It is in the best interests of instructional designers to maintain as wide a range of decision-making motions as possible. This is not only for quality of work-life, but it’s also for professional development and the extension of capabilities. One of the critical aspects to this range of motions involves the decision of what to offer faculty, staff, and administrators for free—beyond the limited gratis hours offered to all faculty working on an online course.

Political Necessities

Of course, one works in a political environment, and political imperatives will guide some types of free. These are determined by the administrators on campus. They will horse-trade with each other, and if a certain project requires free work, then that’s totally fine. Optimally, the work will involve plenty of high-value learning and other benefits. Certainly, all people have to selectively identify what is / is not important in a workspace. Leaders’ priorities do have to be our own.

Even so there will still be decisions that come to the fore and that are critical to us that are not done at the administrative level. Often, these decisions have to be floated up for checking, but other times, one has to have the flexibility of decision-making to make the choice on-ground of how to proceed. We want to care for people’s needs but have limited time and energy. We can even spill work hours into our own evenings and weekends, and while those are justified for some worthwhile projects, they are not justified for everything. After all, one cannot let a few free projects destabilize one’s other professional commitments.

It is in our interests to have some leeway for offering free hours and resources but also to have some restrictions. After all, there are a lot of professions of friendship and requests for help (and assumptions of lots of free work), but that can turn sour pretty quickly. Projects can balloon when responsibilities are foisted off to others. Having defined limits can help instructional designers control for the favors that are requested, especially those that are beyond the realm of the possible. Having limits helps control for client expectations.

What Can You Offer Us?

I’ve had maybe a dozen ways that the question is asked: What can you do for me? There are dozens of queries for co-authorship and writing. There are lots of offers of free projects to enable me to cut-my-teeth on instructional design work. There are all sorts of unfunded mandates that departments try to bring outsiders in on.

The best response is to be candid and to offer what limited support that one can. It helps to offer work samples that the clients may aim for. And it helps to offer free work in the limited dollops—to the most effective ways possible.