I enrolled in the Instructional Design master's degree at Western Governors University (WGU) starting in April 2025, specializing in the adult learning track. I hope to complete the degree by the end of my term, September 30 (wish me luck!).
Why I started this degree
I work at Western Governors University (WGU) as an evaluator in the Marketing Graduate department, and one of the employee benefits is a 75% discount on tuition for an already affordable degree plan. I wanted to take advantage of this amazing benefit to improve my skills and credentials for creating courses, training, and other educational content.
I hope the degree may also help allow me to create classes on the university level at some point, since operations classes and programs are few and far between in most business schools. There is usually only one class related to manufacturing supply chain in MBA programs, for example, but no classes related to digital business operations. There are many additional classes that would be helpful to include in college degrees in many university programs, and I'd like to help fix that gap.
Why can the degree be finished so quickly?
WGU's degree programs are competency-based, which means as soon as you prove competency through taking a test or submitting an assignment (assessment) such as a paper or presentation, you pass and can move on to the next course. (These types of papers and presentations are what I evaluate in my employee role at WGU in a different department.)
Since this competency-based program is not a set semester at a certain time of year like traditional colleges, you can start the degree at the beginning of any month. You pay for a six-month term, and you can move as fast through the program as your schedule allows. This format makes it possible to finish the degree in six months if you can devote the time to it. You can think of it like a subscription to access as many classes as you can finish in six months, and you can renew your subscription for additional six-month terms as needed. The tuition for most (non-medical) degrees is $4000 - $5000 per six-month term, and financial aid such as scholarships and payment plans is available.
The classes are asynchronous, based on text, videos, and additional online resources, so you don't have to wait for any weekly meetings to complete the required work. You can meet with your instructors if you want, but you may not need to, especially if you're familiar with the topic from working in the same type of job as the degree. You are assigned a mentor who stays with you throughout the program and checks in often to assist with enrolling in new classes and other needs.
If this sounds too good to be true, or you're questioning if this is really a degree, here are a few facts that could help.
- WGU has been an all-online school since 1997.
- It is accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU) as the only university to have received regional accreditation from four regional accrediting commissions at the same time.
- It is a nonprofit, which may help build trust in this program when so much online education now exists
The MBA program at WGU appears to have been introduced in 2021, and I wish it had existed when I was doing research for and completing my online MBA at Montclair, which took a lot more time, money, and stress from the group projects in all 22 classes. Because of the competency model, there are no group projects in many of the WGU degrees, which is another big benefit!
Details about the Instructional Design degree
The official name of the program I'm taking is "Education Technology and Instructional Design Master's" in the School of Education.
I would guess the name includes the word 'technology' to make it appear more relevant and helpful in SEO/searches from potential students, and helpful for the resumes of the graduates to signal to employers that the degree was not just theory. The technical part of instructional design, such as LMS (learning management system) development or loading the courses into software, is my least favorite part of the overall category of work (or for any category of work), whereas I enjoy the research, planning, goal creation, content creation, creating assessments, testing what works and making improvements, and similar topics. So I was glad to see a more comprehensive approach to the instructional design subject in the curriculum, not just technology-focused classes.
This degree includes 12 courses for the adult learning track:
- Learning Technology
- Assessment and Learning Analytics
- Learning Experience Design Foundations I
- Learning Experience Design Foundations II
- Designing E-Learning Experiences for Adults
- Quality and Impact of Adult E-Learning Solutions
- Learning Experience Design Lab
- Identifying Learner Needs and a Research Problem
- Developing an E-Learning Solution and Research Methodology
- Implementing and Evaluating E-Learning Solutions
Curriculum order
I thought it was interesting that technology and analytics were the first classes, and the foundations courses weren't the first classes. I believe this is because the school wanted students to have some quick wins by finishing these two shorter classes first, while students are getting used to this competency-based format and building their own schedule, habits, and study tactics. It was probably a decision prioritizing student motivation and retention over a more linear or logical order of classes that starts with foundations and builds from there. Also, this program is assuming we are coming into the program with some knowledge on the topic, so the foundational classes may be a review of existing knowledge for many of the students.
Current progress
I recently finished the design lab class in August, which included making a 1-2 hour course that was fully complete and functional in the Canvas LMS.
This class course should fit in with the next course/workshop I'll make next year about creating employee onboarding programs. For this small portion of it, I focused on a narrow audience and topic: remote managers of individual contributors who want to create a team onboarding program that encourages bonding and belonging in their team. So this small lesson is not company-wide onboarding information or role-based information, it is only the teamwork side of onboarding.
The final 3 classes are called the capstone, where students go through a shortened cycle of the design-based research process. I will recruit volunteer learners to participate in the research and testing as I'm developing a course. For this project, I hope to continue making pieces of the course I'm planning to launch next year about creating employee onboarding programs, so I can ultimately re-use some of this work. (Contact me if you're reading this in August or September 2025, match that audience described above, and would like to volunteer!)
Next steps for sharing information
I plan to make blogs on each class to help me retain and synthesize this information, as well as spread the word about some of the best practices for instructional design. You'll find links for those blogs above in the curriculum list when they are published.
Of course, I can't share everything from the courses, such as the information I created for most of the assessments, due to 'originality' concerns for the program (since new students would be able to find that information by searching online, and WGU's automated originality check would also be able to find that information when the assignments are being evaluated). I can still safely share topics, lessons, and takeaways that are not specific to the answers in my assessment papers.
Please reach out if you're considering this program, and I'm happy to answer questions.
After I finish this degree and my book, I also hope to enroll in some of the interesting certificates available at WGU next year.
Topics: Education, Instructional Design