NWeLearn 2024

Curious about freelancing in instructional design? In this session, I'll share my journey and practical advice on being a freelancer. We’ll explore the factors to consider in deciding if freelancing aligns with your working style, essential skills for instructional designers, finding opportunities, and adapting to diverse work environments. I’ll also talk about important considerations before starting a project, how to manage projects, and tips for working effectively with clients and subject matter experts. Whether you're contemplating a move to freelancing or looking to broaden your instructional design career, this session will provide valuable insights and practical tips.

Session Slides

The key points covered in my presentation include:

• Understanding your responsibilities as an LMS administrator, such as identifying the eLearning decision-makers, clients (teachers and students), and institutional policies impacting eLearning.
• Determining if you are responsible for user support and training, and how to approach these tasks effectively.
• Encouraging your supervisor to provide a clear vision for your success, as they may lack technical or LMS experience.
• Realizing that you don't need to know everything about your LMS; instead, learn how to locate solutions and curate resources.
• Translating imprecise language used by clients into technically precise LMS terms.
• Investing time upfront on tasks like setting up competencies, user accounts, and quiz formatting, as it can yield significant rewards later.
• Understanding LMS user roles and permissions, and how to fine-tune them through testing and careful adjustment.

In today's educational landscape, digital badges and micro-credentials are vital for acknowledging continuous learning and professional skills. This session will delve into Lane Community College's strategic implementation of a badge and micro-credential system, providing attendees with a clear blueprint of the steps taken from inception to execution. Participants will gain a deep understanding of the system's structure, the methodologies employed, and the essential elements that have contributed to its integration.

Centers for teaching and learning in higher education institutions have varied approaches to assessing the impact of their work (Haras et al., 2027; POD Network, n.d.), including professional development. Using a program evaluation or assessment framework is one way to measure efficacy of a center for teaching and learnings’ resources. At OHSU’s Teaching and Learning Center (TLC), we needed a flexible and adaptable instrument to assess a wide variety of resources that differ in mode, objectives, and duration.
Thus, we wanted to see if the Evidence of Learning and Impact Framework (Tucker et al., 2022) could be applied to a professional unit that provides resources for educator excellence. In this session we will share the history of professional development offerings provided by the OHSU TLC, what we learned from how they had been assessed and how that led to the need for a more holistic framework. We hope by sharing our story, other institutions may consider adopting and adapting OHSU’s evidence of learning and impact framework to evaluate their own professional development offerings.

This session explores how Generative AI can aid adult learners in achieving their professional goals. Introducing learners to simple yet effective AI prompts can increase their learning agency. Over the past year, students have reported that using generative AI has boosted their confidence in applying for jobs.