Career path for instructional designers

Instructional designers in India are paid far less than international standards. This is on account of unawareness of instructional design as an integral competency for learning design and lack of clarity of role and responsibilities, writes Madhuri Dubey

Your first break could be as a trainee instructional designer, whose main responsibility is to implement design specifications. This involves creation and review of storyboards for the course, or effective use of authoring tools to create lessons. The next step could be the role of the instructional designer who is primarily responsible for content design and writing by closely interacting with the Subject Matter Expert (SME), conducting pre-design activities like learner needs analysis, content and context analysis. When you attain the position of senior instructional designer, say after gaining three years of experience, you would be involved in evolving the overall course design strategy and manage projects from content perspective. This calls for leadership skills in coordinating with the team members and the client.

Higher leadership positions could be:

• Content manager in an e-learning firm
• E-learning project manager in training department of a company
• Head of education services
• Director of course development in distance education institutions
• Chief learning officer/vice president education
• Director of training and development

The above mentioned positions depend on the type of organisation you are working for—corporate training departments, distance education institutions, corporate university, e-learning firms or consulting firms specialising in training and development. The salary may start with Rs.1.5 lakh per annum (minimum for a trainee instructional designer) and the highest position could well be at Rs 8 lakh to Rs 10 lakh per annum.

When compared to their counterparts in countries like the US and UK, instructional designers in India are paid far less than international standards. This has to do with lack of awareness of instructional design (ID) as an integral competency for learning design and lack of clarity of role and responsibilities. Often the value added by an instructional designer is equated with that of a content or technical writer.

Market potential

According to IDC the overall corporate learning market in India will be worth $15.5 million by 2005, increasing at a CAGR of 17 percent from 2003-2005. Certainly these predictions reinforce the fact the

e-learning in India is sure to grow and this is bound to result in a greater requirement for competent and qualified instructional designers. In addition to exploring opportunities to work with some world-class e-learning companies at their offshore development centres in India, you could try organisations like NIIT, C-DAC, Tata Interactive Services, GECIS, Globarena, DigitalThink, Hurix Systems, Gurukulonline, Eminds, Ment-orix, Aptech, Cognizant Techn-ologies, Icus, IBM, SQLStar and Oracle.

With several companies setting up their own e-learning departments, you could check out opportunities at banking institutions, insurance industry, pharma industry and customer service segment.

Industry-academia collaboration

There is growing number of opportunities for professionals in this field, but there are very few people who are formally trained in ID.

Of course, we have abundance of talent in areas related to ID, such as educational technology, distance education and so on, but there is a need to create awareness that people from allied disciplines could lend their expertise as instructional designers.

There is a dire need for institutions to come up with new courses such as a certificate or diploma course in ID. This could be enriched with insights from the industry so that mutually beneficial synergies could be created between the industry and the academia.

Content for formal courses

Being multi-disciplinary in nature, instructional design calls for acquiring knowledge in several domains, particularly, education, technology, project management, written communication and business sensitivity. Following is detailed course outline, suggesting a list of topics that could be covered as core courses and electives.

Institutions taking initiative in offering such courses would fill the gap in the e-learning industry with professionals with leadership, management and practical skills to tap the enormous potential of e-learning.

It is recommended that the courses are designed with equal value attached to application of theoretical knowledge and provide scope for ample hands-on experience by incorporating case studies to complement course work.

Courses in project management

Planning and managing projects, budgeting, resource allocation, project sc-ope, RoI, define critical success factors, define risk elements, delegate works, assign ta-sks and sub-tasks, use of project management software.

Courses in orientation towards technology

Multimedia technologies, introduction to operating systems, programming languages, content authoring tools, principles of software design and engineering, UI elements, software usability, real-time Web technologies for virtual classroom, LMS architecture, other content management and delivery systems.

Courses in written communication

Writing for the medium (print or the Web), effective writing and editing techniques, basics of writing: paragraphs, précis, summaries, abstracts, instructions, and effective technical communication.

Courses in principles of education

• Educational psychology, curriculum studies, adult education, educational technology, new media—computers and the Internet in education, educational innovation, planning and management, educational leadership.
• Models, theories, learning outcomes, cognitive strategies for teaching online, adult learning theories and fundamentals of distance education.
• Assessment strategies, skill gap analysis, performance-based assessments to match the learning goals.
• Fundamental concepts of course design and performance support technologies, emerging issues in training and development.

Courses in e-learning and business sensitivity

E-learning and emerging digital economy, framework for e-learning implementation, business cases of e-learning implementation, development process for e-learning content, organisational readiness for e-learning, current and emerging e-learning technologies.

Where is instructional design heading?

New developments offer new challenges for the instructional designer to constantly learn and innovate while strategising for optimum learning experiences. Perhaps the term “instruction” is too narrow to convey the value added by the instructional designer, “Learni-ng Designer” is what is more appropriate.

As we are moving towards convergence and integration in digital economy, the field of e-learning is seeing a perceivable move towards blending digital learning with various learning formats, ranging from classroom-based learning to use of real-time technologies. Knowl-edge management is another area where learning initiatives will fine scope for integration, enhancing the agility of workplace learning. Also, several enterprise software applications such as ERPs, CRM, HRM, are building learning components into the workflow to integrate performance support while wor-king with the applications.

Madhuri Dubey is a Senior Instructional Designer associated with a software MNC in Hyderabad. E-mail: madhurid@rediffmail.com