Professional Development

Penn State and Educause Debut Mentoring Program for Instructional Designers

• By Rhea Kelly
• 04/17/17

A new professional development program from Penn State University and Educause is pairing up instructional designers for mentoring and collaboration. The ID2ID Peer Mentoring program is open to all professionals involved with instructional design in higher education, and will explore topics such as digital literacy, assessment, open education and more.

Applications for the program are being accepted until May 15, after which participants will be "paired with a peer, mentee or mentor with whom they'll collaborate [beginning in mid-June] for the following six to eight months. The pairs will identify goals and attend professional development events together before they complete the program with reflection pieces on what they learned," according to a press release.

"The program is designed with a loose structure, allowing participants the flexibility to create a personalized experience while benefiting from a cohort of professionals," said Angela Dick, instructional designer in Teaching and Learning with Technology at Penn State, in a statement. "As participants move through the program, they will be able to focus on current key issues higher education institutions are currently trying to solve." The hope is for participants to be able to contribute to a community of practice as well as expand innovation and support the strategic goals of their institutions, Dick said.

ID2ID was created in response to the changing role of instructional designers in higher education and their growing influence on teaching and learning, according to Kyle Bowen, director of Penn State's Education Technology Services. "Many aspects of education, from blended learning to analytics, involve instructional designers as key agents that help make academic transformation happen," Bowen said. "In addition to supporting course design, instructional designers now serve as creative partners with faculty developing new ways to engage students."

"Teaching and learning in higher education is experiencing an unprecedented amount of change," commented Veronica Diaz, director of online programs and associate director for the Educause Learning Initiative, "and instructional design is no exception making ongoing professional development, mentoring and the cultivation of new competencies more important than ever."

For more information, visit the ID2ID site.