Instructional Design and Work

For our first week of CECS 5210, I read the ADDIE handout and the first chapter of our text book, and I must say that I am heartened by what I have read. I have been doing instructional design, of a sort, for the last several years, and I didn't really have an official process for it. I just did it by instinct. While I didn't have any disasters, I certainly did have times when it didn't work as well as I had hoped it would. Now, it's nice to learn that instructional design is an interesting combination of art and science, and that it is a continuous process. When I tried following a strict instructional design model in the past, I kept getting tripped up because I was trying to follow a linear process, and it doesn't work that way. Not from my experiences, anyway.

As for the ADDIE handout, it confirmed many of my suspicions. I almost never hear the word ADDIE mentioned at work. We use an adapted form of it, but I was beginning to wonder if ADDIE was one of those buzzwords that people who really don't do a lot of instructional design throw around in conversations or in job interviews. I think ADDIE is a good guideline -- or a framework, as the article put it -- but the instructional design process doesn't seem all that different from the software design process.

As far as my future work goals are concerned, I would like to be a full-time instructional designer. I've been encouraged by what I've read so far and by my past experiences, so I would say that instructional design is extremely important in my future work goals. I had a job interview this summer and the interviewer asked me several pointed questions about my instructional design processes and I really couldn't explain them. Needless to say, I didn't get the job, but it was a learning experience.

Suffice it to say that I know I have a lot to learn, but at least I know I'm not on totally unfamiliar ground.