Every day, I tend to fill at least some of my time with reading the latest in education news. I’m a big fan of newsletter subscriptions in particular, so everyday, my e-mail inbox tends to include some message with the latest headlines from Educause, Inside Higher Ed, the Chronicle, or EdSurge. 

So, seeing today’s headline from Inside Higher Ed felt like yet another reminder of what’s been on my mind for the past few weeks: “Career Advice: Write.” I found myself sort of floored, in fact; as part of a professional development and mentoring group that I am a part of, I had just asked someone else about their advice for career exploration and advancement in learning design. Her response? Write. Share your writing or your thoughts on something. Clearly, I’m getting some signs here that if I want to make myself visible as a professional in learning design and higher education, I’ve got to get my words out there.

No brainer, right? I’ve been writing about writing on this blog ad nauseam and yet it had somehow never clicked that this very writing could do something for me: form networks. That is, conceivably, what all good writing should do, so why had I struggled with the idea that my own writing could help me form my own professional network? Why had I not yet grasped that writing itself could have the velocity to make career connections, form collaboratives, and (I’m dreaming big here) shape how other professionals might understand the work they do in meaningful ways?

I think for the past few years, I had relegated the “blog” to an Internet trend of the past. In the early 2000s, blogs were a kind of novelty; the thrill of getting individual space on the Web led to a tremendous flurry of creative voices and ideas. Just search for “the golden age of blogging,” and you’ll find think piece after think piece on how the golden era of blogging has passed in fashion, in tech, in any industry you can think of. As social media became even more ubiquitous through the 2000s, the idea of one blog – one more piece of digital detritus – making its way through the Web and reaching someone struck me as sort of ludicrous. Why would I create one more space just to talk, talk, talk when they were already spaces that more people were flocking to – and more readily – than blogs?

I’m realizing now just how misguided that perspective was. Sure, this blog is never going to attract analytics that an article on, say, Slate or The Huffington Post might. But that’s not really the goal of a personal blog, is it? Anything that can speak to a community still counts as doing important communicative work.  I’ve not always had the most crystal clear audience for this work, mind you, but as a general rule, I know that the people who are reading this blog are 1.) other learning/higher ed professionals (who will probably find this post when I Tweet it out or share it on LinkedIn), 2.) my immediate family (shout out to my sister who lovingly told me she read this blog, but didn’t always understand all of it! That’s OK!), and 3.) curious friends on Facebook. So, given that I have a sense of who my immediate, primary audiences are, I write posts with those people in mind accordingly, especially and primarily with group #1 in mind. In that sense, my blog may be a single, small piece of the floating digital landscape, but it is, at least, very much my space.

I knew that if I wrote something to my primary audience, they might just be curious enough to click and read, but I had not really considered the ramifications thereafter. It had never struck me that my own writing about what I read – my own commentary, ideas, reactions – would actually be valuable in the larger learning design community.  Given all of the teaching I’ve ever done on the importance of understanding an audience and their needs, it really strikes me now that I had never considered the impact of a blog post on that very target audience. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I’ve long realized that all of those blog posts, articles, and tweets I had been perusing in my own free time were written by other learning designers, educational specialists, and instructional designers. Sure, I had also realized that the more I encountered particular names writing those very articles, the more I recognized, trusted, and valued their perspectives on my writing.

But somehow, I had never put two and two together: that writing is the way that we network in a learning design community. Sharing our reactions to the latest developments, news stories, or learning trends are the ways that we all get to think together, collaborate, and build new systems. Of course.

I would like to think that perhaps a call for non-tenured (or non-tenure-track) teaching and learning professionals to write is a way to inscribe power in our positions. Working in higher education as a non-faculty member has reminded me just how hierarchical the university system. I have felt, on many occasions, resentful of the felt sense that my perspective has not seemed to matter much institutionally or that my suggestions may not be considered on equal footing with faculty, in spite of the fact that I interface with students regularly and do the direct work that impacts student experiences in our classrooms. But perhaps just being our own advocates, offering our own takes as our own sort of publicity, is one way we can actually try and make change in our communities. It often feels fruitless to propose change in a system so rigidly adherent to hierarchical power structures and yet, giving ourselves voice to share our concerns as educational specialists, to spread the knowledge we know and have, we can at least start a buzz about the things that matter to us. And hopefully enough buzz precipitates the kinds of action we’d like to see in the world.

So I’ll take this career advice from my inbox today: write. Share. Build this network. There are a lot of smart people out there who are doing the same things, and I’m feeling ready to dive into those conversations with them and create powerful noise!