New Position: Director, instructional design, Sparrow InterActive, Tampa. Previous Position: Instructional designer, Concurrent Technologies Corp., Largo
By Times Staff Writer
Published October 4, 2004
Kristy Anderson likes learning. She likes to help people learn, and she likes to take college courses to learn new subjects. "I'm a lifelong learner," she said.
As director of instructional design for Sparrow InterActive, which develops instructional programs for a variety of clients, Anderson is in charge of designing "the processes and procedures for end-to-end products, from the analysis phase to delivery."
The programs Anderson helps design can be used in a variety of ways, from Internet to classroom to personal computer.
For example, she explained, suppose the Army needs training for soldiers on how to reduce the impact of corrosion on its vehicles. Anderson would help design a training program using a variety of media and delivery techniques.
Anderson would determine what the client needs, come up with a concept and then work with the client to finalize that concept. "There's no definitive method of training," she said. She would then develop a story board - map out each step of the training - and once that is approved, turn it over to Sparrow InterActive's developers.
Getting to that final stage might take 20 to 30 cycles of review, she said. "With the military, it can take forever."
One rewarding aspect of designing training programs, Anderson said, is that "you can train (people) on anything, absolutely anything. There's no limit."
Before joining Sparrow InterActive, Anderson was an instructional designer with Concurrent Technologies in Largo. While at Concurrent, Anderson had a key role in designing training programs for the Army, Navy and the Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command.
Anderson grew up in Panama and lived there for the first 20 years of her life. She earned a bachelor's degree in Spanish, studying first at Panama Canal College, then moving to Tampa in 1996 to study at the University of South Florida. She earned a bachelor's degree in 1998 and then earned a master's degree in education, also from USF, in 2000.
She grew up with computers, she said. "I've been in computers forever," she said. "My father made me study for my SATs on the computer when I was in elementary school. He was a big computer guy."
After working in loss prevention and teaching high school Spanish for six months, in 2000 Anderson joined Concurrent, where her work revolved largely around her computer skills, "learning to design curricula for whoever my client is.
"It's a nice accomplishment to see people learn," she said. Anderson said she gets to observe her training programs in action, both to assess the success of the learning methods and to observe the clients as they learn.
"It's rewarding to see the light go on," she said.
In her spare time, Anderson takes college-level courses, not toward a degree, but recreationally. Last semester it was calculus; this semester, she is taking chemistry and physics courses at Hillsborough Community College. "I have an interest in the sciences," she said. "School is my recreation."
Anderson, 31, lives in Tampa and has a 9-year-old son, Tyler. She also has a large extended family of friends and relatives from Panama who live in the Tampa Bay area. "The climate is similar to Panama," she said. "But a lot of people moved here because Florida allows in-state tuition for people who lived in Panama. They're treated like a resident of Florida."
As a result, Anderson said she has friends living here whom she went to kindergarten with in Panama. "We all migrated toward each other," she said. "We've been friends forever."
