Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Getting an Informal M.Ed

For various reasons, I'm not going to go back to school to get a Masters Degree in instructional design. At least not formally.

But I firmly believe that this journey I'm on is giving me the experience and educational equivalent (if not better) than a formal M.Ed.

The benefits: It's free! It's available whenever I want it to be! I get to learn what I want to learn! I never have to graduate! I already have a job doing it!

Even though I've been doing this ("instructional design") for over ten years, I'm starting over. I'm putting my beginner's mind back on; I've realized how much I don't know about this stuff.

I'm the over-eager kid in the front row, asking the dumb questions. The 1st year grad student.

You are my professors.

You are my classmates.

You are my students.

This blog is my notebook. Comments are encouraged, especially when I get something wrong.

My work-related projects are my laboratory, my assignments, my assessments -- to be "graded" by my clients.

I don't have a formal curriculum. I am starting right where I am.

I am compiling some reading lists and resources that I have found useful. See also the "Instructional Design Resources" section in my sidebar, which I just added this morning.

Be sure to check out Essential Reading for Instructional Designers with a link to Dr. John Curry's post How to Get An Instructional Design Education Without Paying Tuition.

I welcome your suggestions, your feedback, your guidance.

Thanks for helping.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think it's a great idea to learn ID informally, while you apply it to the real world. The challenge, as you note, is to use your beginner's mind--and to ignore a lot of what's done around you. Too much elearning is built on the content-centric, teacher-tells-you model that we're familiar with from school. It's become the default.

To your list of books I'd add Michael Allen's Guide to Elearning. If you're looking for more links to theory, discussion, and research, I've got a bunch of places bookmarked at my FURL site.

The ID theory and research is under the topic "Information design" because I think that's really what most of it addresses.