On the verge of completing my undergraduate degree, after 13 short years of on-again/off-again schooling, a man I admire at work talked about how great it would be it get some experienced curriculum designers in the department.
Let me back up. I started in corporate training 13 years ago and for the last nine years I have worked for Investools, Inc. We are an investment education company that was acquired by TD Ameritrade in 2009 to be their education division. We offer free and paid, live and online, personal and group instruction. I teach in all of our various channels, though I'm not up in front of a live class as much as I'd like.
After the TD buyout we had to completely revamp our curriculum so that it reflected the brand properly. We had a couple guys who developed curriculum but they weren't really educated in how it is to be done. They were subject matter experts who could write decently but didn't know anything about instructional technology and learning sciences.
Enter Dr. Mott. Jon, as I think he likes to be called, was ripped from academia and thrust into Corporate America. Jon did great working with the tools he had as we rewrote our education, though he had to hire a former student and contract with former colleagues.
When he suggested I pursue a graduate degree I didn't hesitate and instantly started to investigate various schools. I decided to stay in-state since our tuition reimbursement would be dropping from 10k to 5,250 in 2012 and approached him for advice on weather I should go to BYU or USU. Coming from the Y he was obviously partial to their program but informed me that they prefer their grad students don't work. That seems like a contradiction of commandments from The Church but I happily decided to go with USU. He was particularly excited about the possibility of an online degree with them since we are a distance education company.
So that is how a corporate trainer/Certified Financial Planner/Chartered Market Technician ends up in a program with a bunch of instructional designers. I'm loving every minute of it so far and I guarantee it won't take me 13 years to finish this degree.
