Sometimes an outside perspective can help you see your own potential. In this workshop, find out what else you can do through GRAFT, a personal branding framework for IDs. In higher education, we don’t talk about branding, but GRAFT teaches how to find your IDentity and grow your career.

What does it mean to be an instructional designer today? As more employers recognize the value of instructional designers, definitions of “instructional design” have expanded to cover a wide range of skills and activities. As a field, instructional design has not yet reached the point of specialization, but the reality is that there are too many topics that fall under the broad umbrella of instructional design for everyone to be experts in everything. A quick glance over recent ID job descriptions reveals a need for expertise in almost anything: learning theories, project management, user experience research, accessibility and remediation, graphic design, web design, script coding, video editing, and communication (just to name a few). At the same time, Joshua Kim predicts that universities will need to not only hire more instructional designers, but that, “forward-thinking universities may find that they need to start offering star non-faculty educators the same recognition and incentives that have long been necessary to recruit and retain star tenure-line faculty.” How would an instructional designer even be able to become identified as a “star” within the field or even at a specific institution? As job descriptions keep evolving to meet individual institutional needs, we IDs need to find ways to better communicate our unique areas of expertise to all of the stakeholders involved–including ourselves. Executive coach Harrison Monarth observes that, “in high-performing organizations, at certain levels, everyone is exceptional. To clearly differentiate your value and what you bring to the table, you need to do more than have a good reputation. You need to have an outstanding personal brand.” Understanding your value and your values is one way to approach building a mission-driven personal brand. This workshop helps IDs develop a professional identity through a branding framework, which can help us articulate our strengths and interests through a value-oriented lens. Because most of us are not used to marketing ourselves, the workshop introduces the five-stage GRAFT model, a framework to help identify personal and career values that form the backbone of our identities. GRAFT was created by IDs for IDs. The framework asks you to: Generate a list of personal and professional values Review your experiences and accomplishments Align your values with professional development opportunities Frame your past, present, and future activities for use in a branding statement Take the next steps to begin building your brand We will provide real examples, guidance, and activities for working through each stage of the model. Learning activities include reflective writing, small group discussion and critique, draft and craft time, and peer workshopping. The speakers will provide materials for reflection, writing, note-taking, and draft sharing. One-on-one support from the presenters will also be available throughout the session. By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to: * reflect on current and past job responsibilities and professional activities to identify ways their values intersect with their personal and professional identities * apply branding concepts to create a brand identity and branding statements that align with their values * create a professional development plan that aligns with their brand identity Attendees will also leave the workshop with a how-to guide for drafting their own branding statement and ways to leverage professional development activities and career networking platforms (e.g. LinkedIn) to create brand awareness. To make the best use of the time provided, the workshop will open with a 10-minute reflection activity to help IDs practice describing their current and previous employment, including non-instructional designer roles, professional development activities such as certifications, credentials, conferences, and publications, institutional and organizational service on committees or other programs and initiatives, and other non-paid or non-instructional design activities that could also align with their core values, such as volunteer work or teaching. The presenters will provide reflection questions and a worksheet (digital and print) to take notes in. Participants will be able to discuss their reflections in small groups during this first 10-minute opening section. The middle 20 minutes of the session will be spent in a brainstorming-style writing workshop. The speakers will present each part of the GRAFT model, allowing participants a few minutes to draft their initial responses for each element during the 15-minute participatory presentation. Then, using those notes, participants will spend 5 minutes developing their own branding statements. Those who want to share will have time to read their first drafts for live feedback. The workshop’s final 10 minutes will wrap up with the provided how-to guide and additional documents for attendees to further develop their identities beyond the branding statement and create a professional development plan.