S3E6: Stephanie Smith: Order Takers versus Consultants

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Stephanie Smith is the Learning and Design Manager for Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Inc. located in Westminster Colorado. She has experience in training and development for a variety of industries including energy, safety, software, sales, customer service, medical management industries. Specializing in eLearning, learning architecture, learning platforms, and learning management systems, Stephanie has a proven track record of successful implementation of learning systems. She has experience creating solutions for human performance issues, leadership development, apprenticeship programs and change management course development. Stephanie has a BA in Speech and Media Communications from Colorado State University, a BA in Education, and a Master’s in Information Learning Technologies, eLearning Design and Implementation from University of Colorado. Stephanie manages the Learning and Development and Training Managers Group on Facebook, which supports members with management issues, metrics, ROI and other instructional design issues. As well as the Instructional Design and eLearning Community page.

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What is Demystifying Instructional Design?

Instructional designers specializes in the creation of learning solutions. In this podcast, Rebecca J Hogue interviews instructional designers from a variety of different fields, with the goal of gaining a better understanding of what instructional designers do. The role of instructional designers varies across contexts including formal education, corporate sector, healthcare, non-profit, military, government, and more. Further the types of learning solutions created by instructional designers varies including learning programs, semester length courses, short workshops, eLearning, and job aids. Join Rebecca as she demystifies instructional design.

Welcome, Stephanie, to Demystifying Instructional Design, a podcast where I interview instructional designers to help figure out what it is instructional designers do. To begin with, can you start by introducing yourself?

Hi, my name is Stephanie Smith.

I am the learning and design manager for Tri-State, which is an electric utility co-op.

So a very interesting part of the business to be in the energy sector at this time.

And I've been in instructional design for about 16 years.

And then before that I was a teacher for seven years, and then in the education field for quite some time at this point.

How did you get into instructional design?

How did you make that transition?

Yeah, I was teaching.

I had become a master teacher and I was really hitting burnout, as many do, and I was like, what is my favorite part besides the kids that I love?

And that was curriculum design and and building things.

I started this was way back before I think even e-learning had its big...

I mean, there was some stuff out there, but it wasn't huge.

It was distance learning type of things that were out there at that time.

And so I started working for the Library of Congress doing these sort of virtual field trips and stuff, creating these experiences for students.

And I used that as the base of my portfolio and then I begged for a job.

I found a company wasn't a great company but found they were hiring.

And I just begged quite a few times and then they finally gave me a chance and I came in.

I'm trying to remember all of it, but I came in and I felt really comfortable on the design side.

But I really had to learn technology where I think a lot of teachers feel that sometimes, which is funny because I tell people like, You really don't need to know the technology as well as you think you do.

But I sat with people.

I learned... we had a recession hit at that point.

Everybody was losing their jobs.

So I thought, I better I don't have to be the best, but I better not be the worst designer.

So I started reading a lot of books, really trying to just up my game as an instructional designer.

I was doing a lot of I was doing a lot of e-learning and video and I think finally my, my boss, who was also my mentor at the time, he's like, if you've read all of these books, why don't you just finish your master's degree?

And I had read the entire curriculum for my master's degree before I ever even got there and took the

master's program.

He recommended me, I got in and I got to work with some really amazing people in our industry, like Patti Shank.

She became a mentor for me as well.

So it was really good.

I've had two really big mentors in my career that have taken me to those next steps, those next levels both times.

So it was really, really beneficial to have that.

A question for you is how do you describe what you do when when you say, hey, I'm an instructional designer, How do you describe that to people?

So what I tell people is that we use a lot of we use like brain science, we use learning theory to really help people learn skills and knowledge to help further...

like in the corporate world, we do that for for employees.

And part of that is, gosh, I'm trying to think of how I would answer that question.

But I think one of the big pieces that I try and explain to people is anybody can, like a SME can put together a PowerPoint or they can put together a training and really where our where we're really beneficial is that we represent the learner, right?

We are looking at what is the best way to convey this information? What is the best way for this learner to learn?

We know there's not going to be a ton of retention for a two hour course versus smaller chunking pieces.

And so we as brain science and we use learning theory and we and we put together our best methods of trying to transmit that information to improve performance.

Cool! What kind of projects do you find fun?

I think in my career I've really enjoyed when they have an actual problem and I have to really think it through and really do analysis and to do.

I had one where, you know, they came back and they're like, we have to teach this skill.

It's a super important safety type of skill and we go through this whole process of analysis and we realize that as we're going through this analysis and talking and interviewing people on the job, that everybody was doing something different.

And so we realized that there was a there was a huge discrepancy on what was supposed to be the actual process.

So I actually love projects that have a problem where I have to really be creative and think outside the box.

And then I also really do love doing courses that are fun with lots of different multimedia.

I love doing video, so there's a development side that I enjoy.

But from that design side, I really love figuring out, Hey, this is the problem.

What are the nuances of the problem?

And then coming up with different types of solutions that will really attack that and help.

And so what are the biggest challenges you face as an instructional designer?

I think one of the biggest ones is order taker versus consultant.

A lot of instructional designers, especially newer ones, they come in and what do you want?

You want a video?

I'll make you a video.

You want that?

They take the order and they create the product, versus really trying to get down to what is the issue, what is the problem you're solving for?

And really being able to guide the customer into a solution that's going to be the best solution for a learner.

And one of the things that I've always had guide me is if I wasn't willing to take my own training, that I didn't do a good job.

It's because it's funny.

I've been a teacher, I've been a trainer, and if I can't sit through it because I just I'm not a good student sometimes.

And so one of my benchmarks.

If I can't stand it and didn't hit it out of the park.

I totally relate to that.

And when I was working in tech writing, it was the same thing.

If I didn't use the stuff that I was writing as a reference, then it's not good enough.

It's not solving the problem.

And so that's very interesting.

And I really like the order taker versus consultants analogy there because there is so much of that, especially when people don't understand what instructional designers do.

It's, oh, build this training for me.

I want training for that.

Yeah, I want an e-learning course.

Okay.

Why?

What exactly do you want it to do?

Yes.

What do you think you're going to get from it?

Yeah.

And having having them get something from it.

Right.

You want to be able to have that return on investment and I would say corporate.

In the corporate world, we don't do a great job on doing that.

But I've really worked hard to try for our department to make sure that we're showing our value right.

I'm trying to advertise, hey, these are all of the things that we fixed for the company that we did for the company.

And so that it... that's the other thing, right?

In a recession, what's the first department to get killed?

We don't need training, showing your value, being a consultant and a huge portion of that is starting a project as the lead.

You've got to lead the project.

You've got to guide your customer through those processes, but explain what we're doing and trying to teach them.

I have at this point, some of the people we work with, they just love it.

They're like, I know you're going to handle it.

You're going to guide me each step, and they really enjoy it working with us.

That's awesome.

So what skills do you find most useful in your work?

I have seen very successful instructional designers in my career and not so successful.

There really is a brain for it and it's not necessarily something that you're going to learn in a program.

But one of the biggest skills is managing a project.

If you can't manage a project well, you will have scope creep and you will you will have a you'll have a very impatient customer who then starts changing their mind and then you don't know what you're doing anymore.

So having really good project management skills, and part of that's customer service and communication pieces of talking your way through the process and then having this mental ability to organize and chunk content and to look at content and convert it into something that is a lot more easier to digest.

For example, I might look at a participant guide and if I see paragraph after paragraph, I'm like, I'm going to snore through.

This isn't working.

How do you create graphics?

How do you pop things out?

How do you make it digestible?

And those are some really key things.

And so when I'm interviewing, we create scenario questions because want to see how how does their brain work?

How do you get from A to B to C?

And that's going to show me what kind of designer you are.

So there is a brain to it.

It's not always, hey, I can make a really great job aid or I can make a video.

It really comes down to how do you organize and chunk information so that learners can consume that and be able to retain it.

What advice would you give to the new instructional designer?

My first mentor, one of the things he had us do was we would take learning theory and then we would try and figure out how to apply it in real life.

And so we would do these sort of workshop scenarios.

And I will tell you that you start to really

learn a learning theory that way and really think about

how if you're looking at behaviorism, how am I applying that to what I can do for my learner?

And so they weren't always.

A lot of them were very rhetorical and discussions, but we really tried to figure out how do you take these concepts and apply them in different mediums.

So that was one of the things that I think can really help.

Do you have an example of that?

Do you have one that off the top of your head?

One of the ones that I did through that process, I did the format theory, which is not actually really obscure, but a teacher think she was a teacher.

She came up with this one.

But basically it combines a whole bunch of things from like Kolbe's Learning Theory of how we perceive and internalize training as being able to take some of that and apply like how do you give time to give content and then allow for processing and then communicating that that content out.

So that was one that we did.

It's harder to do with e-learning, but it's pretty easy to do in the classroom, right?

You can present content, you can allow them to.

Then you have to look at what is the schema of the learner.

Having a learner that's somewhat familiar with the content.

Like if you're teaching something about dogs and you're like, Oh, I love dogs! That's the learner's brain's going to do right?

There can be like, I'm learning all this content about dogs.

They're going to reference their memories and experience of dogs and you're going to encode that that into their schema and then having them have a chance to think about it, to process it, and then to communicate that back, that's going to help reinforce what they're learning.

And so those are some types of examples that haven't used that one.

But I should say I've used that one as an example to use, but I haven't actually got to do an amazing course about dogs.

I would love that.

And so you mentioned you're a hiring manager and so when you're hiring an instructional designer, what are you looking for?

One of the biggest pieces for me is do they fit on my team personality wise?

And I think that's where I've seen a lot of people online very discouraged, where they're like, I didn't get this job, or I went through this whole hiring process and sometimes it has nothing to do with your skill set.

Sometimes it has to do with how are you going to fit in with the rest of my team because I need you to be able to work together.

Yes, there are skills, there are competencies that I am specifically looking for, but that is one of the bigger pieces of what, of who gets hired over someone else.

I recently was looking at two different candidates and they were really equally strong and one one of them didn't have a strong portfolio.

But you know what?

She sent me emails thanking me.

She followed up.

She got a lot of eagerness from her.

And so when I went to compare the two, because they looked really close, I was like, I'm going to take the one who just put just a teeny bit more effort into it.

And that's what I ended up going with.

I know it's brutal out there, but knowing learning theory and understanding the difference between learning theory and instructional design theory, that's a big one.

You should know the difference.

A lot of people can't answer that question, which is really surprising our industry.

And so having being able to like take a scenario, walk through it, I have I've hired people who said I don't know to a question.

I can teach that.

So being honest, if you don't know something is totally fine For me as a hiring manager and portfolios, honestly, they can help you, but they don't get you the job.

For me as a manager, I'm really looking at like how your resume looks and that's going to get you in my pile of interviews and looking to see how you perform on that, those interviews.

And then I'll probably take a look at your portfolio and see you.

It looks like you have those skill sets or but you're going to talk about that in your interview with me.

You know, it can be a lot of things, but the portfolio doesn't make or break for the job hunt.

And what can somebody do to stand out.

And guess that should be... okay.

I have hired somebody based on their portfolio before.

And this person, he was straight out of college.

He'd never had a job before.

He had an amazing portfolio.

I didn't believe he made it.

So I called him because I didn't think he made it, and he did! And he walked me through his process and he walked me through what he did with his portfolio.

And I hired him and I trained him on all the other stuff.

But so I have hired somebody based on their portfolio.

Guess I should be honest about that.

But that was because he had zero experience, right?

So he had an amazing portfolio, zero experience.

But most of the time I see a lot of people who have decent portfolios and some experience.

So you have a stack of resumes.

What makes some person someone stand out over someone else?

Good.

That's a good question.

Okay.

So things I'm looking at, when you have, and I'll take you've got some of your job titles.

But what I'm specifically looking at is do you have the tasks that an instructional designer does in that list of what you did for that job?

So are you managing projects and SMEs? Ae you communicating with those stakeholders?

Are you are you following the ADDIE process, doing analysis on different projects?

Are you developing?

Some people are not developers.

There's a lot of instructional designers that just do the first analysis and design and they hand it off right.

I work in a shop where we do everything from soup to nuts, so I want to see that you know how to do everything from soup to nuts.

And if you have that, then I'm usually in the yes pile.

I'm going to I'm going to at least give you a chance and give you an interview.

Cool. You mentioned that when you get to that interview, one of the things you do is scenario.

Can you give an example of the types of things you ask people?

Yeah.

So one of the questions I will ask is if you had to teach the color red, how would you do that?

So if your objective is describe the color red, how do you fulfill that?

What would you do?

What what learning theories would you bring in?

What would you do to teach that?

Wow, that one's got me really thinking! I was, like the color red.

Really?

That's interesting.

And then in a sense, it's a little bit of a trick question because anytime you have the word describe, you're really, really what that does in instructional design is you're telling me what it is and what it isn't.

I've used red, I've used the I've used an elephant or a moose.

We've used all sorts of different things depending upon the interview, but we're really looking at, can you tell me, can you describe what it is and can you describe what it isn't?

You create learning pieces around that, and a lot of times what people do, they'll go and say, Oh, I want to teach them the parts of a moose and I want to teach them what an elephant sounds like.

So they'll start to get that.

And I know that's where their brain is going.

And that's really the answer to the question.

The color red is particularly hard because there aren't parts to it.

But it's funny because the thing that went to my mind, are okay, so the RGB values and the hues and all of the things that make the color red.

Red like the prism.

Yeah, that would be a correct answer.

Yeah!

Thta's fascinating.

Or one of the other ones is I'll ask and I'll say, tell me about your your favorite learning theory.

Why do you use it a lot?

What do you use it for?

How do you use it?

So just getting to talk about how they're applying those instructional design pieces around that.

I also ask a question like, if you were going to design...

You got a project to design new hire benefits, like you came on to the company and you have to teach a new hire about their benefits.

What would you do?

So things I'm looking for are getting stakeholders involved, starting with analysis.

It's really an ADDIE question, right?

What are the points of.

And so just having them talk through that sort of scenario tells me that they understand the process and they understand how to... if they SAM or if they use something else, that's fine too.

I just want to see that they can apply the instructional design theory and follow up with that.

What are the biggest mistakes that people make during the interview process?

So having examples and using examples that don't fit with an adult learner.

So the big red flags I have, if they if you start talking about, Oh, I can have somebody do a crossword puzzle, what's the actual benefit of that besides busy work?

You can do some vocabulary, things like that.

Just to say I use it for vocabulary, but that's about it.

Yeah, but typically that's not going to be something that we're and if you use that as an example, that's okay.

But I've had a lot of people who, who don't seem with the examples that they use, they're not thinking about what an adult learner is.

And then I know that's not going to fit with my clients, right?

They're going to be like, why am I filling out a crossword puzzle?

Whereas they're trying to learn.

One of the things that we do at my company is we have we have apprenticeships, so people are coming in and it's like a college in a lot of ways.

It's not to say that we don't do vocabulary with

them, but that is... they're looking at pieces of machinery and how things fit together.

And so you've got to you've got to think about what's going to engage an adult learner and what makes sense for them, if that makes sense.

So that's usually a red flag.

I also again, I'm looking at different types of teamwork questions or part of the interview process is it's two sided, right?

We are interviewing you to see if you fit with us, but you should be interviewing us to see if we fit for you.

You think people forget that sometimes.

And part of that is I'll ask you a question like what's your favorite part of the process or what's your favorite things to do at work?

And if it's completely different than what we do, then we know we're not probably a fit. We want, I want you to be happy.

I want you to stay and work for me for a long time and be engaged.

And so I want to find somebody that's going to want to do what we do.

It makes total sense.

How big is your team and what is it comprised of?

What types of people, do you have instructional designers, but do you have other trades as well?

Yes.

So we have three instructional designers and then I have an IT trainer, so she does some of the design work.

She's like a SME in-house for IT projects and then she's also our trainer. Then I have an LMS administrator and she also helps manage and run the apprenticeship programs that we have.

I team manage partner with our other team, which is our trades and crafts facilitators.