My Desire

My desire to become an instructional designer is rooted in a passion for helping people who learn differently overcome challenges and succeed. That desire comes from both my personal experience as a learner and my professional experience supporting employees who must learn and apply large amounts of complex information.

For much of my life, I wondered why it was so difficult for me to pay attention in class, why I learned more effectively when studying alone, and why people sometimes assumed I was not listening. I was diagnosed with ADHD in my twenties, which helped me better understand some of the challenges I had experienced as a learner. It also made me think about people who struggle without ever understanding why certain learning environments may be more challenging for them.

That experience is one reason I chose to study instructional design. I want to create learning experiences that recognize that learners bring different strengths, experiences, needs, and challenges to the learning environment. My goal is not to make learning effortless, but to remove unnecessary barriers that may prevent capable learners from succeeding.

My professional experience strengthened that desire.

For the past ten years, I have worked in auto claims for two major insurance companies. Claims professionals must learn an enormous amount of information, including policies, procedures, coverage concepts, legal requirements, documentation standards, technology systems, and negotiation practices. In many training environments, learners spend weeks or months receiving information before they have meaningful opportunities to apply it to the work they will actually perform.

By the time learners begin handling live claims, information presented early in training may already be difficult to recall. They are then expected to connect months of instruction to real situations while managing workloads, making decisions, communicating with customers, and meeting performance expectations. That transition can contribute to stress, frustration, and a loss of confidence.

Observing this process caused me to question whether delivering more information is always the answer. I became interested in how training could provide learners with earlier opportunities to practice, receive feedback, revisit information, and gradually build confidence before being expected to perform independently.

I want to design learning that does more than expose employees to information. I want to design learning experiences that prepare them to use it.

My Experience

My interest in instructional design is also influenced by my own experience with corporate training.

Even after receiving treatment for ADHD, I sometimes struggled with the way large amounts of information were presented during insurance training. Initially, I viewed that difficulty as a personal limitation that I simply needed to overcome. Conversations with coworkers eventually helped me realize I wasn’t the only person struggling to grasp and retain the volume of material.

That realization changed my perspective. Instead of asking, “Why am I having difficulty learning this?” I began asking another question: Could this information be presented differently?

After several years in the insurance industry and experience in multiple claims departments, I had an opportunity to assist with training newly hired remote employees. It became one of the most rewarding experiences of my professional career.

My knowledge of claims was useful, but so were my memories of being the learner who did not always grasp information the first time it was presented. Those experiences encouraged me to incorporate additional ways for learners to engage with information rather than relying on a single method of instruction. Learners also periodically received surveys that allowed them to provide feedback about their experiences and suggest improvements.

That experience helped me recognize how important empathy can be in learning design.

Empathy does not mean lowering expectations or removing every challenge. It means recognizing that difficulty learning something does not automatically indicate a lack of intelligence, effort, or motivation. Sometimes the barrier lies in the way information is organized, presented, practiced, or supported.

I have a genuine interest in helping people learn difficult or even mundane information that is essential to their success. I am naturally curious about why problems occur, and I enjoy finding solutions that require looking beyond the obvious answer. My work in claims has also taught me to analyze information, identify gaps, ask questions, and make decisions when the solution is not immediately apparent.

As I have learned more about instructional design, I have begun to understand how these qualities connect to the profession. Instructional designers do more than create courses or attractive learning materials. They must understand learners, identify performance problems, determine what people need to know or do, and select appropriate strategies to help them achieve those outcomes.

That type of problem-solving is one reason instructional design appeals to me.

My Growth

My long-term goal is to help develop training that enables employees entering complex auto injury claims roles to feel confident in their ability to perform their jobs when formal training ends.

I am particularly interested in reducing the distance between learning and application. Rather than expecting employees to retain months of information before they begin using it, I want to explore approaches that give learners opportunities to practice realistic tasks, make decisions, receive feedback, and revisit information as they develop their skills.

If improved training can help employees become more confident and capable in a complex claims environment, similar approaches may also be useful in other areas of claims. Better preparation can reduce frustration, strengthen performance, and contribute to employee retention. Those outcomes can also benefit the organization through increased productivity and reduced costs associated with turnover and retraining.

My interest in instructional design therefore extends beyond creating training materials. I am interested in the relationship between learning, performance, and the systems employees work in.

That is also why I have explored process improvement alongside instructional design. Not every performance problem is caused by inadequate training. An employee may understand what to do but still struggle because procedures are inefficient, resources are difficult to locate, technology creates barriers, expectations are unclear, or opportunities for practice are limited. I want to develop the ability to identify the actual cause of a performance problem before deciding that additional training is the solution.

A workplace situation involving two colleagues helped me think more deeply about this distinction.

“Mary,” an experienced manager, had been promoted after successfully managing employees in less complex roles. Her new position required technical knowledge she had not fully developed. One of her employees, “Jack,” had performed the work successfully for more than six years and had greater technical expertise in the role.

Mary was reluctant to seek assistance from Jack or her peers because she did not want others to recognize the gaps in her knowledge. Jack, meanwhile, wanted to advance professionally and needed a leader who could support his development. Over time, Mary’s performance challenges began affecting Jack’s results as well.

At first, the situation seemed like a straightforward training problem. Mary lacked knowledge, so more training seemed like the logical solution. However, the more I considered the situation, the more I realized the problem was more complicated.

If Mary did not know how to perform certain tasks, instruction could help. If she knew where to find assistance but avoided asking because of pride, fear, or concern about appearing unqualified, another traditional training course might accomplish very little. A searchable resource, private simulation, job aid, or other form of just-in-time performance support might better address her needs. More importantly, we can’t determine the right solution without first understanding the cause of the performance gap.

This example represents another reason I want to study instructional design: I want to learn how to analyze problems before choosing solutions.

Technology is another important part of that growth.

Growing up watching The Terminator franchise, I saw artificial intelligence as firmly rooted in science fiction. As we approach 2029, hopefully without Skynet, technology has become inseparable from how people work and learn. Universities offer complete degree programs online, organizations train geographically dispersed employees through digital platforms, and tools such as simulations, learning management systems, video, collaborative technologies, and artificial intelligence continue to expand what instructional designers can create.

To remain relevant as an instructional designer, I need to become comfortable using technology. More importantly, I want to learn how to determine when a technology supports the learning objective and when it simply adds complexity. Technology should serve the learning experience rather than become the learning experience.

My understanding of adult learning is also developing. Earlier in my journey, I focused mainly on presenting the same information in different ways because adults learn differently. I now recognize that learner differences are more complex than assigning individuals to fixed learning styles. Adults enter learning environments with different levels of prior knowledge, professional experience, motivation, confidence, goals, and familiarity with the task. Understanding those differences can help instructional designers make more thoughtful decisions about practice, support, feedback, and access to information.

When I first considered becoming an instructional designer, my motivation was relatively simple: I wanted to help people who struggled to learn the way I sometimes had. My experience in claims training expanded that goal. I now want to understand how thoughtfully designed learning can improve confidence, performance, and the overall employee experience.

I know that instructional design cannot eliminate every challenge a learner will encounter, nor should learning always be easy. Meaningful learning often requires effort. What I hope to learn is how to distinguish between challenges that support growth and barriers that simply make learning unnecessarily difficult.

If I can design learning experiences that help someone move from feeling overwhelmed by information to feeling confident in their ability to understand and apply it, I will have accomplished the reason I chose to study instructional design in the first place.