Walden Instructional Design Students

I’ve gotten a bunch of comments from students in the Masters of Instructional Design program at Walden in the last week—enough that I suspect that there’s an assignment that requires commenting on a blog. I’m not complaining; I’m enjoying the discussions and hope they continue.

However, I’d like to ask a favor of those of you in that program. Could you please comment here and let me know if my guess is correct? I’ve developed similar kinds of assignments in the courses I’ve created, and I’m curious how yours works.

Thanks!

10 thoughts on “Walden Instructional Design Students

  1. Hi Christy,

    I’ve been reading your blog for the past few weeks. I’ve been a web content manager on corporate websites for 10+ years, but am now considering a career change. ID seems like a good fit for my interests and background, except that I don’t have formal training or experience in adult learning or teaching.

    I’m considering Walden’s Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Instructional Design, and wondered what your opinion was of the school’s reputation. The majority of comments written by Walden graduates have been extremely positive, but I guess I’m still looking for an impartial opinion.

    Thanks so much. 🙂

    1. Hi Linda,

      I haven’t looked at that certificate program, so I can’t give you an opinion on that. I will advise you to make sure whatever program you do will help you create a portfolio so you can demonstrate what you learned.

      A few years ago, I worked with Mark Wagner on a project while he was finishing up his doctorate at Walden. Obviously, the doctorate isn’t the same as the certificate, but I believe it’s the same department and the same people, probably in the same organizational culture. Mark does recommend Walden, but you should read his blog posts on the topic for the full nuance of his position. A number of these posts are just on his dissertation, which you can skip, but look through the whole history of archived posts in this category for his “adventure” completing his program.
      http://edtechlife.com/?cat=65

      In particular, I recommend Disappointed with Walden University, Walden University Exploits Students for Money and An Answer to the Tough Question on Walden University. Read the comments on those posts too.

      Good luck!

  2. Hi,

    As you’ve already been informed, we are Walden students working on assignments. I confer with all that my classmates has ssaid. In addition, I want to thank you as well. Being brand new to this, it was soooo much information to look through, and some wasnt that easy to follow – I found yours to be inviting and informative. You’ve done an excellent job and many are benefitting. I as well, received it through Google Alert… Thank you.

  3. Hi Christie,

    Yes, this was an assignment for us.

    I actually reviewed many other blogs on instructional design before choosing yours for my assignment. Yours was the best in my view! Very easy to read and understand and chock full of good information. I’m sure others at WU agree.

    Thank you for your excellent blog.

  4. Hi Christy,

    You are absolutely correct!

    At least you know that your site ranks high in the Google keyword search for instructional design. 🙂

    For the past three weeks, we have been given blog assignments to complete to facilitate participation in professional online communities devoted to instructional design resources.

    We have had to create our own blog site – most of us are using blogspot – post entries referring readers to other blog links and subscribe to them using an RSS aggregate – most of us use Google Reader -to keep abreadst of new posts.

    In fact, I found this post while reviewing my subscriptions in GoogleReader!

    Thanks so much for all of the wonderful information you have posted and keep blogging since many of us are truly benefiting from your efforts!

    1. Thanks! I do get a fair amount of search engine traffic here, so it doesn’t surprise me that students like you would find my blog. My series on instructional design careers still gets more traffic than anything else, even though it’s now two years old.

      This sounds very much like some of the activities I’ve done in my courses, except my audience is K-12 teachers. We also usually use WordPress or Edublogs rather than Blogspot, although any of those tools really work pretty well. One of my courses includes student-led discussions on blogs, which have worked really well. If you’re interested, I’ve written more about the learning communities in that course on our course development team blog.

      I’m glad to hear that Walden is encouraging all of you to go out and participate in these online discussions. After all, once you graduate, the online communities will likely be an important factor in how you continue to learn.

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