As a part of my work as an instructional coach for one of my clients, I had the most positively delightful time yesterday facilitating a team-building session for a group of college students enrolled in a pilot program.
It was their first day of class and they spent the morning in an orientation, going on a college resource scavenger hunt, taking some placement exams, and doing team-building with me and their college professors. They were a delightful group of folks spanning the spectrum from their twenties to their forties.
As I was facilitating I was reminded of how very much I love face-to-face training and teaching. I think the last training I conducted was 9 months ago! Training has taken a back seat to a full plate of instructional design projects.
When I finished and turned the group back over to one of their instructors I gushed, "You are so lucky. You get to see them and work with them every week for the whole term!" She smiled broadly, having participated in the team building session with them, and nodded in vigorous agreement.
So, as an instructional designer AND trainer, where has the training gone? Are these two separate vocations or are they two halves of the same vocation? As I was driving home I was thinking that it isn't just that I have missed classroom and training room time, I think face-to-face training is essential for keeping my instructional design relevant, fresh, accessible, and meaningful.
Being in the classroom with students keeps me in touch with the concerns, hopes and dreams of the audiences for whom I write. It also puts me in a position of trying out what I create, a mini test-drive, if you will, for the benefit of any trainers who have to train what I design.
Yesterday's experience made me wonder, are there instructional designers who are instructional designers only and never train? If so, how do they keep their practice fresh, accessible, and relevant to the folks for whom they design? I know there are processes for conducting needs assessment, I use them to understand the audience, desires of the client, the demands of the subject matter, and to create the instructional outcomes that will drive my design, but is that enough? Is face-to-face time with students and consumers of training, in a teaching/training context , essential for the most responsive and resonant instructional design? I think so, but would love to hear from others. And in the meantime, I'm going to beat the bushes and network with colleagues, in search of a class of my own to teach!
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
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2 comments:
Tracy,
I REALLY enjoy your blog. I'm amazed at how similar our approaches are to instructional design and I love how you write about your real experiences. Most instructional design blogs today focus on e-learning, which is fine, but it leads me to appreciating your focus on instructor-led training that much more. Thank you.
I have been doing independent instructional design work for 9 years now. Until recently, most of my clients have been large companies and they hire me to design training and develop materials for their internal trainers. As a result, I have had few opportunities to facilitate training, except when my clients have been willing to have me lead a train-the-trainer to teach the internal trainers how to facilitate what I've designed.
My experience has been that people who love to facilitate, tend not to enjoy designing...and those who enjoy designing, tend not to like to facilitate. They're complementary skill sets, but quite different skill sets. I prefer to design, but I also like to facilitate. I believe that designers should facilitate, at least occasionally. I know that every time I facilitate a program now days, it's a rich experience that reminds me of what it's like to work concretely and directly with the learners, instead of abstractly and theoretically during the design process. To me, design and facilitation go hand in hand, and cannot exist without the other.
Hi Paul,
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. Your point is well taken about people who love to facilitate not often enjoying design. That is where a lot of my work comes from: good folks doing training from a wealth of expertise but never quite getting around to writing it down!
I enjoyed hearing about the interplay between your writing and facilitation with your clients. Thanks again for sharing.
Tracy
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