Breaking into Instructional Design: A Course for Editors Seeking New Opportunities and Challenges

with Liz Warwick

When: Four Tuesdays, January 12, 19, 26, and February 2, 2021, 7:00 to 8:30 pm

Where: All sessions are via Zoom

In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore how editors can use their skills to move into the world of instructional design, a field that is growing rapidly as demand for online courses increases. Instructional designers focus on helping people learn effectively. They work with schools, universities, businesses, governments, and non-governmental organizations to design and create a wide range of learning and training materials. An instructional designer may structure, write, or edit content for an online course; create a storyboard for a training module; create a job aid to help someone perform a specific task; and much, much more.

This workshop will include short presentations, readings, and discussions and lots of opportunities to practise skills through in-class exercises and at-home assignments.

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Describe the role of an instructional designer, including the range of activities and tasks instructional designers might be asked to carry out
• Specify the essential skills and knowledge instructional designers need, including how to analyze audience needs, create learning objectives, identify learning strategies, and build educational content
• Explore how editors and writers may already have these essential skills, and discuss how to demonstrate this to clients
• Create and evaluate prototype instructional materials, including learning objectives, part of a needs analysis, a high-level course design plan, and a simple storyboard
• Identify different pathways for finding instructional design work and acquiring additional skills in the field

Liz Warwick is an editor and writer who returned to Concordia University mid-career to complete a master’s degree in educational technology. Since then, she has divided her work life between instructional design and editing. This year, she is helping an Ontario university bring their courses online, managing several instructional design projects for a Vancouver-based training company, editing a romantic fiction trilogy and a book on changing careers, and serving as branch chair for Editors BC.