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<p id="p_VexP" name="p_VexP"></p><p id="p_MWoY" name="p_MWoY"></p><p id="p_gwLi" name="p_gwLi"></p><h2 id="h2_PjhS" name="h2_PjhS">An instructional designer is an instructional designer is an instructional designer, right? </h2><p id="p_gSnA" name="p_gSnA">Not necessarily, young grasshopper. </p><p id="p_inEr" name="p_inEr">Instructional designers regardless of the setting can wear many hats including (not limited to): tech support, LMS admin, consultant, babysitter, coach, etc. You get the point. Going back to being true to yourself and keeping yourself in the center of the job search process, how do you know what setting is going to work best for you?</p><p id="p_pxgp" name="p_pxgp">Before going forward, identify three aspects you'd like in your instructional design role:</p><div class="form-group"><label for="text_prompt_5qwlt">What are three aspects you want in your ID job?</label></div><div class="form-group"> </div><div class="form-group"> <div class="form-group"><label for="text_prompt_pwe1p">Reflect here</label> <textarea data-text_entry-id="text_prompt_pwe1p" id="text_prompt_pwe1p" class="text-entry form-control">

I'm encouraged by the "time in the sun" of instructional design, especially by higher education institutions. What I saw as a higher education ID however when COVID-19 hit wasn't good design, it's what I call "panic-gogy". The emergency remote teaching often threw out accessibility initiatives, scaffolding, and basic user experience. I hope that now that more are using online learning, there is a call to improve and again make sure students are supported. 

So what's the TL;DR for higher education? I think it's a great fit for people who are formally educated in ID or looking to get formally educated in ID. Many universities offer free or reduced tuition to employees. That is the primary reason I worked at the institution I did so I could get my education paid for. Also, higher education usually has a decent work-life balance and is pretty open if you consult on the side. I found as a higher education ID I had plenty of energy at the end of the day so I could go to school at night and also consult on the side. In my experience, the pace is decently slow with ebbs and flows in accordance with the academic semester. Even when the academic semester was kicking off, I found it easy to balance the demands. It's a great starter role and if you can move up in higher education, maybe you can change the world ;) 

Corporate ID

So what do corporate IDs do? Obviously, it may differ from institution to institution but you will likely find yourself:

• creating learning experiences for internal employees or customer education for a product your organization created or manages
• managing and troubleshooting the LMS although you often build with learning technologies such as multimedia or eLearning authoring tools
• managing reports of completion of various learning expereinces to report out to departments and leadership
• maintain old learning expereinces and provide updates accordingly
• facilitate virtual instructor led training or classroom training
• determine root cause analysis of various problems brought to the instructional design department to see if training really is the answer
• all other duties as assigned

So what's the TL;DR for corporate? Corporate offers you a chance to often "own" the learning experience from start to finish which can be very rewarding. With that though comes the need to often manage your own projects (yes plural as you often are working on a couple of projects at the same time) which can be a challenge for new IDs. You will also need to keep your learning technology skills sharp as the variability of tools and ways ID is approached differs from organization to organization. The "good" standard will vary and while you may have tools and processes that works at one organization, another organization it may not work for. I do think after COVID-19, corporate has gotten better overall with work-life balance as many corporate IDs can work mostly remote or fully remote. Corporate roles often pay more than higher education roles too.

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