Week 6 - R/D10

Throughout the readings of chapters 18, 21 and 22 I have noticed the themes of leadership, team membership, and understanding the stakeholders which I will call listening. All three chapters spoke about the role of Instructional Designers (ID) in differing applications: business, P-12 education and higher education, yet these three themes, leadership and team-membership and listening, came up time and time again.

In Chapter 18 which spoke about the role of ID in Business and industry, the roles of ID was described as either a sole designer, consultant or team member/leader (Page 176). In the first two business roles the book describes, leadership and listening play critical roles The ID first understands what is needed by actively listening and then leads the client to a appropriate solution by taking a leadership role in the design process. Of course none of what the ID does can operate in a vacuum and the design process is iterative, so the ID must work as a member of a team to create the final product which is acceptable to all stake holders.

The trends and issues described in Chapter 21 talk about all three of these themes throughout the chapter. Several school districts’ transformation projects were highlighted and in all of them the ID had to understand, listen to, all interested parties from both within and outside the school building. The book mentions leadership teams on page 216 which, of course requires team work and IDs work with parents, teachers and other stakeholders in developing goals and plans.

Chapter 22 dealt with ID roles in higher education. The unsurprising parts of the chapter described the ID working with faculty improving instruction. These parts inherently had aspects of the themes of leadership, team membership and listening pretty much as described above from Chapters 18 and 21. The surprising parts of Chapter 22 are actually quite different from the prior two in that they describe the IDs role in academia. We read about tenure concerns, “publish or perish” anxiety and job satisfaction. Even through these very practical sections of the role of ID in higher education the three themes are represented. ID’s are called upon to listen as the council graduate students. They are called upon to take leadership of their hectic schedules so that the details of academic advisement doesn’t lead them to loose sight of the importance of research. They are required to think as a team member so their institutions can remain appealing and thus competitive in an competitive environment.

In summary, if I had to choose three significant themes which ran throughout these chapters, the three themes of leadership, team membership and listening are the ones I would choose. They certainly are demonstrated in all three chapters as important aspects of the role of the instructional designer.