Instructor Roles

When I was working on my bachelor degree, I attended a traditional class of sorts in that we had to physically go to the classroom and it was face-to-face instruction. However, since it was on a military installation, the class size was smaller than those large university campuses. So I was completely taken by surprise when I read that graduate teaching assistants taught without the supervision of their professors (Bates & Poole, 2003, p.155). This was definitely new information to me, but obvious the normal course of doing business at universities. I wonder, then, would it be difficult to get a teaching position at a community college with a graduate degree; although my interest actually lies towards corporate training.

Another statement in the text had to do with instructional designers being capable of being project managers but managers cannot be instructional designers without extensive training (Bates & Poole, p. 158). I beg to differ. I have had the unfortunate luck of holding the position within my organization of Software Quality Assurance (SQA). In this role, one of my primary responsibilities is to evaluate IT projects throughout their development life cycle. This may not always be the case, but I have watched a great deal of IT professionals fail miserably at being project managers simply because they were not trained to be project managers. My opinion here is that it is an advantage to have Instructional Designers involved with training design projects, but unless they are trained project managers, it would be more beneficial if the project manager of the design project actually have project manager experience.

Cheryl