Do you think that a Masters in ISLT is a Scam?

Passing along an interesting article about the “Biggest Scam in Higher Education.” Had no idea that student loans for a bachelor’s degree are limited and master’s degree unlimited. The State of Florida paid for my bachelor’s and is now paying for my masters. My thirty year old still has an outstanding loan from his bachelor’s degree and is now studying for his GRE to work on an MSW. I do wonder if my friends with Phds are still paying off their student loans? When they find out that I am back in school, they assume it is for my Phd, or just flat-out wonder why in the world I am doing this. I’ve always been a late bloomer, late to the table, late to have that “ah ha moment.”

When I think about the ISLT program, our final portfolio is akin to a final portfolio for an MFA, there is a lot of creativity and innovation involved. Think about our produsage project that I truly believe mine is boring, but we have to start somewhere, right? I feel for the folks with MFAs and high student debt who are just entering their field, looking for meaningful work, looking for a way to pay down their student debt. This is not a problem that we, meaning ISLT majors, will have when we finish this program. I read a blog last week that laid out the plethora of job prospects for instructional designers, the salaries, and opportunities for flexibility in what we specialize in. Unsure if it was an EME 6414 blog or another blog I’m on, and wish I had bookmarked it so that I could reference it here. I didn’t learn anything new in the blog (probably why I didn’t bookmark it), but it reinforced why I was doing this crazy thing and working on my masters. This directs me back to a blog I wrote about how important our roles are in the communities that we will work in. This ISLT degree program is grounded in science (of the factual kind, thus an MS) that allows us to design learning experiences grounded in that science to effect change.

Often asked what an instructional designer does, I tell them that they are enablers, they enable others to change. Then I get all geeky on them with “who use a systematic approach . . .”

Thinking about it though, fine arts does change our view and interpretation of the world, and how we respond to it. So we need these degrees as well. Here's one of my favorites . . . a website that you can make your own Jackson Pollack!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How this class has already changed my world.

Unlike a lot of you, I have experienced living in a world without the internet, the PC era, Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 2.5. and Web 3.0; looking forward to 4.0. Social networking occurred in person, a social networking site was the employee lounge, cafeteria, or the bar/restaurant around the corner, for some, the golf course. Your community was your neighborhood, your classmates, your workmates, your family. Opening a business in 1985, I knew that technology would save me time and money, provide better customer service, and allow me to expand. I embraced email to communicate with my clients, Lotus for accounting, WordPerfect for newsletters. If I remember correctly, I had a website within a couple of years. It had drop down menus that you could get information about the business, but you had to pick up a phone to have a conversation; Yelp did not exist. Networking before the internet involved phone calls, snail mail, and in person conversations. You had 3 choices. There are so many resource
Read more

Great start, bump in the road, boulder in the road, pebble in the rearview mirror

I was (still am) so excited to be back in the learning environment, then a week in I cracked a tooth in half, to the root, eating almonds (one of my favorite nuts), and it felt like someone had shot me in the face (or I believe that's what it feels like) or that I got kicked by a horse in the cheek (long story there). I don't do meds, but immediately found myself on antibiotics and opioids until they could schedule me in for an extraction (with complications). The antibiotics immediately changed how I felt, but the opioids did the real number on my psychic. Now I was a Dead Head back in the days, but have been clean for over 40 years, downright borderline vegan; I'm so careful what I put in my body.  How many of you can identify with this scenario?  (Well, maybe not the Dead Head part . . .)   Amid all this, my youngest and his partner visited to "help out" and I had to immediately return to working in the office, in person, full time beginning this past Monda
Read more

Yes, Multitasking is Changing Our Brains

Image
  Most of us are in this class to learn how to change brains through learning. In the process we are changing our brains, yes? What pulled me in was the by-line in 10 Things You Can Do to Literally Change Your Brain . I’ve never been a big fan of being stuck with something so this intrigued me. The usual suspects appeared – exercise, sleep, meditate, read, listen to music, and shinrin-yoku can make positive changes to your brain. I’m on the fence about drinking coffee, but sugar and multitasking didn’t come as a surprise. The tenth influence is “believing you can change your brain,” which had a TedTalk (my favorite), and a picture of a buton, receptor, and synapses (also one of my favorite images from a physiology of behavior class in undergrad). The speaker talked about grading students not as failures, but as “not yet” and embracing the potential for growth and improvement. This resonated with my blog Go Forth and Bury Dead Ideas about Learning, as one of the suggested ideas to bury
Read more