Contexts Are Vital for Effective Solutions
Ekaterina Tretiakova (M.S. IDD&E ’21) is a recent IDD&E alumna from Russia. In this interview, she shares with us what brought her in the IDD&E program, what she thought of it, and what her immediate future looks like.
What brought you into instructional design?
I have been working as an English instructor in an I.T. company for seven years. During these years, my colleagues and I have been requested to, what I’ll now call, close gaps in knowledge, skills, and attitudes of our employees. One day we were to develop a pronunciation training, another day a public speech training, then boost the employees’ confidence in answering phone calls. These are just a few examples. It was challenging for us to start the development from scratch, and our usual approach was to go to the market and check what was available. We would try to adopt or alter something—in the end, I‘d say, we only partially closed, or rather covered up, the gap. The need to learn to produce a better, more effective product made me go and look where and how I can close my own gap. That is when I embarked on studies for a master’s in Instructional Design.
What did you like most about the IDD&E program?
Apart from mastering the fundamental principles, theories, and models regarding learning and instructional design, it was incredibly curious and interesting to dive into the “melting pot” of cultures. I encountered a variety of cases from different countries. The cases we discussed were from K–12, higher education, and corporate environments. Doing the front-end-analysis of each case with other students, I understood how cultural, political, and religious contexts are vital for the solution to be implemented and be workable. I met students from all over the world and learnt about education in their countries, mindsets, and outside-the-box approaches to the organization of learning.
If you could improve your experience in the IDD&E program, what would you suggest?
I sometimes questioned myself, “Why are we reinventing the wheel?” What I mean is, some projects that we developed were real projects from the places where students worked, but at times the teams had to “invent the project” and, as a result, launched projects that were already available on the market like design of instructions for teachers on how to use certain functions of Microsoft Teams. In my opinion, it could be invaluable to work on authentic cases and requests coming from schools/ departments/ units of Syracuse University or businesses. I was lucky to take part in one of the hackathons in instructional design, where teams were requested to come up with a prototype of a solution for real cases introduced by logistics, medical, pharmaceutical, engineering, and other companies. It was eye-opening for me because I discovered that all the cases were to do with motivation and attitude problems. I believe students could be more engaged and feel more responsible when they tackle real client’s cases and afterwards present solutions to the client. No doubt, it is much more stressful than to present in front of the class, but this is what we are to do after graduation.
How does your immediate future look like now that you graduated?
I definitely take a more active part in designing trainings in the company and share the experience I gained at Syracuse University. Apart from my regular work, I am intent on doing research in human force development, which might shed some light on how to better organize the conditions for learning in companies practicing hybrid working models.
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