The Difference Between IDs and Senior IDs
If you get promoted to a Senior Instructional Designer position, what changes? More responsibility, obviously, but what does that look like in practice? There are a couple key differences between IDs and Senior IDs.
Senior IDs do more project management. They may need to coordinate every one involved, including stakeholders, project sponsors, SMEs, junior IDs, trainers, etc. Whether they use SAM, ADDIE, Agile, or some combination, they have an intentional approach to managing the training project.
Senior IDs build more relationships and consult with the business. They regularly communicate to anticipate approaching training demands, and are proactive in their approach. Senior IDs work directly with SMEs and perform front end analysis to determine the best approach.
Seniors IDs take more responsibility for project success. They determine the project scope and get the proposal approved, and it’s their reputation on the line to meet those stated objectives within budget.
Senior IDs visualize data and report evaluation findings. At the end of a project, senior instructional designers need to prove the project’s success with cold hard numbers. Data analytics and visual storytelling are important skills for individuals at that senior level.
Senior IDs lead more junior employees. They may have subcontractors or junior instructional designers doing development work while they focus on broader learning design. Being able to communicate a vision for a project to individual contributors and provide feedback are in the purview of senior IDs.
So that’s how Senior IDs earn that senior pay, in a nutshell! Can you think of any differences I missed?
