Should instructional designers be considered faculty?

I came across this opinion piece recently on Inside Higher Education. In my Google search, the link for the article was “Why instructional designers should be counted as educators rather than staff.” I clicked on it, because this is something I’ve thought about often as well. Anyone who has spent much time doing instructional design work (at least at the college level) probably has at some point considered themselves an educator. How could you not? Depending on your role, you may be designing a course before it goes live, moving a course from in-person to online format, integrating technology into a live course, consulting with faculty about new techniques, etc. As a former teacher, I’ve often thought of my work as an instructional designer as the lesson planning aspect of classroom teaching. And, as someone who always enjoyed lesson planning quite a bit, instructional design turns out to be a pretty good fit for me.

As I read the article, I did begin to wonder ‘why does it matter how instructional designers are classified?’ The author of the article notes that faculty are often seen by universities as resources to cultivate while staff are typically viewed as “costs to minimize.” He does give a nod to the countless adjunct faculty who probably feel that they are being anything but cultivated. Regardless, one must ask, if an instructional designer were seen as a member of the faculty, would that really make their jobs any different. My hunch is that the answer would be “no.” After all, who’s to say that an instructional designer designated as faculty wouldn’t be of the sort that gets neglected, a la adjunct faculty? The author does state later in the article that he could see a new type of distinction, one in which, rather than faculty, the term for those working directly with the education of students could be educator. Now, there’s all kinds of issues with this as well, but I could at least get behind the idea of acknowledging that an instructional designer is an educator and should be thought of as one.

It seems to me that this is more a question of perception. As instructional designers, we don’t want to be thought of as staff. This is not to take away from the great work that staff members at universities do, but, because instructional designers’ work is so close to the classroom (sometimes it’s even in the classroom), it is hard for us not to conceive of ourselves as impacting students’ learning. I mean, let’s be honest, to do this job well you need to have a decent understanding of learning sciences. There aren’t many staff positions that would require that.

In my instructional design work, I think of myself as an educator. Really, I haven’t stopped considering myself an educator since leaving the classroom. Now, there’s a difference between thinking of myself as an educator and being formally titled an educator, but I’m not sure having that official designation would change my role and duties all that much. The article I’ve been referring to was written in 2017, and like with many things, COVID will greatly impact the role of instructional designers going forward. While it’s far too soon to know how the pandemic will affect instructional designers as educators, I’d presume that we are only going to be valued more and more as a result. If that also means we get termed educators, well, I’m fine with that!