Professional Support
Aug. 15th, 2005 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebToday I started looking for a professional organization to join in support of my new career plan in online course development. It looks like "instructional design" is a good phrase to know. You can get graduate degrees in this. They involve lots of classes in instructional design with the occasional taste of psychology or learning theory. And some extra research for the Ph.D.s, of course. I could earn another masters almost for free in only six years at my university (taking one course per long semester), but that would still require a substantial time commitment.
I once told myself I'm not going to spend the time and money earning another degree unless I know I'm going to use it this time. Specifically, my employer has to pay me to earn the degree or has to promise to give me a big raise afterwards.
Weirdly, my current employer will pay me to earn this degree, even though it would be for another job, as one of the perks of working for a degree-granting institution, if I could get accepted into the program. The deadline is in February.
I also found the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. The branch for my state is having a conference in my town in November, and there is at least one presentation from someone working at UT, though not from the group I want to join.
I was hoping for something with regular local meetings, but the closest I could find was the UT Web Publishers Forum, of which I am already a member. They meet only twice a year (including tomorrow, actually). I'm finally getting to where I have a clue about what they're talking about sometimes.
Apparently there's also a relevant interest group in the Society for Technical Communications, which I always got the impression was mostly full of people writing computer software documentation.
One thing I learned during today's perusal is that I am a big fat ignoramus in this field. For example, it took me a fair amount of time to discover the meaning of "SME." This term is just so common that many don't see the need to define it in their pages, yet I'd never heard of it. That doesn't mean I'm unfamiliar with the concept; it's just that I'd always referred to it as "content expert." "SME" stands for "subject matter expert." Think how long it could take me to learn the concepts I'm not already familiar with.
I have to make sure to not let this intimidate me and just go ahead and keep pedaling.
I once told myself I'm not going to spend the time and money earning another degree unless I know I'm going to use it this time. Specifically, my employer has to pay me to earn the degree or has to promise to give me a big raise afterwards.
Weirdly, my current employer will pay me to earn this degree, even though it would be for another job, as one of the perks of working for a degree-granting institution, if I could get accepted into the program. The deadline is in February.
I also found the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. The branch for my state is having a conference in my town in November, and there is at least one presentation from someone working at UT, though not from the group I want to join.
I was hoping for something with regular local meetings, but the closest I could find was the UT Web Publishers Forum, of which I am already a member. They meet only twice a year (including tomorrow, actually). I'm finally getting to where I have a clue about what they're talking about sometimes.
Apparently there's also a relevant interest group in the Society for Technical Communications, which I always got the impression was mostly full of people writing computer software documentation.
One thing I learned during today's perusal is that I am a big fat ignoramus in this field. For example, it took me a fair amount of time to discover the meaning of "SME." This term is just so common that many don't see the need to define it in their pages, yet I'd never heard of it. That doesn't mean I'm unfamiliar with the concept; it's just that I'd always referred to it as "content expert." "SME" stands for "subject matter expert." Think how long it could take me to learn the concepts I'm not already familiar with.
I have to make sure to not let this intimidate me and just go ahead and keep pedaling.