Expand your impact in education with a career as an Instructional Designer.

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Learn how Assistant Director of Instructional Design and Touro Graduate School of Technology instructor Nicolette Valenti transitioned from teaching students to teaching the teachers, building a rewarding career with a wide-reaching impact along the way.

Nicolette Valenti always dreamed of being a teacher, but that dream became a reality in a way she never expected. Initially on a path to becoming an elementary school teacher, she’s now the Touro University Assistant Director of Instructional Design, teaching teachers and making an impact that extends far beyond just one classroom.

While she started out pursuing an undergraduate degree in early childhood education and speech communications, an experience during Nicolette’s junior year opened her eyes and changed her path. She was working in a fifth-grade classroom where teachers were struggling as they tried to prepare students for an important math assessment. Day after day, students reviewed course material and solved problems at the board, but after the exam, the average score was just 26%.

“Students missed problems that I had watched them successfully solve during our preparation,” Nicolette recalls. “The teachers were incredibly frustrated, and they asked me to figure out what went wrong.” She soon discovered that while the students knew how to do the math, they couldn’t read well enough to understand the problems. “They were reading at such a lower level – Dr. Seuss books in fifth grade,” she remembers.

“That’s when I realized I wanted to be outside the classroom and have an impact beyond the class I was in.” Nicolette added a minor in business administration to her degree and began teaching at preschool, working her way up to director and eventually running the entire building. “One of the most exciting aspects was teaching the teachers how to incorporate technology, and it came naturally to me.”

Nicolette realized that this was how she could have an impact on multiple classrooms, and she went on to pursue her Master of Education in Educational/Instructional Technology. In grad school, she also worked in sales at an ed tech company – which provided valuable experience collaborating with stakeholders that she uses in her role at Touro today. “As an ID (Instructional Designer), you have to be effective in your communication to ensure faculty feel respected as the subject matter experts in their courses,” she explains. “It requires a strong sense of self and the ability to approach others with grace and humility.”

After graduation, Nicolette joined the company’s curriculum team, creating training sessions for the company’s proprietary subscription-based training platform. The courses she created qualified as Continuing Teacher & Leader Education (CTLE) hours required in New York, so once again, she was helping to educate teachers and give them the tools to do their best work.

Eventually, she found her way to Touro University, where Nicolette currently serves as the Assistant Director of Instructional Design at Touro University. She leads a team of five instructional designers who are responsible for all Touro’s undergraduate asynchronous courses, while helping professors build templates, upload syllabi, and make tweaks to existing courses. The team also assists Touro’s graduate schools as needed.

One of the biggest challenges her team faces is a lack of knowledge about instructional designers and the role they play. “People don’t really understand that ID is there to support the faculty and help them realize the opportunities for how to incorporate tech. There’s a misconception that we’re trying to tell them what to do, but we’re not looking to take control of their course. We just want to share our expertise to enhance it.”

Using that expertise, Nicolette and her team are making the kind of expansive impact that drew her to instructional design in the first place. As part of Touro’s recent “Push to 100,” her team helped to optimize Touro’s catalog of online classes, ensuring they meet a newly developed set of internal standards. Working directly with faculty to supplement existing blueprinted home pages with blueprinted syllabi, resources, tutorials, and orientations, the team was able to achieve scores of “meets” or “exceeds” expectations for every single course. “Some went from 70% to 100%!” she enthuses.

Along with her role as Assistant Director of Instructional Design, Nicolette also teaches a course called “Adult Learning Strategies and Theories” for the Touro University Graduate School of Technology. It’s a class she developed herself after noticing a gap in skills while trying to hire an instructional designer for her team.

“Candidates were missing the ability to keep our attention and engage us. They couldn’t connect to us as adults,” she recalls. Since adults have different goals, motivations, and learning style than younger students, adult learning experience is a crucial part of succeeding as an instructional designer. “There are a lot of programs where, after graduation, you don’t have adult learning experience. I found that missing link and added it to Touro’s ITP program.”

Touro University’s Graduate School of Technology offers two distinctive STEM certified master’s degrees. The MS in Instructional Technology (ITP) prepares graduates to become qualified Corporate Trainers. The MS in Educational Technology (ETP) prepares graduates to be New York State certified Educational Technology Specialists. Both are available for in-person or online learning and provide a comprehensive knowledge of Instructional Technology and Instructional Design via nine required courses. Students also supplement their learning with two electives – like the course Nicolette teaches.

“Adult Learning Strategies and Theories” is one of the ways Touro GST’s ITP master’s program is distinctive, giving students specific knowledge about how to approach and engage learners, and it’s garnering positive feedback. “Students have said that it not only helps them with their teaching capabilities and confidence, but it also helps them learn better themselves,” Nicolette says. “They realize that their needs and study styles have changed since they were teens, and then they can adapt them to adulthood.”

Another aspect that sets apart the Masters in Instructional Technology program at Touro GST is the faculty and the guidance that they give to students. “At Touro, they provide a great deal of support and insight,” Nicolette stresses. “They also do a fantastic job of bringing faculty from different walks of life and with different experiences. It’s a nice way to model different careers paths for students.”

While those career paths include working as a trainer in a corporate environment and creating courses for educational institutions, there are also plenty of other opportunities for someone with a master’s degree in ITP. Nicolette specifically points out the opportunities to create online courses like the ones users often find on retail websites or even on YouTube. “People are becoming more autonomous in the quest for how to do things,” she says. “Whether it’s home improvement or some other kind of self-learning, instructional designers build those courses, too.”

Both instructional designers and corporate trainers are expected to be in demand, with as many as 35,000 jobs projected to be added each year through 2032. Instructional designers can expect to earn a median salary around $66,000 annually, while the median for corporate trainers is $63,000 per year, but salaries for both can reach six figures depending upon the role.

If you love teaching and are eager to make a broad impact with your career, Touro GST’s NYSED-approved master’s degree in educational technology can help. “Schools and companies both need instructional designers – whether it’s to create curricula, training for products, how to docs, videos, or any other kind of educational material,” Nicolette stresses. “Once you understand the goal and what the audience needs to know, you can design the training.”

To put yourself on a path where the possibilities are virtually limitless and you can help to teach the teachers – or anyone else, contact Touro GST to learn more about our Instructional Technology master’s program and apply today.