Q: You were recently recognized for your 10 years of work at U-M. How would you describe your work as an Instructional Designer for the Web and Application Development team within LSA Technology Services?
A: An instructional designer is someone who creates teaching materials. A few examples of the different types of instructional designers are individuals who create text books, semester lesson plans, and online materials. My main focus is to create online, self-directed learning for our Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) web editors. AEM is the content management system for our LSA unit websites.
Q: What does a typical day look like in your position?
A: How can I make the existing course material more useful to the users without over complicating it? I dedicate a lot of my time to making decisions on how to balance including enough content to create an effective online training course without making it overwhelming. We want something that doesn’t take up too much time but gives web editors the knowledge they need to get started on editing their unit’s website content. Material that doesn’t make it into the self-directed training becomes part of the additional resources section. The online training is housed in Canvas and is a mixture of written instructions, screenshots, and videos I’ve created to provide visuals and context on how to edit and layout web pages in AEM. On a typical day, I am writing step-by-step instructions and then pruning them back to be as succinct as possible, and I am reviewing existing instructions to ensure they stay consistent with periodic AEM updates. Then there are my additional duties including managing the help desk for our team and putting together videos that support the instructional content on Canvas but also stand on their own.
Q: What’s your favorite part of your job?
A: Positive feedback after individuals have completed training on their own time and how helpful the information was in the way that it was presented. A significant portion of LSA web editors did not start with a background in technology so the course materials must be accessible to a wide range of experiences and skill levels. I enjoy figuring out how to structure the Canvas course so that the information and instructions make sense to learners without being overly complicated.
Q: Many people don’t know that you spent some time living in Vietnam, what was that like?
A: I lived in Vietnam for six years, and now that feels like no time at all, but back then it seemed like forever. I got my certification to teach English from Certificate in English Language Teaching for Adults (CELTA). I spent a month living at a friend’s apartment in New York. I never wanted to be a teacher, but it was an opportunity to live abroad. I found that I was good at it, and I really enjoyed it. It was awesome when students would make progress and really benefit from the lessons and materials that I created.
Q: What is one thing you miss most about living in Vietnam?
A: A lot of people would say this about a place they lived, but I really mean it: the food! But it’s not just the food; it's the experience of going outside your door and being able to choose from different sidewalk stands that are steps away. Everyone is making food. You can go out at 11 p.m. and get a big bowl of pho. I also loved the hot, humid weather. I love the heat.
Q: When you moved back to the United States, did you want to go into teaching?
A: No, I was so burned out on teaching! After doing some work with the NGO Fauna & Flora International I decided to go to grad school for environmental studies. I came back to the States with the idea that I’d find a better job in the environmental field after getting a Master’s degree. I graduated from what is now U-M’s School for Environment and Sustainability with a degree in Environmental Policy. After graduating, I spent three years looking for a job, any job, and was hired at what was then LSA Web Services at U-M. I started out as a web content coordinator but took over an open position for an instructional designer in 2017. When I started in this position, I knew I wanted to move all the training material online so it was easily accessible to web editors, and I envisioned eventually transforming it into a self-directed e-learning experience. To that end, I completed a Master’s Certificate program in E-Learning Instructional Design in 2020 through University of California Irvine. It exposed me to different platforms for creating online instructional materials and presented many approaches to e-learning, but the most enriching class in the program was how to evaluate the effectiveness of your online training with its audience.
Q: You already had some of the training online before the pandemic. How did the pandemic and remote work change your position?
A: Before the quarantine, I gave people the option to do the training online if they couldn’t make it to an in-person session. When we were still meeting in person, I was really pushing for an on-campus training space. The pandemic changed that because once the self-directed training was up and running I realized a training space wasn’t really needed. Most people are perfectly happy to complete training on their own time, in an asynchronous way. One silver lining of the pandemic is that it forced everyone to come up with different ways of doing things and some new, better practices have emerged as a result.
Q: Lastly, what’s something that most people would be surprised to learn about you?
A: I make and frame my own wall art. I’m a photographer, and I also enjoy making collages. My interests change a lot but I enjoy photographing ugly, blocky architecture like the School of Dentistry building or Fleming. I also speak Russian. While living in Vietnam, I was dating a Ukrainian guy and taught myself to speak Russian by listening to Russian music and using a dictionary. Sometimes I’ll get sentimental and go down a YouTube rabbit hole of Soviet era cartoons and rock bands.
Krokodil Gena sings “Happy Birthday”
Kino (Viktor Tsoi) sings “A Star Called the Sun”
