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Tony Sindelar and I are colleagues at Dartmouth, where Tony is a highly respected learning designer. You may know Tony through his widely read site Tony’s Teaching Tips and LinkedIn posts. As a collaborator with Tony and a dedicated reader of his articles, I was excited when he agreed to participate in this Q&A.
Q: Tell us about Tony’s Teaching Tips. What is the origin story of the series, and how has writing the articles influenced your work as a learning designer?
A: Back in 2023, I was unemployed and doing a job search. I had a lot of teaching ideas bouncing around my head without my usual outlets for sharing them with others. I started my teaching tips site as a place to share ideas about teaching, but also about the instructional design profession and working in higher education in general.
I also saw the potential to put my name out there. I thought about starting a podcast, but I thought something written might have a larger reach and be easier to ramp up. Having a weekly deadline has helped my learning design work by forcing me to dig deeper and formalize my ideas about topics that I’ve been talking about in faculty consultations for years but never had to put in stone.
Q: You’ve been working in and around learning design for, I think, about two decades now. What changes have you seen in the profession over your career? Where do you think learning design might go in the next 20 years?
A: There have been a lot of changes in the field! When I was starting out, it felt like the norm was “accidental instructional designers”: folks trained as IT staff, web developers, graphic designers or other related professions who have found themselves filling learning design needs at a given school or organization. Though the skills and responsibilities of learning/instructional designers are quite varied, it feels like the job roles have solidified around some knowledge of learning theory paired with some media development skills.
It’s hard to know what higher education will look like in 20 years, but I imagine changes in what institutions will look like will be reflected in the work learning designers do. Higher education institutions have a lot of cultural resistance to change but also are under constant pressure to evolve. The future I envision places more emphasis on student-centered approaches to teaching and learning, and designers will be critical to supporting and advising faculty to make this happen.
Q: What advice do you have for anyone considering building a career in learning design? How important is training specifically in a learning/instructional design graduate program versus coming to the profession from a different academic discipline? What do you wish you knew when starting your career as a learning designer that you know now?
A: I have worked with designers with a wide range of backgrounds over the years, and given the evolving nature of the field, any aspiring designer needs to be prepared to keep learning to stay relevant. Some hiring committees are going to be more open-minded than others. Getting a degree or certificate in learning/instructional design is certainly a convenient way to package desirable experiences, but whatever your academic path you take, it is imperative that you be prepared to stay educated about new ideas, technologies, pedagogical approaches and so on. Find the books, podcasts, blogs and communities that are going to help you advance in the aspects of your design work aligned to your needs and interests.
Looking back at what I learned in school versus having to learn on the job, there was zero formal instruction on the elements of relationship management for working with faculty/[subject matter experts], skills that are critical for the day-to-day work of a designer. Especially for those looking to transition into this field, you have to be comfortable and competent with the human element.
