Education careers in instructional design offer some great opportunities to not only earn a solid living, but to also positively affect countless others into the future. What exactly are some of the choices when it comes to education-related careers here? The following are just a handful of the many available today.
Instructional Designer
Probably the most known profession in this line of work is that of the instructional designer. Instructional designers work with various schools and other clients to produce feasible educational plans for teachers to follow when teaching their classes. Aside from simply designing courses, these workers must also test and evaluate those courses. As the education sector itself has grown, this role has recently expanded to accommodate various remote, at-home roles as well.
Accessibility Specialist
Accessibility is the ability for all, no matter condition, to be able to equally access something. In education, it’s all about equal access to all resources and learning instruments, tangible or not. As such, the accessibility specialist is the professional who directly focuses on accessibility in instruction methods as well as instructional designs themselves. In many cases, this role is actually a subset of the instructional design position.
Data Scientist
Data scientists work with information in a wide capacity. In short, they focus on gathering, analyzing, organizing, and making information accessible to the appropriate parties. In the expanding business sectors of education and instructional design, these scientists are in greater demand than ever before. Here, they essentially corral much of the info needed to design courses as well as work with designers to make it accessible and usable to their exact needs. Harvard Business Review quite accurately refers to this professional as a unique combination of data hacker, analyst, communicator, and trusted adviser.
Director of Design
In larger operations of instructional design work, there often exists a need for a number of managerial tiers. One of these is the director of design. This person acts as the top overseer of the instructional design processes taking place in an organization as well as those workers involved with them. While overseeing the design function, they themselves often report to a central director or a CEO. Venues in which this role plays an important part include research labs, educational materials producers, government agencies, military complexes, and many others.
Human Resources Specialist
In many human resources offices exist operations aimed at providing ongoing education and training to new hires as well as veteran employees. Here, specialists, and even general human resource workers, handle the creation and maintenance of these learning materials and programs. This is yet another great way to serve in a sort of educator career in instructional design but within the needs of a company and its specific HR department. The training and development specialist is another very similar title and role of this particular career route.
Related Resource: Top 50 Best Online Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction
Instructional design is the important planning realm responsible for ultimately providing quality educational opportunities to others. Working in this sector truly can provide any number of personal and community benefits difficult to find in many other careers. There are plenty of other options out there for those interested in this professional path, but these five examples of education careers in instructional design shine some great exemplary light on this growing industry today.
