Recently, we moved to a project management software to log our hours. This process, while a little irritating, does have its value.

Techno Maintenance

The way that they categorize the way we spend our time as IDs has shown me that "down time" is helpful now and again for upgrading our technologies and the software programs on our computers.

The way it's done is usually starting some downloading / updating/ patching / changeover process and letting it work itself through on background while we're focused on other things. There are always additional security measures to take.

Plenty in the Research Category

A lot of our work involves learning new technologies and new functionalities within fairly complex software programs. We're constantly reading new research and methods of designing instruction. We're looking at games; we're looking at simulations; we're examining immersive spaces.

We're getting our feet wet with the new projects and special focuses of the respective instructors that we're working with, in terms of their various projects and grant applications. We're updating our knowledge of eportfolios. We're getting a tourist's view of various subject matters.

Check, check, check. Quite a few hours get logged here, and for the cool challenges, this is the only way to be.

It's all ID

An early surprise was how little fell into the instructional design category. Too often, time is spent just with clients, or in presentations, or in research, or in fact-finding, and so on. Or content creation. ID as its own category just sort of exists out there and apparently doesn't require more than half a day a week. That's concerning to me as I came a long way to do ID...but another way to view this is that ID is in all that I do...from the small things to the larger things. The strategy is constant, and it emerges in action, in the trenches.