Teaching Instructional Design

As a lifelong learner, my first and foremost goal in teaching is to ignite and encourage my students' curiosity to learn. I want my students to master learning efficiently and effectively and continue their education long after graduating from my course.

By establishing a good rapport with my students from the very beginning, I enhance our mutual trust and emphasize our partnership in achieving success. I measure my success as a teacher by the success of my students inside my classroom and, more importantly, outside of it.

I seek to be creative in designing learning experiences, focusing on recognizing how students learn and how better teach them. Storytelling is one of my favorite teaching tools since it helps me explain complex topics by enlisting analogy with common knowledge and experiences. Since all students learn differently, I commit to adjusting my teaching style to the specific needs of my students, incorporating an individual approach to each of them.

​I look closely for what motivates my students intrinsically so that I can keep them engaged throughout my course. I encourage their active participation and taking responsibility for their learning, according to the Constructivists learning theory, which I strongly support. I embrace my role as a guide whose main responsibility is to lead my students skillfully from what they already know to what they have yet to discover.

The XXI century skills, such as communication, collaboration, creative thinking, problem-solving, and digital literacy, to name a few, are crucial for success in the modern world. This fact makes me a strong advocate of active learning. I realize that it takes more effort to design such learning experiences, but I am more than willing to invest in an effective and up-to-date learning environment for my students to become successful. I think that backward design should not be called "backward" because it is the only right way to design learning experiences with a focus on students.

I value and welcome my students' feedback because I want to teach them better. I seek to foster the growth mindset in myself first so that I can be a living example for my students on how to give constructive feedback and find great value in receiving it. My next step would be to learn how to fail fast and forward, viewing my missteps as a huge room for growth. I am certain that my students will appreciate learning some healthy ways to fail and persevere.

Although teaching can be a rather solitary experience, I believe that establishing productive and mutually supportive peer groups can bring teaching mastery to another level. As an Instructional Designer, I want to provide my Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) with a safe place to be vulnerable about their struggles and to try out new learning techniques that they may have been too cautious to try on their own. I will strive to reassure my SMEs that my goal is their success and reinforce that our ultimate goal is the success of our students.