Trace Belcher
Doctoral Student- Kansas State University Adult Learning and Leadership
Instructional Designer
HCA Corporate Headquarters in Nashville, TN

 Tell me about what you do:

“The CSG concentrates on Nurse Education, including regulatory training, professional development, and continuing education. I mainly take existing content and update it in a way to increase learner engagement and recall. I also work with subject-matter experts (SME’s) to develop and design new training to improve the patient experience. This requires an understanding of adult learning principles, as well as the technical and systems knowledge to implement the training once it is created. I am also on several projects, which will transform how Clinical Education is managed for over 85,000 clinicians nationally.”

Why do you love what you do?

“I, like many others in the corporate world, have suffered through horrible training, both in-person and online. It is my mission to make sure no one has to go through that again (well, at least at HCA)! I love that I get to learn new things every day, but also take the education and skills I gained at K-State to make a difference in the lives of our nurses, and by extension, the lives of our patients.”

If someone came to you and said, “I want to be an instructional designer!” What advice would you offer?

“Keep calm and learn to prioritize! Seriously, my first day at HCA, I was 3 months behind. Lol! I had 14 lessons that needed to be designed and deployed within 90 days (at least that was the initial request). Learning how to prioritize, and even manage a demanding schedule (skills I also used as a working student) will help anyone in this field keep his or her sanity.”

In what way did the Adult Learning and Leadership program help prepare you to be an instructional designer?

“My research for my dissertation is in increasing attention, and thereby recall, in eLearning lessons. I take what I learned from my professors, on adult learning theory,  memory processing, and even instructional design, and use it to make a difference at HCA.”

“You should always enjoy your work. We spend one third of our day at our job (sometimes more). If you do not love what you do, generally, then you will be miserable most of the time. “Find out how to get paid doing what you love”, a quote from my mother, helps keep me focused on the bigger picture when I am up to my neck in training requests. Do what you love; love what you do. Go Wildcats!”