As a graduate student in the field of Instructional Systems Design, what and how to prepare for our future professional career is the most concerning thing for us. This week’s topic is centered with the career and professional development, which is beneficial to take a reference to see what the critical competencies in the job market of this field.
Ritzhaupt and others examined the competencies of the instructional design professional by analyzing the job announcements, which was a direct way to explore the requirements in the workplace. From the article, I learned that the instructional design competencies are various in different professional sectors. The top four most common settings for instructional designers are business and industry, higher education, consulting and health care. Previously, I only thought the industry fell in the higher education institutions and educational companies. After I joined a panel of our IST alumni who shared their job position and went through this article, I now learned that the options of us are open and various. I remembered one of our alum called Justin is working in a children’s hospital. He said he loves using his ID knowledge in the healthcare industry to help patients and healthcare professionals. I found these seniors who have entered into the workplace of IST all suggested that do not be afraid to try something different or something that you don’t think is exactly what you thought, just try and you would find your values in this field. Do not narrow down your options when you choose the job careers. It is indeed helpful for us to make decisions.
Although there are various options for job sectors, I would like to know firstly the required competencies in education sector because of my preference on job selection. The top five ones are effective collaboration skills, a foundation in learning theory and principles, effective communication through multimodal approaches, experience in e-learning authoring software and skills in using learning management systems and the ADDIE procedures. Take a review of myself, I think I need to improve the collaboration skills and expand my experience scope in e-learning contexts, no matter for the knowledge, skills or the ability. On the basis of improving these aspects, I will always bear the following in mind: knowing how use information and communication technology is important, but knowing how to apply it meaningfully to instructional design and education problems is much more important.
Reflecnce:
Kumar, S. & Ritzhaupt, A. D. (2017). What do instructional designers in higher education really do? International Journal of E-Learning, 16(4), 371-393
Wang, X., Chen, Y, Ritzhaupt, A. D., & Martin, F. (in press). Examining competencies for the instructional design professional: An exploratory job announcement analysis. International Journal of Training and Development. DOI: 10.1111/ijtd.12209
Hi Xiaoying,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on career planning. I was reflecting on my own experience while reading about the required competencies you mentioned and can totally see their importance in the workplace. I personally found communication skills more challenging to develop, especially while using my second language and perhaps in a different work culture from the one I was more familiar with. Thanks for your sharing that helped me reexamine myself.
-Renee