Establishing My Personal Brand

Learning is something I’ve always been drawn to. Throughout school, I wondered why my teachers asked certain questions on exams and hypothesized why certain classmates knew answers but others didn’t. It was this passion for learning that led me to study neuroscience and behavior for my bachelor’s degree. I wanted a degree that challenged me academically and taught me how the human brain worked as it learned. Well, I got it. I enjoyed learning about learning so much that I chose to earn my master’s and PhD in educational psychology. Almost all the questions that I’d wondered during my early school days were answered through courses, educational research, and real-world experiences. I had finally found my calling and loved every minute of it. 

One of my career-defining experiences in graduate school was working in my institution’s center for teaching and learning. I created educational materials to support research-based pedagogies, facilitated webinars on teaching strategies, and coordinated a certificate in college teaching program. Working there became part of my identity. I felt a sense of purpose there because I was contributing positively to the institution’s learning culture and I could see my impact. After graduating with my PhD, I continued my career in faculty development at a new institution. My current position focuses on creating infrastructure for identifying, assessing, and scaling high-impact practices (HIPs) at our institution. I’ve become known as the HIPs expert, which I’ve found to be positive and negative for my work identity. It’s awesome to be an expert in what I’m working on, but I also find myself in an identity crisis because I know HIPs are not what I want to be known for. I picture myself creating learning experiences and pathways using more than just HIPs. I want to use my entire lexicon of learning knowledge to stimulate learning. 

Working full-time without taking classes of my own gave me a lot of time to reflect on where I wanted my career to go. Did I truly enjoy facilitating webinars for two or three faculty participants? Did I see myself helping instructors determine where their course fit in the general education curriculum for the rest of my life? Did I feel like I was making an impact on the institutional culture? No. What I had grown to love more than helping faculty create effective courses was creating those learning experiences myself. When I realized that, I determined I wanted to go back to school to study learning design and technologies. Understanding the intricacies of learning design and creating learning experiences from the ground up is what had been missing. 

I plan to draw on my expertise in educational psychology as I create space for myself in the learning design and technologies field. My knowledge of learning theories, experience conducting educational research, and project management skills will be valuable and may help me stand out from other professionals. Many of the competencies for instructional designers such as applying constructivism, behaviorism, backward design, and Bloom’s Taxonomy to the creation of learning experiences are second-nature to me (Ritzhaupt et al., 2021). I have been inspired by Lev Vygotsky's zone of proximal development and John Dewey's experiential learning framework for years, and many of the learning experiences I've designed have leveraged both heavily. Using these theories, I strive to provide adequate scaffolding to learners and provide them with authentic experiences that they can apply elsewhere. My experience designing educational research and evaluating programs will likely apply to the formative and summative evaluation skills needed in the field (Ritzhaupt et al., 2021). Also, project management and problem-solving are strengths that will benefit me if I work on multiple projects at once or implement instructional design models with structured stages such as Design Thinking (Wagner, 2021). I’m confident that my foundational knowledge of learning, experience in learning research, and critical thinking skills will be useful in this field. 

With that said, I am looking forward to building on my foundational knowledge of learning and technology in this certificate program. I would like to broaden my horizons beyond instructional design and faculty development in higher education. I’ve worked in the faculty development field for almost five years and I’m ready to reinvigorate my love for strategically design learning experiences. I’ve also worked alongside instructional designers in higher education settings, and I’ve determined that I’m looking for something slightly different than what that position requires. After having a conversation with my AI Mentor, Dr. Maya Rivera, I think I’m most interested in learning experience architect, learning evaluation and/or analytics specialist, learning management system administrator, and learning experience designer roles. It seems like these factions of the field will allow me to leverage my previous experience while using my newly acquired skills to create strategic and comprehensive learning pathways, collect and analyze data, and iteratively improve a variety of learning experiences. In the short term, I plan to highlight my new learning design and technology skills on my resume and, after finishing the program, begin a different role. I'd love my new role to combine strategic thinking and learning design - two areas I'm passionate about. In the long term, I aspire to become a leader in an organization or company and be known for innovative learning design methodologies and evaluation techniques. When people have questions about learning design, I want to be the person they come to. 

I will never be finished learning. I think this mindset will serve me well in the learning design and technologies field since it’s evolving so rapidly (Wagner, 2021). Wherever I end up after finishing the program, I hope I can help people learn more effectively, whether that’s through the designs I develop or through the guidance on learning design I provide. Above and beyond the goal of helping individuals achieve their learning aspirations, I can see myself leading change in an organization, designing, developing, and assessing learning experiences, and modeling the love for learning that I hope to spark in others. 

*Ideas and concepts explored in this paper were brainstormed in collaboration with OpenAI’s GPT-4. 

References 

Ritzhaupt, A. D., Kumar, S., & Martin, F. (2021). The competencies for instructional designers in higher    education. In S. Conklin, B. Oyarzun, R. M. Reese, & J. E. Stefaniak (Eds.), A practitioner's guide to instructional design in higher education. EdTech Books. https://dx.doi.org/10.59668/164.4268

Wagner, E. D. (2021). Becoming a learning designer. In J. K. McDonald & R. E. West (Eds.), Design for  learning: Principles, processes, and praxis. EdTech Books.                   https://edtechbooks.org/id/learning_designer