Interview with Syreena Mortimer, Instructional Designer: Innovators in E-Learning Series

How can you bulletproof yourself in a quickly evolving world?  One of the best ways is to continually evolve by reinventing yourself.  But how? That is where the instructional designer does his or her magic.

The world of the instructional designer is challenging, constantly evolving, a wonderful place to express your creativity in a way that builds human capital through effective training, education, and knowledge transfer. 

Welcome to an interview with Syreena Mortimer, an instructional designer who has recently earned her Instructional Design Certification from Rollins College. 

1.  What is your name and your relationship to e-learning?
My name is Syreena Mortimer and I am an instructional designer.

Syreena Mortimer

2.  How did you become interested in instructional design?
I became friends with an instructional designer several years ago. She told me all about her job and introduced me to other instructional design contacts. They each shared unique perspectives about their job roles in academic, federal, and commercial projects. I was really inspired by the all of the different ways they shared information with their learners. Because I was looking for a way to expand my career, I realized that instructional design is a rapidly expanding field with many opportunities. My background is in library science and I wanted to explore ways to organize content and teach others, so I decided to pursue the Instructional Design Certificate at Rollins College.

3.  What are some of the uses of instructional design that excite you?
I love to teach others, so I get really excited when I get to chunk and structure content to make it more accessible to learners.

4.  When you worked on your certificate at Rollins College, what were some of the aspects that were most interesting to you?  What were the courses that you took?

I took six courses for my Instructional Design Certificate at Rollins College: Introduction to Instructional Design, Learner Motivation and Engagement, Learning in the Connected Age, Learning Technologies, Introduction to eLearning, and a Capstone class.

I was particularly interested in the Learner Motivation and Engagement course because I was exposed to the key concepts of learning psychology. I studied some thought-provoking theories and applied them in my daily life for designing learning, working in a team, and setting personal goals. The capstone course was the most useful to me because we created and enhanced our professional portfolios- something crucial for an instructional design career!

5.  How did you use your instructional design knowledge gained from the program?
The knowledge that I gained from the program directly supported my job interview performance as well as my daily work.  I was familiar with instructional design terms and processes, able discuss learning theories, and was ready to share my portfolio. In my daily work, I use these skills to contribute to my team instructional design team in order to create, develop, and implement web-based training.

6.  What sorts of opportunities have you been able to explore as an instructional designer?
I’ve had fun working on different types of projects over the past couple of years. I had an informal internship with an instructional design mentor at a publishing company, and I helped her create quick reference guides. We also interviewed stakeholders in order to update training guides. When I worked for a consulting company, I got to participate in planning meetings about the instructional design process for a commercial client, and then I was staffed on a military client. I traveled onsite to meet with client representatives and worked with a small team to create web-based training. I will be transitioning into the hospitality industry to be a learning designer, where I will create and conduct in-person and online trainings.



 

7.  What is the most enjoyable experience that you've had so far in designing instruction?
There have been many enjoyable experiences! One that stands out is when I learned how to use an eLearning authoring tool by watching videos online, and then I taught my team members how to use the tool- all within two weeks. When I taught them, first I shared an example of the end product, then demonstrated the development steps, and then I had the learners practice alone (with feedback for any questions). The training was a success and my team members were able to create mini-presentations using the tool within 1 hour.

8.  Please list the cloud-based apps you find most useful and fun.

Marvel App: great for collaborative prototyping
http://marvelapp.com/

Thing Link: fun and easy way to make pictures interactive
http://www.thinglink.com/

Creatley: design diagrams and charts
http://creately.com/

Prezi: create engaging presentations
http://prezi.com/

Canva: make infographics, posters, advertisements, and other graphic designs
http://www.canva.com/

Interview with Jeff Kissinger, Rollins College Certificate in Instructional Design: Innovators in Instructional Design Series

The need for innovative instructional design that works in many different types of organizational settings for many different types of learners is surging now with the advent of mobile devices. Welcome to an interview with Jeff Kissinger, Rollins College. Jeff designs and administers new programs in one of the nation's most innovative college, which is known for its passionate approach to instruction and learner engagement.

What is your name and your relation to elearning?
Hi, my name is Jeff Kissinger, Jeff, and what is my relation to eLearning?  Well, at my core I am a curious learner and teacher, always have been.  I am fascinated by how we make sense of the world around us, interact with each other, and attempt to gain novel insights.  eLearning, to me, is connected learning, which I suppose one could easily say of all learning; that it doesn’t happen in isolation and is always situated.  But, for the sake of the topic and this question, and your blog Susan, eLearning might be considered connected, social, omnipresent learning enabled by various technologies and ecosystems.

My relation to eLearning is quite simply my love of teaching, learning, and tools and creative ideas that serve these. I began to develop a true passion and connoisseurship for this convergence many, many years ago teaching students with exceptionalities applying adaptive technologies for their diverse needs at an urban high school in Orlando.  I got to see first-hand how creative uses of tools and technologies could enable higher student learning and outcomes, but more so than that how it changed their lives.  From that teaching experience alone I knew that I had to always be striving for better understanding, competence, and capacity to help create the best learning opportunities possible.  So, again, to me, I see eLearning as a shortcut to describe the learning in our connected age, whether formal or informal, and where modality is not the predominant defining factor.
  
What do you consider your core philosophy of elearning?
My philosophy of elearning, and simply learning, is based on a solid foundation of open access to knowledge, critique, and creation.  I began my career teaching English in a rural area of Florida but truly began to develop a connoisseurship at the nexus of pedagogy and technology while teaching students with exceptionalities in an urban high school.  This experience planted the seed for a life-long thirst to uncover, explore, and share novel learning affordances of emerging teaching/learning practices and technologies.

At the core of these inquiries is a focus on Connectivism and the omnipresent social layer of our modern existence and the necessary literacies we must continuously hone.   In my teaching, regardless of context or modality, I see the world through a multidisciplinary lens, where technology and tools serve the learners and seek to improve how we learn. 

How do you decide what kinds of instructional technology to use?  
Drawing on my resourceful, scrappy years teaching in special education I was always searching for creative ways to enhance student learning opportunities with whatever tools and technology I could get my hands on.  Ironically, in those days most of us wanted more PC-based tools, and I had a bunch of hand-me-down Apple LCIII’s in my adaptive technology classroom/lab.  So, I learned early on to use what I had, in the best possible way, however what this helped me fine-tune in my own teaching was to focus on the learner and not the tool.

The tool will present itself if you have this non-technocentric lens.  This perspective has served me and my students well over the years guiding key decisions in instructional technology selection and application.  I guess the other thing I would say, and why I feel Apple technologies align so well with teaching and learning is that the tools need to become common and fold into everyday life and use.  We can’t have environments and tools that create needless cognitive overload or distractions that get in the way of why we are here, which is to learn, create, share, discover…

Where do you think that elearning is going?  I think when one looks out on the learning landscape we see plate tectonics shifting.   There is a mad gold rush within ed tech, and it seems like there are new ideas and tools popping up daily, which I love.  The challenge will be to make sense of it all, in a sober fashion, to best serve learners.

Practically speaking, I see analytics beginning to emerge in useful ways, a continued move to learner-centeredness, and a unbundling and disaggregation of resources, services, and paths.  Designs, practices, and enabling technologies that foster this organic unbundling of available learning options, focusing on competencies and more authentic higher levels of learning and assessment, will be the successful models that emerge and persist.   

What is Rollins College's new Certificate in Instructional Design? Who is it for?  
The Rollins College Instructional Design program is a learning experience comprised of 5 online courses and a capstone course that is offered in a 6 month sequence.  Designed for adult learners by expert practitioners and leaders in the learning and training field.  These courses are taught by faculty and leaders from higher education, k12, and workplace training.

The learning outcomes are:

• Apply project management principles for local and virtual workgroups
• Develop connoisseurship for learning technologies along with current and burgeoning theories and practices
• Effectively employ technology in the design, development, management, and evaluation of knowledge creation
• Participate in the professional growth of the learning design and training communities of practice.
• Develop and practice a reflective commitment of continuous improvement to creating quality learning opportunities

6. Create an instructional program for a defined population and purpose
The topics covered include: instructional alignment, learning motivation and engagement, assessment, mobile and social learning, eLearning, learning technologies, analytics, and authoring. 

Why now? What makes this ID certificate unique?
The Rollins College Instructional Design curriculum has been a labor of love and has been a culmination of my and my colleague’s years of experience teaching and learning.  What we looked out at the ID job market we saw a misalignment with programs, degrees, and certificates.  We wanted to create an experience for learning professionals, or those seeking to break into these careers, that gave them the foundational knowledge to make effective learning design decisions that produced tangible outcomes.

Employing practical, authentic learning activities and assessments, the curriculum is designed to serve professionals in workplace training, k12, and higher education.  Unlike many of the ID programs we saw, which were heavily technocentric and didactic, we designed a set of learning experiences that we would have wanted years ago that affords graduates the confidence, skill set, and connoisseurship to be successful.