Jen Vanek, a colleague who works at World Education, recently published an article titled Supporting Quality Instruction: Building Teacher Capacity as Instructional Designers in Adult Literacy Education that considered how the roles of educators are shifting. Jen suggests it’s becoming necessary for teachers to, “build their capacity to design technology-rich instruction that meets the needs of diverse learners.”
We’ve chewed on this need for some time at Designers for Learning when we engaged not only instructional design students, but also adult educators, in the adaptation and creation of open educational resources. Adult educators are forced to adapt and create digital learning materials all of the time, but rarely do we equate that work to instructional design or technology integration; at least not prior to the pandemic. The nagging question is what instructional design and/or technology integration skills do adult educators need? Folks like Peg Ertmer have been chewing on this in the K12 world for decades, and it’s wonderful to see those working in the adult foundational skills context jumping on board!
Featured Image Photo by Fili Santillán on Unsplash