What does your typical day look like? 

This is the number one question I get from people wanting to transition to instructional design. This month we are here to answer that question.

Kristi

Each instructional designer’s day most likely looks different. However, having an idea of what an instructional designer encounters most often can help shed light on what to expect.

Kristi

My company works under a “self-directed” policy. All employees are trusted with their positions and to get their work done. Therefore, my schedule is pretty much up to me. As long as I get in 40 hours a week, my boss is very flexible with how and when I get that time done. With that said, I do have team meetings to attend, SME discovery meetings, and one-on-ones with my boss. The discovery meetings with SMEs, while they do depend on the schedule of the SMEs, are scheduled by me so I can decide when I would like to hold those. Other than meetings like this, I schedule my weeks out on Monday mornings. I block my time for my projects depending on their due dates and how long I feel like I can work on them in one day. My attention span tends to be about 3-4 hours on one topic so I batch my days in 3-hour blocks if possible. My company also offers a lot of flexibility to work professional development into our work week so you will see that on my schedule every week as well.

Here is my typical week:

For more detail about my typical week, please watch the accompanying vlog post.

Veronica

At my company we have four people on the Learning and Development team.  Thankfully the company respects our team and are open to using us to assist them.  With most employees working remotely our team has been utilized quite a bit which is why my position was created.  We utilize Monday.com to track and manage our projects and we have to provide an update on our projects on Friday afternoons.  One of the unique things about the company I work for is that we coordinate our projects with the enterprise-wide PMO (Project Management Office).  This means my manager has to provide monthly updates to ensure that we are following proper project management guidelines. My team works a pretty standard schedule but you do have the flexibility to work different hours if needed.  Right now each of us is working on 3-4 projects concurrently which is considered a light schedule.  Our projects are expected to pick up within the next three months.  We also each have responsibility for managing our training inbox and troubleshooting issues that may arise in our LMS.

For more detail about my typical week, please watch the accompanying vlog post.