From Tech College Adjunct to Blackboard Product Designer: The Journey of Melanie Sexton

Melanie Sexton

From Tech College Adjunct to Blackboard Product Designer

Most people interviewed started teaching at the K-12 level. Melanie started her teaching career as an adjunct at a tech college. Currently, she is a product designer for the LMS Blackboard.

Q: How did you get into teaching?

My mom taught elementary art for almost 20 years, so I grew up with teaching and education in the house. When I was in high school and college, I would volunteer time to assistant each at local K-12 schools. This eventually led to teaching at the local public library during college both pro bono and eventually as an Art Performer.

When I graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) with my Master’s degree, I was an adjunct instructor at Trident Technical College and Charleston Southern University concurrently. I loved sharing the knowledge and techniques that I learned from SCAD (art history, graphic design, sequential art, drawing) and mostly, creating the curriculum for college-level students. 2011-2013 were really great highlights in my teaching career.”

Q: What did you teach? What level?

When I was hired at Trident Technical College, I was an online and face-to-face adjunct. I was given the master curriculum for Adobe Illustrator and Drawing 1. After a semester I was allowed to create my own curriculum for Drawing for Animators and Sequential Drawing 1.

At Charleston Southern University, I taught a myriad of courses as a face-to-face and hybrid adjunct instructor. All classes were curriculum I had to create, and the subjects were Drawing 1, Art Appreciation, Visual Communications, History of Graphic Design, Graphic Design 1, and Digital Illustration.

In 2013, I moved to Beaufort, SC, and was the instructor for the St. Helena Library branch’s media production lab. In that space, I taught the public ages 8 and older formal and informal classes that touched on the following subjects: drawing, graphic design, videography, audio production, 3D printing, robotics, coding, basic computer skills.

During my time in Beaufort, I had the opportunity to be an online adjunct instructor at the University of South Carolina Beaufort (USCB) and Technical College of the Lowcountry- while creating curriculum and teaching courses for the Beaufort County Library system. At USCB I taught online Graphic Design 1 and at Technical College of the Lowcountry, I taught online Film as Art for college-level students.

Q: What made you want to leave teaching or why did you decide to leave?

I taught in the classroom full time from 2011 – early 2015. At that stage of my career, while I enjoyed being in front of a class and sharing knowledge, I wanted to get more behind the scenes and expand my career into instructional design. Teaching face-to-face (and online) can be exhausting. You have to always be on your toes, accessible, and answer any and all questions for students. You are their beacon of knowledge. Between creating curriculum and facilitating a class, my desire was to channel my design skills into creating training and education products.

Q: What steps did you take to prepare to leave the classroom/teaching?

I got lucky on this front. My (now husband) and I were engaged in late 2014 and we relocated to the Washington DC area the beginning of 2015. I specifically sought positions that focused on elearning, learning management systems, design, and instructional materials. I fell into a few positions in the Washington DC area that focused heavily on adult education, development of corporate training, and instructional design.

Q: What advice would you recommend to current teachers who want to leave the classroom?

The best advice I have is to plan ahead. There’s a lot of positions out there that can channel teaching/facilitation skills but also pedagogy/andragogy. If you’re good a designing lesson plans, maybe curriculum development would be a good stepping stone for you. If you’re great at engaging learners face-to-face, perhaps looking into corporate training and becoming a trainer would be a good next career. If you have always wanted to learn graphic design, now is your time to learn- take free courses, earn a certificate- instructional design may be a good path to take. It’s always better to know what your strengths are and do research on how you can use these skills in non-traditional teaching environments.

Q: What are you doing now?

Currently, I am a product designer for Blackboard. I work with the Design and Development teams to create new software features for instructors, students, and school administrators. Sometimes, I help our research team to interview instructors, students, and administrators in the field of higher education to see where we can improve and generate software features that will make a great impact in these professionals’ lives.

Q: Anything else you think that may help current teachers who are in the shoes that you were once in?

Network, network, network. I cannot stress this enough. During times of transition during my career, I’ve found people to reach out to in analogous fields (libraries, instructional design, higher education) for advice, best practices. I would also say to never stop learning- a lot of fields (teaching included) live or die based on how current your skill sets are. Be willing to watch videos, take tutorials, go to the local community college for a few refresher classes- this will make not only your resume fresh but also help you grow as a professional.

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