Instructional Design and EdTech ePortfolio

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8 tips for transitioning to a career in edtech or ID

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This past week, I celebrated my first year of working as an edtech at Boston University. I was fortunate enough to have a job lined up before graduating from my program just a little over a year ago. Finding a job is the culmination of my career switch after working in international development for over a decade.

Now that I’m done with papers, projects and exams, and have stopped updating my job application tracking sheet, over the past year, I reflected on the steps I took and other factors that brought me to this point in my career. I hope that taking stock of my experience will help those who are also considering a shift to a new and exciting career in instructional design and edtech. Below I outline a few pointers which I believe helped me get a couple of job offers and clinch a job in edtech.

  1. Brush up on learning theories and frameworks 

Whether through a short course or a full-blown graduate degree, a good grasp of education and multimedia learning theories and frameworks is essential to ground your knowledge of the discipline. I already knew how to administer blogs, webinars, and in-person training, but I wasn’t familiar with Backward Design, and the works of Bloom, Gagne, and Moreno and Mayer. This is the added value that instructional designers bring to a team that may consist of a videographer or a learning management system administrator. It is crucial to anchor learning projects to theories and be methodical in choosing appropriate digital interactions and learning assessments, and not just pick them on a whim. 

  1. Create projects and an ePortfolio 

I’m a big fan of project-based learning. This will sound a little meta, but one of the ways to consolidate the learning theories and frameworks you will learn in class (See #1 above) is to apply them by creating projects. They will also form part of the ePortfolio you can showcase to prospective employers if asked during the recruitment process. Especially as a career changer, I needed to show I’m capable of applying my knowledge of learning theories and seeing an instructional design project through the entire ADDIE process.

I wasn’t very intentional in choosing the projects I worked on. If you look at my portfolio, it’s an eclectic collection of Canvas and edX courses, a science engagement project, and an online game using Zoom and Google Sheets. I believe these diverse projects allowed me to highlight my broad knowledge and interests as well as adaptability and creativity when it comes to different types of projects, learning experiences, and technologies.

  1. Work as a graduate student assistant

While deciding to do my program, I knew I needed to gain experience as a newcomer to the profession. I negotiated a graduate associate position at Georgetown University’s center for teaching and learning. While the salary helped defray some of the cost of going back to school and living in an expensive city like Washington, DC, learning the ropes of developing online courses, conducting research on various tech platforms, and assisting faculty with their tech needs were perhaps even more valuable.

There were times I doubted this decision to work alongside my studies, wishing I had more time to work on exciting personal projects instead. Before the summer session, I even considered doing an internship outside of the university to diversify my experience, but I was somehow forced to stick it out because of the pandemic. Yet, during my job interviews, I drew on this work experience which proved valuable to illustrate that I’ve “been there and done that,” and for examples of challenges and approaches I’ve encountered in a professional setting.

  1. Review and reframe my resume

My original CV was peppered with international development jargon such as “portfolio review,” “policy analysis,” and “agricultural input distribution,” which to HR specialists in education institutions might suggest that I’m applying to work at the UN. Midway through my application cycle, I revisited my CV and thought long and hard about duties I’ve performed in the past such as organizing knowledge-sharing events, conducting and evaluating training and workshops, and administering websites and webinars – tasks and projects where I used skills related to instructional design and technology. I believe highlighting this skill set signaled that I have transferable skills and am not starting my ID and edtech career from scratch.

5.  Conduct informational interviews

As an introvert, I shy away from mixers and networking events. Still, I knew I had to reach out to people who were already working in the space I wished to enter. I had to psych myself up to asking for introductions, reaching out to people who don’t know me, and eventually speaking with them. Because of the pandemic, gone are the days of coffee meet-ups which have been replaced by Zoom calls. Virtual calls may be less personal, but this has been convenient for me and my interviewees who are located far from DC. I virtually met a business developer in a leadership position in New Hampshire, a university vice provost in Boston, a metadata expert in New Jersey, and a doctor of osteopathic medicine in Baltimore.

I managed my expectations during these conversations, not hoping to snag a job at the end of a call. Rather, I was genuinely interested in their work, asking them how they ended up in their current roles, what they like about their profession, and how they deal with the challenges and opportunities they face. Also, informational interviews were a great way to prepare for job interviews, where I would be on the other side of the process.  

6. Keep track of time and your job application

I kept a spreadsheet to track my applications – job links, dates of application and rejection, and marginal notes. Without a system, it’s easy to lose track of them. I began sending out applications around September and I received my first job offer about three months later, after submitting close to a hundred applications.

In addition, consider the various timelines involved. When do higher ed institutions tend to hire staff? The hiring process may take about two months from the first time an HR specialist makes initial contact. Meanwhile, I also had to apply for my employment card, time my start date, and juggle my student job and classes in my final semester. In hindsight, I’m glad I made the call to take electives during the summer, which lightened my course load in the fall and gave me the bandwidth for my job search.

7. Prepare a portfolio presentation in advance

I started working on my ePortfolio by taking a studio course during my second semester specifically for the purpose of jumpstarting the task. Don’t wait until your last project is finished to assemble your portfolio. It also helped that I like tinkering with content management platforms, which I can trace to 2003 when I started my own blog. I chipped away at the work – choosing a theme, organizing the structure and information, and writing drafts of the “About Me” page and my learning design philosophy. Over a week during my summer break, I buckled down to develop the first draft of my ePortfolio, and by my final semester, I only had to make incremental changes in time for my presentation and job applications.

If you can, also prepare a slideshow presentation in advance with three to five projects which you can easily choose from and tailor when the time comes to present them to a potential employer. Search committees for instructional design positions will assume you have a portfolio, and will likely ask you for a presentation if you advance in the recruitment process. I thought it was as easy as walking my interviewers through my online portfolio, but was advised by my manager to prepare by picking two projects to dive deeply into. So that’s exactly what I did one weekend, before the Monday I was scheduled to give two portfolio presentations. I wish I’d had a master slide deck ready so I could have avoided the stress from last-minute cramming.

8. Scan the job market to manage employment expectations

The Covid-19 pandemic presents both difficulties and opportunities for the labor force. I remember the director of my program saying that we, his students, will be in demand in the job market, as we walked down the hallway on our way to a meeting a few days before the university shut down in March last year. We saw universities impose hiring freezes as a cost-cutting measure, which made me nervous, but I’m glad they also started making exemptions, as we see from job postings for edtech and ID roles, as soon as university administrators realized these positions are essential, even more so during a pandemic.

A year and a half of graduate study, half of it done virtually during the pandemic, and many job applications and interviews later, I’ve successfully pivoted to a new role, a new industry, and now, a new city. In the end, I was in a very fortunate situation in my job search which yielded three job offers – two instructional designer positions and one educational technologist position. Career transitions actually begin as soon as you start considering them. It can be a daunting process, but you can make it more manageable with “good timing,” ample preparation and the right frame of mind and attitude.

Talbot building

Working in edtech: My first six months at a med school

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A few weeks into starting my new role remotely, my manager told me that I should be all ramped up in my position in about six months. Back then I told myself I could probably get myself oriented in a few weeks, maybe three months max. Or so I thought. That sixth month arrived about a month ago.

Now half a year in, parts of my job and the routines corollary to it still feel new, because some of them are by virtue of moving to a new city: the office location, my commute, my workspace. Even my work arrangement is new – a combination of two days of remote work and three days in-person. Meanwhile, I’m still far from the expert my job title “Educational Technologist” suggests, and I thought I would become when I started. It’s not a terrible self-assessment. It keeps my eyes peeled for tech issues, processes, and solutions to learn and improve, big and small. So here I’m sharing some of them, observations I’ve collected over the last couple of months of working in edtech at a medical school.

A unique med school subculture

As a grouping of would-be and current medical professionals, the med school has its own norms, values, and forms socialization. From the white coat ceremony when students enter med school, to Match Day when they learn their destinations for their residency. This has led me to read a couple of articles by FW Hafferty on the hidden curriculum, ethics, and dynamics in medical education. I’m sure I’ll get to know more of these customs and traditions as I interact more with faculty, staff, and students.

Med schools start the school year early

Most college students start the academic year in late August or September. By then med students are two months into their school year. First year BU med students started their classes in the first week of August, with the first exam rolling in three weeks later. This means our academic calendar is dialed back earlier than the rest of the campus. As early as spring we start supporting faculty and course coordinators through responding to requests to copy courses in Blackboard, training them for any new tech, or training new faculty. By July, while other departments of the university were still ironing out their back-to-office strategies, we were already clocking in on campus.

Emphasis on standardized assessment

Part of my role as an Educational Technologist is teaching instructors exams are posted with the correct settings. And in doing so, I get to take a peek at their tests. I’ve observed that many of the items are multiple choice type of questions, possibly a holdover from the days of shading sheets of Scantron. We still keep a few copies at hand for one of those unfortunate tech fails. This is not to say that’s the only way med students are taught and learn. They also go on to do “Doctoring” and clerkships where they further develop other competencies outside the classroom and in a professional  setting as they advance through the program. They also engage in team-based learning with their peers throughout the year or even longer.

Edtech can support inclusivity

Students who require time accommodation during remote-proctored exams maintain a sense of privacy. Because they take exams in their own private room, their status as accommodation students remains private and not under the scrutiny of other students, avoiding the stigma that may accompany finishing an exam later than the rest of the class.

Faculty’s varying levels of tech savviness

It’s easy to assume that all faculty need help with the many platforms we use. But some faculty, do have an affinity for tech. They can set up a team-based learning type of assessment on Examsoft, or just tell me how to allow other participants to share their screen on Zoom, a tool they’ve become experts of over the past year and a half. It’s good to remember that faculty have varying levels of tech know-how, we edtechs can’t be absolute experts of multiple tools, and that’s okay.

Expect the worst, hope for the best (of edtech platforms)

This applies not only to a med school, but higher ed and any organization that relies on technology more broadly. No matter how much we prepare or anticipate tech issues, I’ve learned to accept that no session will go smoothly technology-wise. New edge cases will always crop up: Blackboard assignments not showing up for one student or Examsoft getting stuck when uploading, There are also things that are just beyond my control, such as students not updating to the latest version of a software despite several reminders, or the new product license not carrying over to previous users. Inasmuch as educational platforms can inexplicably get a little buggy, its users can also be the reason for when a tech “is not working.

Be ready to pivot

Ok, this actually happened toward my seventh month at work. We were preparing for the first in-person big exam of first year med students. It’s a big deal not only for them, but also for us. We had to nudge everyone to install the testing software, take a tech test to check the compatibility of their laptops (for the nth time, no iPads allowed!), and download the exam. Closer to the big day, some students had to change their mode of assessment and take it remotely. This meant making sure we still had remote exam credits left, setting up the back end of the testing platform, and providing tech support to both in-person and remote exam takers. Despite our original plans already in place, we had to be agile to catch those last minute curveballs. Who would have thought hyflex learning also calls for hyflex edtech support?

Early this month, first year med students held their white coat ceremony, that rite of passage inducting them to the world of becoming a medical doctor. As I stood at the back waiting for the event to start, a mother approached me and as she eyed my ID, asked what course I taught, or if I had a child who was taking part in the ceremony (!). I explained I’m a staff, and that I work on educational technology. “No, I’m just here to observe,” I said with a smile. The next day, the students started their first class. Like them, I realized I’m in a similar position of starting out, of learning, though I did months earlier in the edtech field. I hope to keep this curiosity for the next months or years to come, or even years, beyond their tenure at the medical school.

Boston skyscrapers

Moving to Boston to start working on campus

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I’ve been working in edtech at BU for the past six months, having started remotely last January. Exactly five years after I arrived in DC, on the 4th of July, I moved to Boston. Three days later my office ID was activated and I sat at my work desk for the first time.

Like many higher ed institutions, BU called on its faculty, staff, and students (insert link) to return to campus this fall semester. Faculty and staff at the medical campus where I work meanwhile started to return this July. This could provide a preview into how offices might look like for Charles River Campus and perhaps other campuses as they open in a few months and as we emerge from the pandemic, barring any pockets of outbreak.

As a university staff member who started my job remotely, I may not have a full idea of how the “before times” looked like in my new workplace. Despite this, as I and the rest of our department’s staff prepared to report to work in-person, we’ve met to discuss and anticipate anxieties and adjustments in our shared work space. Our instructional technologists, in fact, have been coming to work since July 2020 to provide on site tech support to faculty in classrooms and conference rooms. Implementing social distancing back then was more manageable with fewer staff coming to work and working in shifts. 

There are no in-person meetings yet as some faculty and staff are still working remotely, or at least not yet ready to meet in-person. Thus, Zoom is still the default mode of communication. And in our shared workspace, hearing my colleagues’ voices live and then on my earphones a microsecond later is slightly off-putting. Meanwhile, in other virtual meetings, my mic can pick up conversations happening around me. On the flipside, I hear my colleagues’ Zoom conversations while I’m trying to focus on my work. On my second week, one colleague I’ve only met on Zoom called out my name to say hi, and because she only saw my back, she did not notice I was actually on a Zoom call. I just waved at her, and pointed to my computer screen filled with faces and names in rectangular boxes.

In a Zoom meeting, we thought about ways to address these missteps and inconveniences by setting new norms in shared spaces. One colleague suggested putting up red Post-its or cups, like an analog “On Air” sign to minimize distractions. But this does not solve the noise leakage from others and me. Another potential solution is to conduct the Zoom calls/online trainings in an empty conference room or private booth like those found in co-working spaces. This presupposes working on a laptop that’s portable to use from one workspace to another. Fortunately, trainings I’ve conducted have coincided with my work from home schedule.

It’s my first time to wear masks indoors for an extended period of time, and breathing is unpleasant. To cope with this, I bring extra masks to replace it when it starts to feel grimy, and I take periodic breaks and step out of the building to get some fresh air – the pandemic version of a non-smoker’s cigarette break.

Because of the nature of my work, I’m somewhat privileged to have a hybrid work arrangement, from home on some days and in the office on others, a good balance that keeps my schedule interesting. Whether it’s the most efficient way to work is still a question that needs to be answered, considering most of my tasks are doable online, though this might change as more classes are held on campus. I technically work under the IT department, which has a longstanding remote work arrangement, and has since been reinforced by the President’s university-wide policy. At the moment, I have no fixed schedule, but for sure we (in my smaller team) will have a better sense of on-site support necessary as more faculty, staff, and students return to campus.

Looking beyond a few months or even weeks to what offices will be like is challenging. It seems for every proposal on new ways of working or office adaptation, there seems to be an equivalent and unintended difficulty or disruption. It’s a constant reminder that we are still in the middle of a pandemic, and that we shouldn’t let our guard down.

For many, returning to the office means dusting off keyboards and seeing familiar faces again. Having started work remotely, I feel a deja vu of sorts, that I’ve met my colleagues from somewhere. Amid mask mandates, weekly nasal swabs, and daily symptom attestations, whether coming back to campus after over a year or stepping in for the first time, everyone is trying their best to give our work and life a semblance of normalcy, even as we struggle to define what normal is.

Charles River with Boston skyline in the background

Searching for a job and starting a new career in edtech remotely during the pandemic

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Almost two weeks ago in late February, I celebrated a milestone of sorts, my first month at my new job, and a new career in higher education and technology. Just combine those two fields and you’ll come up with my job title – Educational Technologist – at Boston University Medical Campus. As in most new beginnings, starting this new position and career have had its fair share of ups and downs. The pandemic and subsequent remote-ification of work have made the mechanics of the transition all the more unique, from the job application process all the way to hiring, onboarding, and of course, work itself.

Even before the pandemic, I’ve mostly relied on online job boards, like internal ones for short-term gigs while I was working at the World Bank. My approach this time is mostly the same, only now I had to search on other social media networks like LinkedIn and Facebook groups for instructional designers. In the early stages of my job search, a classmate who also teaches at Georgetown mentioned HigherEdjobs.com, which is probably my favorite platform for opportunities specific to – you guessed it, higher ed – which offers features for tracking applications, resume versions, and alerts and reminders built into the portal. On occasion, friends and acquaintances also sent me job openings, one of which I now hold.

Perhaps I most benefited from the virtual exodus to Zoom when I started fielding interviews, both informational and formal ones. I got to chat with professionals who work at a private company, a non-profit, and even global brands such as HBO and Harvard University, and were located in New Hampshire, Baltimore, New Jersey, and Boston. Except for one, all were held via Zoom, which has become the default means of synchronous communication in professional settings. Then came the real thing: job interviews.

I started getting invited to interviews during the last two months of my final semester. While the majority of the universities were located in the Washington DC, area, the convenience of holding all of them on Zoom was still undeniable — both for the interviewers and for me. Some of the institutions were located at least an hour away from where I live. Traveling to Boston, meanwhile, would have been costly and disruptive to my academics had the series of interviews been in-person. I even had three different interviews in one day, including one in Boston, which is probably the closest to teleportation I can get. And since a good internet connection was and is still a must, I went as far as booking a private room in a co-working space in Georgetown. The office space and the rideshare expenses were very much worth the peace of mind I got from eliminating the risk of getting disconnected in the middle of my two portfolio presentations. I’m not new to job interviews conducted remotely. About a decade ago, I interviewed by phone all the way from Hamburg for the first job that eventually brought me to Washington DC. By the end of this year’s job search cycle, I had participated in a total of 14 interviews, most of them Zoom calls.

When the time came to work – just a month after I was hired – Zoom became my de facto office space. On my first day of work, I put on what I thought could pass for office attire, a collared shirt and comfortable pair of pants, and logged on to Zoom for the three-hour staff onboarding. Later, team meetings and my core tasks of training faculty to set up LMS and assessment tools and helping students troubleshoot Examplify were all done via Zoom. 

I still find it odd that I have formed some degree of professional relationships with my colleagues, people I haven’t met in person, all of whom live in the Boston area. I also try to attend professional events and meetings so I can stay engaged with my work place. This Zoom-centric work environment may not come as a surprise in the new industry I’m joining. Edtech lends itself naturally to remote work, as we promote tools and technologies that allow learning to continue whether in the classroom or online, a career made all the more essential due to the perils of the pandemic.

We are one year into the pandemic. This means for the past year many of us have been studying and working remotely, living socially-distanced, and holing up in our dwellings. Many believe this is our new normal. While I have gotten used to doing minimal prep work in the morning and skipping a morning commute before I boot up my computer to log on to Zoom, I look forward to taking the T and settling into my new work station someday.

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