The relatively new field of instructional design and technology offers a variety of career prospects
With the way the world is growing and needs are expanding, there are new career options waiting around the block for students who are interested and willing to explore. There will be options which were not heard of before, since these work profiles did not exist before. But they are upcoming now, and are here to stay. With the expanding gamut of learning options and systems, instructional design and technology as a career is really picking up. Several education and learning-based organisations need trained professionals in this field, and trained professionals are few.
Several senior working Indians say that they have never heard of the subject of instructional design. It is true, since it is relatively new, and even now, it is not that widely talked about. Most professionals working in the field say that it is an essential process now, and the concept will gain a lot of importance since it works to solve and sort the glitches in the processes of teaching and training.
For all those who are wondering what instructional design even means, in simple terms, it is a systematic process according to which learning materials are designed and developed so that they can be taught in the classroom effectively with showing a difference among the learners. Since the material designed in this manner has to be instructional in nature, it is usually related to curriculum, technology and learning management systems.
With online learning becoming so popular and penetrating the remotest of markets, instructional design is a necessity for this platform, and concepts like massive open online courses (MOOCs). A lot of traditional people may question whether it is really needed. The answer, according to practioners, is yes. Ideas regarding teaching and learning have changed and gone outside of the box, and this field helps in exploring platform of learning as well.
When the need was felt to apply the systems of instructional design to materials in India, there were no courses available and the personnel was trained on the job, after being hired based on other related criteria and trainability. It was a system where the instructional designers need to be instructed first before developing any material. In fact, even today, a lot of personnel is hired based on different skills and them trained for instructional design. Organisations which work in e-learning need specific skills, and therefore they have to work at training the personnel.
However, now, professional courses are being offered in the country and aspirants can look at the courses available in an objective manner and choose from what is available. Many courses are on offer in other countries also, and these are also available in the online format in India. Even though there are few universities and colleges that offer these courses, the field has a long way to go to advance to the next level. Some institutes that offer courses around Mumbai are:
Symbiosys Centre of Distance Learning – Post Graduate Diploma in Instructional Design (PGDID)
SNDT Women’s University – Offers a 4-credit Online Course on Instructional Design and a Master’s in Educational Technology with Computer Applications (METCA)
ibruk Consulting Pvt Ltd – Various Certificate Courses in Instructional Design and Technical Writing
There are several short- and long-term courses available in Bangalore as well. You will have to check the eligibility of each course with the institute.
In terms of personal qualities, you need to have certain traits which will help you succeed. These include a good command over the English language and its usage, both verbally and in writing. Most instructional material is written by one person to be followed by someone else. An analytical bent of mind is required to match the appropriate theory to the learning needs. And for that, you need to have a passion for teaching and learning.
Surabhi Shahane
Pursuing her course
I have a friend who works as an instructional writer for a well known company, and she was the one who initiated me in this area. She suggested that a professional course would help, and therefore I enrolled for a short-term course. Before the course began, I read a lot about the field, but nothing prepared me for the training I got within the course and the nuances that I learnt about the field. I now have a fair idea in which way students aspiring for this
field can check their abilities of working.
The first thing you need to ask yourself is – do you enjoy writing, and can you use your words effectively? Here, I mean clear and precise writing, not a novel. If you were to write something, would a third person reading it understand what you are trying to say? If you think you have the skill, think about this field.
You should also know that the field is not only about writing and writing well. You need to learn the theories of learning and design, and how to apply them to the situation at hand. For that, a course helps, since it reduces a considerable amount of figuring things out by yourself. It is a very interesting field, with great career options.
In this field too, like any other field, a new comer will start at a junior level and work his or her way up the ladder. Most often, designers begin as instructional writers within a project, which is handled by a project leader or a manager. After a few years of experience, the work tends to shift and new designations can be reached. Most designers go on to becoming project leaders and managers and may even handle more than one project at a time. Despite the fact that professionals have been working in this field in India for over a decade, it is still in the nascent stages, but a boom is not expected any time soon since it is a very niche field.
Work options in India can be found in information technology companies or organisation related to knowledge process outsourcing, apart from options in e-learning companies. A few companies that aspirants can work for include Tata Interactive Services, Wipro Technologies, Aditya Birla Group, Accenture, NIIT, Sify, and Aptech among many others. In fact, even smaller companies higher designers based on temporary needs and these may be consulting projects rather than full-time jobs.
Globally, trained instructional designers are needed the world over, and job opening can be found in countries like Canada, USA, Malaysia, Singapore, the Middle East, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. Many Indian companies send their experts on off-shore projects to foreign lands, where they get to taste a new work environment as well.
For a new comer, the salary can range anywhere between Rs. 25,000 to Rs. 30,000 which is comparable to most fields in the country. With increased experience, these figures definitely shoot up, more like upwards of Rs. 50,000, some even earning touching a lakh a month.
Devayani Deshpande
Instructional designer
Even though aspirants may now have a slight idea of what instructional design is, there is a long way to go. You know that these professionals are engaged in making study courses for learners. But, the learners here are not necessarily students in a college or at an institute. These learners could be new hires at an organisation, they could be teachers and professors, they could be construction workers or even sales and marketing personnel, who are being taught how to carry out certain jobs.
For that, the instructional designer has to develop learning material with story boards, and this is a very challenging task. So, my suggestion is that try and look into this feature, find out what exactly a story board is and how to develop one. A story board is a graphic (or pictoral) representations to pass on instructions to others. The process can be time consuming, because it requires several details.
When developing any material, you have to have only one point of focus – who is the final learner? After that, you need to know who the in-between people are who might also need to go through your material. And then, according to that, you implement your project. You
will learn how to customize for each kind of audience and how much of a difference that makes to the learners.
Amruta Patil
SYBA student
I was reading online about this field, and I realised that the US is far ahead than any other country in training for this field. I do not have a clear idea on what this field is all about, so my parents are not willing to back my study aspiration abroad at this stage. Can you tell me a little more about the field and what kinds of qualities I will need to be suited for it?
Professional Devayani Deshpande answers: You have gone ahead and checked out a lot of options in this field, so I suggest you go a little further and read up on instructional design and what it is. There is a lot of information available. In addition, you can try contacting a few professionals in the field who might be able to help you as to what this field really looks for.
You definitely need a passion for education, since it is all about learning and training. Also, you need impeccable communication skills and the ability to learn from your mistakes and learn to refer to certain guides and styles of writing, which you might not be used to until now. Like many other fields, you may be required to interact with people, with your colleagues who work on the same project and the subject matter expert who will provide the learning material content, and you might also have to train a few trainers on delivering the content.
