Instructional Design Master's or Graduate Certificate Programs

Hi everyone!

As I read all the responses below, I am amazed as to how many universities are out there that offer a graduate degree program for Instructional Design. My path into this field was unusual, but I am so excited to be here and am looking forward to what I can do in the future with this degree! 

I am currently a graduate student in the Organizational Performance and Workplace Learning (OPWL) program at Boise State University and I actually found out about this program through the U.S. Coast Guard. I was an officer in the Coast Guard for six years and sought an opportunity to be sponsored to attend a master's program in Human Performance Technology and the Coast Guard's recommended school was Boise State. Even though I wasn't selected to obtain my degree through sponsorship, I determined that it was still a path that I wanted to take, so I separated from service and have been enrolled in school ever since. Boise State's Organizational Performance and Workplace Learning offers a Master's degree and graduate certificates in Workplace Instructional Design, Workplace E-Learning Design and Development, and Workplace Performance Improvement. 

There are several amazing things about this program, and one that makes this program so accessible to its students is that it is completely online. It has actually been offering courses online since 1989, which is really amazing to think about! Another thing that this program does, which has helped me greatly, is how it has used the combination of theory and project based courses to help students really learn and the apply the material. Then to add on top of that, when we have a project based course, we get to work with real clients and go through the process, just like we would when we become instructional designers. So not only are we learning the material, but we are also practicing and becoming instructional designers before we enter the workforce. 

One last thing that I would like to mention which has helped me professionally is my current involvement in two labs within the OPWL department. I am a current member of the Marginalized and Cross Culture Research & Design Learning tech group (MarCC) and the Process Management Lab (PML). Both labs focus on two different aspects of the human performance field, but I am gaining knowledge, insight and wisdom from two amazing professors and other students and graduates that are involved! I think that anyone looking to getting a graduate degree or certificate should definitely look and consider the OPWL program at Boise State!