Thank you so much for chatting with me today! Avi, can you please share a bit about yourself.

I was a student in the DMDL program from 2017 to 2019. I graduated in May 2019. After that, my professional experience has been I worked with organization named AltaClaro, as a learning designer. And then I worked with NYU School of Nursing as an instructional designer from October 2019 to December 2019. And then, after that, I worked as a learning designer with the University of Michigan School of Public Health from January 2020, till you know, I should say, last month of this year, and then I will be starting my new job at Carnegie Mellon University, as learning engineer, very soon, probably next week.

Wow, congratulation! So, why learning designer/ learning engineer?

Well, from the beginning of the DMDL program, I was really interested in doing the work, which was at the intersection of data analysis, and the instructional design, since starting only I was working towards gaining the skills in learning analytics and education, data science, along with my instructional design skills coming from a teaching background.

I was a chemistry teacher back in India for three and a half years. I was teaching high school kids for college entrance exams. Since then, I was very much into driving my teaching decisions or course planning decision based on data. So that's where I started my journey with the DMDL program. Then I started to gain my skills in learning analytics, and as well as everybody has to take the classes of instructional design and stuff like that.

So why learning design? I mean that's what brought me here to United States to learn to learn about how people learn and design those efficient learning experiences. And the job at University of Michigan lies at the intersection of where I got the opportunity to apply my skills and even even learn more skills in the in the learning analytics space, as well as most of the work was focused on designing new courses for for their online programs.

I was working with School of Public Health School of Public Health, University of Michigan has a program, which they offer fully online, which was a great opportunity. When it comes to building up our total program online program from ground up, like I was involved, starting from the curriculum planning to designing the courses as well. So that's the motivation: that I will be involved in planning and deciding and designing the courses from the ground up. And also I will get the opportunity to work on the data collected through the platform and try my design decisions based on the data analysis. That's the journey and those are my motivations to work in this space.

And this will now moving on to a role which is learning engineer, which as an organization, Carnegie Mellon takes takes so much of focus on, on on driving that design decision based on data analysis, they have a great lab here, which is which is focused on education, data science, and that's how they, they approach their, the their course design processes here. So you know, that's been my motivation to work in these roles and move along this path.

Thank you for sharing about your day to day work.

There are a lot of career paths to pursue after this master degree. In your opinion, what does it take to become a learning designer?

The most basic things which takes to become a learning designer is basically I would say, care about the learners on everything; everything in your mind should be focused towards learners. As a student in the program, sometimes we tend to focus more on, you know, technical skills. They are necessary, you can't work without them, the technical skills and tools and things like that, but the core ethos of becoming a good learning designer lies at being empathetic towards the learners, everything should be learner focused, whatever you're thinking about should be learner centered.

That's I would say the short answer. The long answer can be you know, knowing about what type of work you want to do, whether you want to be working as a learning designer in the K 12 space, or whether you want to be working as a learning designer in the higher education, the big you require different skill set, I mean, not a lot of different skill set, but, but there are tools which differ, the catering space, you there is a focus on you should know about different technologies.

When when it comes to designing those learning experiences, but when you when you work in, in higher education, all your focus, as a learning designer should be on on knowing about, you know, the ways where where you can know more about your learners, your your research skills about learners, what you can know about them, and how you how you reach out to them to give them a perfect learning experience. Basically, it how it differs is that in higher education, space, where I have worked throughout my career till now, is that in higher education, a team consists of instructional designers or flash learning designers, and then you have technologists, and then you have other media designers and stuff like that.

So your role as a learning designer should all be focused on on you know, being being being up to date about what kind of what kind of methods people are using to create these, these efficient learning experiences, technology wise, when you have a technology person with you, who is a learning technologist or instructional technologist, what you call a team, you work in tandem with that person to decide what technology best suits for, for what you want to achieve with a particular course or say, particular objectives of the course.

So that's how it differs between higher education and, and gateway, okay, well, where you as you are kind of working like when you say a learning designer, you kind of go into the space of working as a product manager kind of space. If that's what you want to go for. That's like, so you should be knowing about how UX design works and other courses which you take in the program, you should be more focused on that. But otherwise, as I mentioned, the basic thing, which you need to have is your design should be learned on learner centered. That's what it takes to be I would say a good learning designer in the industry.

I'm curious how much you learning frameworks you actually use in your job because you know, from the DMDL program, you probably learn a lot about theories and frameworks. So how much of that is applying to the real world?

You use them all the time. That's the short answer. I always have those learning theories and frameworks as as notes in front of me on the desk when when I'm working, so you always go back and refer to them, and you have to make those decisions, your design decisions. So I would say you use them a lot in your job.

And so here's one thing, if you're working as a learning designer, in a corporate world, you I haven't worked there but there are rules which are focused on just developing the modules for for, for employee trainings and stuff like that. And then there are certain rules set for that. And then you have to follow those rules. You use there those frameworks as well, but not as much as you use in other parts, whether you're working as a learning designer in K-12 or higher education. But you use them, always, you should have them handy. You can't remember all of them. But depending on the situation context, you go back and refer to what's the rationale behind the decision I'm making, whether it is supported by theory or not, whether it is supported by research or not. So? Yeah, you use them quite a lot.

I'm curious, what do you think about the job opportunities for a learning designer right now, you know, as soon as the pandemic is almost over?

It's great! In short, the great job prospects, you, we all have seen that there has been a shift towards these online learning all over the world. And everybody now has has realized the need of the skill set, we as learning designers, and the students in the program are getting that, that are that are required to create these efficient learning experiences online. I mean, you can create an online learning experience just throughout your content in a technology and you're done. But, but that's not how it works, if you have to have to run a great online program, you require people who have those skills, who who take these design decisions based on on which are bad, which is backed by their data analysis or which is backed by theory. So, the job prospects are great.

All universities now are moving towards having some of the programs being offered fully online first, before that, they will need a team, they will need people who will have the skills to create these experiences. So there are great job prospects, I would say it's just that you have to be focused on what you want to work on, whether you want to work in K-12 space or higher education space. In K-12 space schools are also now realizing that we need to be using technology and in an efficient manner, not just use the technology for the sake of using technology. So, that's where our skill set comes in place, and then we are able to provide these expertise on designing these these programs or courses, whatever we wanted to. So yeah, very good prospects, once this is over, people have realized there is need for learning designers or learning engineers.

As an alumni, now that you look back to the years that you were still at the program, what is the one thing that you wish you should have known or you should have done?

I would say, you know, these kind of experiences, like we're talking today. And I don't know if you're familiar with the mentorship program, which is going on? Yes. So I that is the reason why I signed up to be as a mentor to somebody like, you know, if I can help somebody to maneuver, any kind of stuck, whether it's, you know, whether it's any questions about what they're doing in the program, or set their career path or what they're looking for. That's what I wish was at my time as well.

If I could talk to alumni, where they're working, what their experiences are, how did they learn the job, and what skills they had to acquire, like, all these questions what you were asking me today. If I had the opportunity to ask this to somebody, that would have been great. I did that when I was in the program, contacting people on LinkedIn reaching out to alumni, but having that formal structure of the mentorship program, which is here in the program now in the DMDL, I think students will benefit from that lot.

But having said that, my experience in the program was great. I still get connected with the people any opportunity I get, any webinar or talk to students like you who reach out to me, I'm happy. I'm very happy talking to you today or any opportunity I get to connect with people from the community we have there at the DMDL or G4L people. I really enjoy that.

Do you have any other tips or advice you want to share with current and prospects students?

I would just say, keep having fun and you'll get a job.I mean, there will be stressful times, you will face a lot of rejections from a lot of places. But don't be bogged down. by those rejections, you will land where you really want to be. Finally, you will land in a job which you really love. Just don't let those rejections bog you down and keep looking for new opportunities, or I should say, keep exploring. You never know where like where you get a great opportunity and you start working with great people. Just keep exploring and keep having fun.

Thank you so much Avi for your time!