Community Showcase: Heather Herstine

Luis Malbas  
All right, we are live. Hello, everybody. Thanks for joining us today with the training, learning and development community. Happy Wednesday to all of you out there. I'm very excited about today's guest, Dr. Heather Hurst Herstein. Oh, I didn't even ask how to pronounce your last name. Is that right? It's our Stein. Erskine, Dr. Heather her sign, who is who is who works for our friends over at Cinna craft, you know, a co worker with Kim Lindsey, who has been a longtime supporter of, of the training, learning and development community. And I'm so glad that that we're getting an opportunity to talk with you, Heather, because you have a really, really fascinating background. And before I get going, I want to pull up the chat because I'm sure that yes, there's Kim and Tiffany and Jen are here. So I wanted to Yeah, let's. So basically what this conversation is, is a member showcase. And we're going to kind of be exploring your background and the intent of this series, really is to find out just the diversity of of l&d individuals out there people that are part of the TL DC, people that participate in the things that that we do, and the work of, of a learning and development professional. And, and Heather is has some really, really interesting elements to your background that I want to cover. Now. I want to start out with you have a doctorate in philosophy, right? You know, how did you get from philosophy to instructional design? Because I think that we have maybe had one other guest where that was a path. But your journey to instructional design, can you can you talk about that a little bit and then talk about your current role at at center craft.

Heather Herstine  
Okay, so I started an online education when I was in 10th grade. So I've been an online student for many years. And obviously, through those different paths, high school, and then three different colleges and universities, for different colleges and universities.

I really saw the good, the bad and the ugly of online education, specifically how it was designed, how it was written. And it really became a passion of mine to not do the bad things, fix all of those bad things and take the good things that I saw and make them better embrace new technologies and things like that. So

when I was looking at extending my education into that terminal degree, I was looking between the EDD and the PhD. And the coursework in the PhD just seemed so much more interesting to me. So that's really why I went that route. But really, it's it's a very simple answer. Right?

Luis Malbas  
And you're interested in philosophy. What, how did that come about?

Heather Herstine  
I've always been a really deep thinker, and I always want to learn more. People say, Oh, you have a terminal degree. Yeah, I have a terminal degree, but I will never ever stop learning. You know, what my my PhD is in? It is in instructional management and leadership.

Luis Malbas  
Okay, for somebody I thought it wasn't in. I thought you had a doctorate in philosophy.

Heather Herstine  
It's a PhD in instructional management and leadership. Ah, I

Luis Malbas  
see. Okay. Okay. Excellent. All right. And so now currently at Sinha, craft, what do you do there?

Heather Herstine  
So I am an Instructional Designer at cinema craft. So I write courses, I storyboard courses. So I get the courses very early. I get the content very early in its development with us. And I take it study it, kind of analyze it, break it down into what the learner actually has to do. And then I start to storyboard it write scripts. I storyboard it write scripts for video and for animation, design and development. And then it will go off to our dev team or video production depending on what we decide to do with that course. And then I also offer some like project management assistance. So when it gets to the part that we're looking at, you know, did we meet all the requirements or we're doing our quality assurance checks. Our project managers often invite me back to just do one final look at it and make sure that it is kind of what I what I had envisioned and meets all the needs and objectives of the client.

Luis Malbas  
Wow, love it. And so I know that you have a background in education. You know, you were at the Rochester, Rochester Area School District. Now Now that you're working for Senator Kraft, more on the corporate side of things like, what is it that you really like about your current? The work that you do now?

Heather Herstine  
Um, that's a tough one. I love everything about my job. I think that probably one of the best things about going from education to the corporate environment is I have a lot more freedom to do to be a little bit more creative. I'm not as restricted in that kind of public school environment. As I was,

Luis Malbas  
yeah, yeah. Oh, no, that's fascinating. That's great. Um, so I mean, as an instructional designer, kind of relatively new in the field just the last few years, right.

Heather Herstine  
Yeah. I mean, I, I have done instructional design for several years, I started teaching online when I was, well, it was 2009, I believe I took my first online teaching class that was offered by the college that I was working at. And then I just kind of kept taking online teaching classes. And I, yeah, just kind of fell into instructional design, as of just something that I really liked to do. I enjoyed putting presentations together and designing my LMS and things like that. And really making sure my classes were user friendly. So when the pandemic hit, I mean, we were the, the university that I worked out, we were in class on Friday, and on Monday morning, we were not a lot of other schools had not done their spring break yet. So their spring break was the first week that we were starting out with for the pandemic, we had already had ours. So we were just right from ready, Friday afternoon to Monday morning. Then, my my students all commented specifically on like, reader professors, that my transition was very smooth, because even in an online class, or even in an on ground class, for me, all of my content was online. So I did take attendance, because I wanted to make sure that the students actually came to class, but they, they could have never come to class and still fast.

Luis Malbas  
Wow. Yeah. No, that's really interesting. I mean, you were, I don't often hear that, you know, that somebody just immediately says that they love online, you know, our virtual virtual training and teaching. So that is interesting to hear that. In fact, you know, when when we shut down, this is kind of just related to it. I had I had a broadcast going for, you know, TLD, a TLD. Cast. And the guests that day was, was actually your boss was Dan. And the entire time, all we talked about was the fact that everything was was just shut down. And it was just such a bizarre thing. And it's actually I went back to it to just, you know, see that at one point, just to tune into the conversation. It's definitely an interesting point in the history of some of the online events here is just a document that the fact that Dan and I were just talking about the shutdown and and how kind of creepy it was. But yeah, but you were doing you were doing exactly what you had been doing. And you just didn't stop there. So that's really, really fascinating. Excellent. And and so now you're in the corporate world, but I would I do want to talk about there was something you had mentioned earlier, when we were, you know, when we were in the green room, and it's this question, explain the importance of instructional technology and elearning in modern education and business training environments?

Heather Herstine  
Yeah, so I wrote a 203 page dissertation on this topic. So it's kind of hard to summarize it in just a couple minutes. But the for me, the pandemic was really a catalyst to bring instructional technologies and elearning to the mainstream. I believe that this would have happened eventually. But the pandemic really accelerated what was already in motion. So first, I would say that our world really heavily relies on technology, whether we like it or not, and it's going to become more prominent in the workforce in business training environments, as the workforce gets younger. So older people retire, Gen Z comes in. They are very used to working with technology, not only you know, with the pandemic, but just because they they have access to it, they're digital natives. So if we're going to reach this upcoming generation and a training paucity, we really need to consider how technology can assist. In doing that. I also think that is impractical and expensive to hold in person trainings, especially when a company is hiring frequently or launching products. an elearning kind of provides a way for learners to get that content really quickly, efficiently and cost effectively, whether they are in a physical location or working remotely or their salespeople on the road. So using technology, like an LMS can really help companies track that learning who has completed the training, and analyze data accordingly. So, you know, if you're seeing that there are some salespeople who are not completing the training, and their sales are lower than people who are completing the training, then that that really tells you something. And then, kind of in regards to education, I would say that technology based learning needs to happen really early. So I have a seven year old, he has an iPad, in school, a school, the school provides it for him. And these days, most kids can navigate technology better than adults, I always say if you can't figure it out, leave it to a seven year old because they they're better than we are. But we need to focus that interaction, really early on into actively like Steam activities and less passive activities, like watching videos or scrolling social media, those things are not going to be helpful in their future. The problem is, and this was kind of the whole premise of my dissertation, modern schools need an on staff instructional designer, because teachers often don't have the time, or the ability to teach themselves, or plan lessons that involve this theme, these team activities. So technology for the sake of using technology is not the answer. Just give it an iPad and say here play this game, that's not going to work. We need very focused team activities. And like I said, I think that all staff instructional designer, especially in the school setting can help with that. But when it comes to andragogy, studying how adults learn, it's very different than kids, because adults are very, are usually more intrinsically motivated and kids are. So how can we use that technology? You know, our our phones have a greater technology capacity than the tech that they had when they put a man on the moon? So we have that in our pockets? And how can we harness and embrace that technology? Going forward? I think that really is the the real question. When we look at the future of Instructional Systems Design.

Luis Malbas  
That's fascinating. So I do want to just kind of sort of follow up on the concept of having an instructional design designer at schools, like, you know, like in the K through 12. level, what got you really interested in studying that piece of it? I mean, did you have an instructional design? Or were you doing any instructional design work for a public school? And did you see that need? Or did you work with other instructional designers? I probably had, you know, at the K through 12 level?

Heather Herstine  
No, and that was the problem. It what really happened to me was I was stupid. And I was seeing that my online courses, even in like the, you know, early 2000s Were basically correspondence courses. And it just wasn't enough. And even going to a very dedicated online, school online, public high school. It didn't we didn't have that expertise in the school to provide that to the students. So that's that's kind of how I got to that and then I had a very brief stint after I got my my bachelor's degree in a title parents mortgage title therapists absolutely awful. I hated it. So I decided to go back to school and get my master's in education. And I am a certified southern drawl English teacher did that for a little while. kind of saw the writing on the wall in public school and decided to go to higher ed worked in higher ed for a while and really liked that we had an ID on staff that I've worked with a lot, but it was more like it felt more like Got a colleague kind of thing like bouncing ideas off because I did have that online background, and the desire to very purposefully instructionally design my course not just here's a whole bunch of content that I'm going to be teaching in class this semester. So I was kind of merging those two backgrounds. And I really thought that what was going to happen was I was going to become an instructional designer in a public school. But when I graduated, it just kind of didn't really happen. And public ed is just in a weird place right now. So the job at Senate craft kind of popped up on my LinkedIn, and I started talking to Tiffany, and it just seemed like such an exciting opportunity. So I'm really, really thankful that they kind of took a chance on me and gave me the opportunity. I love what I'm

Luis Malbas  
doing. That's great. No, that's great. Heather. I am curious, though, like, just because you've gone through this experience, you know, I like I have, I have a few friends that are, you know, like, very one of my best friends is a high school teacher and, and you know, another guy that I regularly play music with his high school teacher, they have no clue what instructional design is, they really don't. I mean, is there do you know, like, in your research, is there anything that pointed to like sort of the barriers of between like that, like, you know, instructional designers in, say, a public school? Like why? Why is it that you know, that these guys have no idea what instructional design even is.

Heather Herstine  
So the biggest barrier that I, that I heard over and over and over again, in my dissertation research was the cost. In most schools, the superintendent is the curriculum director, sometimes the assistant superintendent, sometimes they have a separate curriculum director, but this person doesn't always know how technology plays into this. So my husband is actually full disclosure or tech director at a local school. So I saw this person as a merger between the technology director and the curriculum director. So there would be like a liaison that knows about technology, but also knows about curriculum, and this person would kind of bring those two worlds together. So they would almost oversee the technology and the curriculum, how to bring it together. Because my husband is not a teacher, he knows nothing about curriculum and how it works, and how to write lesson plans. And then you have a curriculum director, who really does not know how to use technology, but we have all of these apps, you know, every parent out there, ask them, and they're like, Oh, my kid has 15 apps, and I have no idea what to do with all of these different apps. I believe that there's a lack of communication.

Luis Malbas  
Right, right. And I remember at the beginning of the pandemic, there was like this whole thing where, you know, we were talking about how instructional designers the importance of, of an instructional designers was really going to float to the top because this pandemic is happening. And we would all see what the value is of, you know, like having an instructional designer on staff is, but I didn't really see much come of that, unfortunately. So, yeah, thanks for all that your insight has been really, really interesting. I'm going to catch up on the comments here. Kim was saying, um, would you say that the technology is invisible to those younger workers? Like they don't even see it? It feels natural.

Heather Herstine  
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I see it with my son. I mean, he just kind of intuitively knows how to work things. I was I was doing a training on view boards at the school district that I was working at. And I really thought that I, like, had known everything. I probably wasn't, didn't know everything, but I knew enough to teach the teachers how to use it. And he comes in and I forget what it was that he did, but he did something and he was like, Oh, look, Mom, I can do this. And I didn't even do that. Right. So yeah, it really is invisible. It's very intuitive.

Luis Malbas  
Right, right. No, absolutely. I have a nine year old and you know, sometimes when my wife is having it issues, I'm like, can you go over there and help your mom just makes it.

Heather Herstine  
I mean, he, with my husband being a tech director and me being the, you know, technology instructional design thing. That's great.

Luis Malbas  
Awesome. Julia had written in quotes here. Technology for the sake of using technology is not the answer. And that was that's a great point. Yeah, there. Yes. And let's see. And Kim had followed up here with us I am fascinated because my local school system has had a technology ID on staff, specifically for the high school for over a decade, someone who figures out our tech and dance classes. And I'm surprised to hear that because I really, just in my experience and talking to a lot of teachers, I rarely run into anyone that has any idea about instructional design. And even when I tell them like yeah, I help I run a community of instructional designers who like their eyes kind of glaze over and they're like, what does that mean? No clue we're talking about right now. So yeah,

Heather Herstine  
school system that my son is in adopted iPads very early on. They had them for over a day. And the school that I was working at, as the instructional technologists they also adopted iPads several years ago. And my, my thinking is, if we just give a teacher an iPad, and say here, teach with this, it just becomes an expensive paperweight. I can't tell you how many times I've gone into teachers rooms, and their iPads are in the box in their desk, because they don't know how to use it, it really is very different. Even if you're you're used to using a map like a MacBook or an iMac, the iPad just feels different. And figuring out how to teach with that technology is is difficult. And I know this as a teacher, you don't want to look like a fool in front of your students. If you try something, and it doesn't work in front of your students. It is one of the most embarrassing things I've ever experienced.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, definitely. Definitely. All right, so let's move on. Oh, so I want to mention everybody, I sent a set of 10 questions that I was going to ask Heather, in this in our interview today. But, of course, we've only gotten to one so far, which is the one that we just have had that I had on the screen. And these are ones that that she is feeding me, these are the ones that I came up with. But she had another question that she wanted me to ask that she thought was really relevant to her background. And so I'm going to ask you that question. Now. Heather, could you describe an instance when your analysis of qualitative and quantitative data significantly influenced the creative learning solutions you suggested? And is that something just? Oh, go ahead and answer that question I have lots of.

Heather Herstine  
So right now, I'm working on an onboarding project for one of our clients. And Gen Z is really our target audience. So that like, you know, early 2000s, mid 2000s born babies. So they are now coming into the workforce. And in fact, about 75% of them are of working age, a rough estimate. So fortunately, for this project, we had the budget to do a needs analysis as part of our learning strategy, and then make a suggestion after that needs analysis. And that was really helpful. I'm really glad we were able to do that, because we learned a lot talking to the Gen Z. So we use semi structured interviews, to talk to our Gen Z audience, and also their supervisors. So our learning strategy suggestion took into account that these very young workers are digital natives. They're significantly influenced by this kind of entertainment, learning, merging education and entertainment. So our learning suggestion was to use kind of tick tock style videos and make reels that you would see like on Instagram or tick tock, yeah. And present those as the onboarding training. So they will get several very short. Rios videos, presenting their onboarding.

Luis Malbas  
Wow. So this is something that you built or helped build.

Heather Herstine  
Me and I this has really been a group effort. I mean, when in what we do at Cinna craft is not it is not a one one band band. We all work very closely together to make suggestions make sure that we are providing the best opportunity that we possibly can for the client.

Luis Malbas  
Interesting, and so did you have to do a lot of research? I mean, how familiar were you with the concept of rails to begin with with you know, Instagram rails and and the content on Tik Tok? Was that something that you had to really figure out first?

Heather Herstine  
I hate to admit that I'm very much an Instagram scroller. So I was really familiar with it all. already, and kind of being I'm considered an elder millennial, I guess. But I still am very well versed in technology and much more present on social media than I would like to admit. So fortunately, I was pretty well versed in, in making it look like a real. So I'm excited to see how our video and dev team take this and bring all of these ideas to life.

Luis Malbas  
Right. I was I wanted to I was gonna ask about the onboarding results, whether or not you had any. It's not done yet. How fascinating. That's a great idea. Um, and so you would obviously this onboarding series is something that is going to just be is meant for the smartphone? Specifically?

Heather Herstine  
Yes, yeah. We are building mobile first on this. Yes.

Luis Malbas  
That's great. Wow, that's really, really interesting. All right, well, now we're almost at at at our time limits. So I'm going to ask you some things that are just a little, not quite the, the comprehensive or the, the the types of questions that we had on our list, but stuff that is more specifically about you, what keeps you inspired in your job and the work that you do?

Heather Herstine  
Um, well, first and foremost, my my family, my son is very interested in learning things. And that makes a mom really happy. But really, what inspires me to do, what I do in my work, is, as I mentioned, when I was younger, I had a lot of really poor examples. As teachers and administrators, I had several teachers who doubted my abilities, I had a principal who told me I would never amount to anything. We never graduate high school. And I, I always say the best revenge is not only living but living well. And I believe that I've done that. And I've kind of made it my life's mission to prove them wrong. So do I need a PhD to do what I'm doing? No, but I graduated high school and

Luis Malbas  
awesome, nice. i And do you have any advice for teachers that are transitioning your background is a little different than, you know, than the typical, I guess, teacher moving into instructional design, especially because you started out with a love for online classes and programming, even you know, before it became the norm during the pandemic? Would you have any advice for teachers that are transitioning into into instructional design,

Heather Herstine  
don't give up. I applied to probably hundreds, literally hundreds of jobs. And I just needed to find the right fit. And before I got this job, I thought that I had found the right fit, and it didn't work out. And I'm really thankful that it didn't use your waiting time to improve your skills. So a lot of the time, and I think I had to prove myself early on that then I could do this job. So a lot of the times, people can't see how valuable the teaching experience would be for an instructional designer. Now, that was the hardest thing that I had to do when I was interviewing. So use your time of waiting to expand on those skills. I took the apple Learning Coach cohort. So I completed my apple Learning Coach certification that was really helpful with iPads, do the Google Teacher, do the apple teacher? Take classes on LinkedIn, a lot of them are free, do the Skills Test. Anytime you can prove that, quantitatively prove your skills quantitatively. That is really helpful if you're trying to

Luis Malbas  
make veterans. Nice, nice. And I do want to mention Laura had a great comment on here. Or maybe it Well, Laura had mentioned University falcate faculty are still resistant to what instructional designers do. They don't want to teach online. Therefore what it stands for should be avoided at all costs. This is still a very prevalent mindset. In many circles, especially the tenured faculty, adjuncts. adjuncts have it. It's interesting. It's great. So um, how about this last question, Heather, if you weren't an instructional designer, what would you be?

Heather Herstine  
I know that my co workers on the line know this. I was a Disney blogger for several years. And I absolutely loved working as a Disney blogger. I was also the social media manager so I I manage to Instagram Facebook posts. I did Instagram lives in Disney World. I have met with Imagineers. I've gotten walk on rides to Star Wars, I opened a hotel was there for the grand opening for a hotel, I got to walk the red carpet at Mickey minis runaway railway and opened that ride. So I wrote it before anybody else. It was one of the coolest jobs I've ever had. And

Luis Malbas  
I just want to say that out loud, you would be a Disney blogger. That's great. Awesome. So fascinating. Wow. I like that. It's such a great question. I like asking that one. Because it just gives, you know, adds more, more more levels to the individual that is being interviewed. And that one is that's such a fascinating response. I love it. It's the end. Let's see one more thing here. Laura hadn't been added in the conversation. So you need to think things through when you apply for university ID jobs. Also, the salaries tend to be lower, you get a different set of benefits, great for people who have older kids and need the university stipend. Yeah, totally agree. Totally agree. Hey, you know, one last question. Are there? How do you stay on top of your professional development? I know with your background, it's a little different. So I'm sort of interested about that. And you are definitely, you know, digital natives. So what do you do to stay on top your professional development?

Heather Herstine  
I like to do a lot of research. When When I tell people that I like to research that they just think that I'm crazy. But I will just go on Google and search things. I like to go on LinkedIn. And like I said, take those skills, quiz quizzes, and most of them I don't pass the first time or even second or third time, but it tells me what I don't know. And then I can kind of use that to figure out what I need to learn. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I like to write proposals for conferences and then get the feedback as to, you know, why they were accepted or why they weren't accepted. Talking to people in the field. I think I do a lot of informal professional development.

Luis Malbas  
Yeah, yeah. Nice. All right. What kind of what kind of topics? Have you submitted for conferences?

Heather Herstine  
Oh, ah, so I just did one about Gen Z. So I'm hoping that that will be accepted. I was in Orlando, so I'm probably will get to go to Disney while I'm there. I submitted one about waiting. So what do you do with your Wait, how do you work your week? Done how to do a needs analysis and how to use that needs analysis to to plan a learning strategy. Yeah, that's all I can think of off the top of my head, but all right. Oh, there was one about leadership. I didn't want about leadership as well.

Luis Malbas  
Great. Awesome. All right. Well, thanks, Heather. I, you know, I'm just gonna ask, Do you have a Disney blog?

Heather Herstine  
I don't know. I don't. I've worked for someone who owns Disney cloud. Shout out to World of Walt. Blah blog is incredible. I do have an Instagram handle. It's does many moms so DISMIN ie, mom. But I just don't post as much anymore because they don't get there as much. So a little bit harder to do that from Pennsylvania.

Luis Malbas  
Fun how fun okay, all right. Well, Heather, thank you so much for taking the time out today to to talk with us. I'm so glad we got to know you. Please everybody here I'm gonna post and is it okay if I posted your LinkedIn URL in in chat? There we go. Okay, so it's a cat. Connect with Heather. Fascinating background love talking to you. I'm so glad that that you were able to make some time for us. And with that, I'm gonna go ahead and close out the session tomorrow we have Jennifer Grimes that is going to be with us for another showcase. She has more of an art background. So that one is going to be definitely different. And so hopefully

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