing effective instruction. (5th ed.) (pp. xviii26). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

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As I begin my journey to start a career as an Instructional Designer (sometimes called an Instructional Technologist), I have had many people ask me what exactly an Instructional Designer does. In fact, I’ve had to ask myself this very question in order to truly be confident in my intended goal. One needs only to look at job postings on the internet for Instructional Designers in order to realize that the definition of the job and the expectations for what Instructional Designer are to do are widely varied. In order to explain how I came to my own definition of what an Instructional Designer does, I believe that it will be helpful to look briefly at the historical transition that the field has taken.

According to Januszewski and Molenda (2008), the term “Educational Technology” was one of the foundational terms for this field especially as we entered the information age (p. 1). Later on, the term “Instructional Technology” began to be used more widely (Reiser, 2018, p. 2). As time went on the conceptual understanding of the field and all that it encompassed began to evolve. This evolution was due in large part to an evolution of research and thinking on learning theories and with that came “a greater recognition of the learner’s role as a constructor as opposed to a recipient of knowledge. With this recognition of learner ownership and responsibility has come a role for technology that is more facilitative than controlling” (Januszewski and Molenda, 2008, p.4).  I believe that this was an important turning point for the field of education as a whole because it resulted in a focus on tailoring instruction and the learning environment to the learner and what would best help the individual in their learning path.

One of the things that I find most interesting about this field is the opportunity for creativity in the design of the instructional environment. The goal of the Instructional Designer is to use any method or tool that is feasible and applicable to help the learner achieve the learning goals. According to Januszewski and Molenda (2008), “the immersive environments and cognitive tools educational technologists help design and use are created to guide learners, to make learning opportunities available, and to assist learners in finding the answers to their questions” (p. 4). This field truly is an excellent combination of creativity and scientific research. The research portion informs the Instructional Designer on what the data says about how people learn and what instructional strategies may best to be used. As research is applied to the design of instruction and evaluated for its effectiveness it will naturally lead to more questioning that will need to be validated by additional research (Januszewski and Molenda, 2008).  The creativity portion takes the scientific data from research and applies it in unique and thoughtful ways to the individual learning environments. My personal definition of Instructional Design is that it is the art and science of developing the learning methodology and/or environment.

Januszewski, A., & Molenda, M. (2008). Chapter 1: Definition. In Educational Technology: A Definition with Commentary (pp. 1-14). New York: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Reiser, R. A. (2018). What field did you say you were in? Defining and naming our field. In R. A. Reiser & J. V. Dempsey (Eds.), Trends and issues in instructional design and technology (4th Ed.), (pp. 1-7). New York, NY: Pearson Education.

Top of the morning to everyone! I would like to say that I am thrilled to be starting this adventure of learning, and I am especially looking forward to getting to know everyone that is a part of it too. My name is Charity Jackson. My introduction here may seem to be a little all over the place but my journey in life has been a little all over the place so it is a good representation of me. In 2012, I enlisted in the United States Navy as a Cryptologic Technician Interpretive (CTI) specializing in Mandarin Chinese. I went on to become a Cryptologic Warfare Officer and Space Cadre Officer. I just completed a deployment on the USS DWIGHT D EISENHOWER. Throughout my time in the Navy, I have also been Adjunct Faculty for the National Cryptologic School where I taught courses in Pedagogy to new Adjunct Faculty (most teachers for this school were Adjunct) and courses in Analysis. Before I entered the military, I taught 7th-9th Grades Science and 9th-12th Grades French as well as coached Middle/High School Girls’ Volleyball. I have a Master of Education degree in Secondary Education.

I absolutely loved teaching and coaching. I went into the military because I wanted to do something different in the field of education. I didn’t know what that would look like, but I knew that I wanted to take the opportunity to explore a different path. Throughout my entire time in the military, I have always been involved in training and education even if my full-time job was something completely unrelated. I gained exposure to unique and diverse systems of training and also to adult education. Last year, I made the decision to pursue my love of teaching and learning full-time and I will be transitioning into the Reserves this fall in order to pursue a career as an Instructional Designer.

I am in my first semester of the IST EdD program. I chose this program at IU because I believe that it is perfectly suited to my interests and needs. I especially loved looking at the course offerings as I was excited to see a list of interesting courses all chock full of all the things that I want to learn. If I could take all of the courses that I want to take, I would be in this program for ten years! So, I will try to exercise restraint. I also like that the program seemed to be quite “outside the box” compared to most of the other programs that I looked at.

You’ve probably already figured out that I love teaching and learning, but I definitely have other passions in life as well. I love reading, cooking, traveling, and spending time with my family. I have also developed a recent interest in ballroom dancing and am having a marvelous time dancing for fun.

Here are some pictures 🙂