In India, there are very few training institutes or universities that offer certification courses in Instructional Design. When you look at the courses that these training institutes offer, all these courses follow the classical approach to teaching Instructional Design. In a classical approach, you start with the basic concepts, theories and then move on to application.
So the classical approach to teaching Instructional Design to a fresher would start with the question “What is Instructional Design?” , then move on to Instructional Design theories and models, Instructional Design tools and the Instructional Design activities would be taught after the learners have got a grip of the theories, concepts, tools and so on.
At the end of the training program, the learner will have to do a storyboard for which he/she will be evaluated and given a certificate. So typically the course duration for such beginner level course would be three months.
Now this is one approach to teaching Instructional Design.
What about the Hello World approach to teaching Instructional Design?
Have you heard of a Hello World program? If you have not, let me quickly tell you what a Hello World program is.
When you want to learn Java programming or any programming language for that matter, you first write a simple program that will print Hello World. People who have no prior experience in programming are asked to write a Hello World program, so that they quickly understand the principles of a specific programming language. People write a short code to print Hello World and run it to see how it works. They also trying making small changes to the code and then they run the program to see how the changes get reflected.
So when I say Hello World approach to teaching Instructional Designing, I mean a quick workshop or a tutorial , that will help freshers create a complete e-learning course on a very simple topic. When I say “complete” I do not mean just the storyboard, but the digitized e-learning course, may be using some rapid e-learning tool.
When the fresher actually completes creating this simple e-learning course, he/she would have gathered a lot even without getting into the Instructional Design theories, concepts and models. After this, the fresher gets to learn more on Instructional Design and undersands better because he/she has already tried a hand in creating a complete e-learning course. Instead of overloading a fresher with lot of information at one go, mentoring and coaching the fresher to gain hands on experience might work well.
All freshers who start with Instructional Designing typically work on linear e-learning courses and most often only do storyboarding. So is it not important to teach the most important skills that will make a fresher productive at workplace? Instructional Design is like programming. You gain mastery and expertise over a period of time. You internalize Instructional Design concepts over years. So what is the point overloading them with lot of information at one go?
What do you think?
- Considering the young generation joining the workforce and that they are likely to be impatient to get hands on, will not a Hello World approach to teaching Instructional Design work?
- Instead of a three month beginner level course, will not short end to end beginner level workshops with lot of mentoring and coaching work?
- If you want to hire a fresher, what would you look for? A certificate that the fresher can do Instructional Design or the fresher can exhibit hands on experience in Instructional Design or not?
- If you are from a different country, I would love to know how you teach Instructional Design to freshers? What is the approach you follow?
Please leave your thoughts in the comments section.
What you say makes some sense, except that:
a) Instructional Design shouldn’t be all about creating courses. It should be about determining the right learning approach to a performance problem.
b) Instructional Design is not all about elearning. There are other facets to learning and I’d like to start with classical methods of learning before moving to elearning.
The problem with most elearning ID’s in the market is that they don’t understand jack about learning itself. They’re more obsessed with approaches and tools than the psychology behind human learning. Starting your professional journey with elearning as the focus, is a smell in my opinion.
As always, interesting post Rupa.
I am not a very big fan of ‘quick approaches’. Why? Because they seem to act like a band aid and not the actual cure. Secondly, like Summeet says, learning can be imparted in several ways. Handouts or job aids, eLearning, ILTs, flash cards, out-bound training, and so are several ways in which learning can be imparted. eLEarning is just one of the many options.
I think what most IDs lack is seeing the big picture. It is not about designing the course itself, but about understanding the learners, the need and then identifying the most effective approach. What worked for me as a fresher is on-the-job training, sprint sessions on theories (where I presented the theory and we discussed what made it work and how it was applied), several brainstorming sessions, and involvement in all phases of the DLC (to understand how each phase is linked to each other). I was encouraged to join learning communities and read several online articles. I was also encouraged to write on Learnability Matters as early as 2006. The processes at Kern is clearly defined. As an ID, we know where to start and all the focus is always on learner’s needs. Everyone involved (including the development team)asks questions such as ‘Will this work for the learner?’ or ‘Will they really find this interesting?’
It is time to widen our minds and think beyond writing and storyboarding.
Cheers,
Archana
Hi Rupa,
I’m completely in sync with the approach you have advocated on your blog post. I really like the name “Hello World” for this approach. Looking back, I remember that I indeed learnt my HTML and Java basics with a simple “Hello World. ” What I also remember is the joy I experienced in seeing those two words on a Webpage that I created. It simply egged me on to continue learning more concepts and keep applying them.
It is this aspect of learning that I feel gets lost in formal approaches to learning any discipline. Especially in a corporate environment, it is all the more imperative to follow a simple, goal-oriented, do-as-you-learn approach to instructional design.
Faced with a situation (in my previous organization) where I had to quickly ramp up a group of process trainers on e-learning and ID, I followed a similar approach where participants had to create 2 minute learning objects at each stage of the workshop and follow it up by creating a complete learning path that used all/most of these objects.
Best,
Samarpan
“The problem with most elearning ID’s in the market is that they don’t understand jack about learning itself. They’re more obsessed with approaches and tools than the psychology behind human learning. Starting your professional journey with elearning as the focus, is a smell in my opinion.”
I overwhelmingly second Sumeet’s thought that the IDs in the market do not know the L of Learning. Therefore, irrespective of the approach that we adopt, we need to induce the fact that ID is not just eLearning, but has a lot of other applications as well…
If I was an ID starting off my journey today, I’d actually set myself a high standard. I recently wrote an article about the skills ID’s need -> http://cipher-quaker.blogspot.com/2009/09/instructional-designers-need-more-tools.html
It’ll be useful to do a SWOT for yourself and coach yourself in the journey of becoming a complete learning professional. No doubt, opportunities in your existing job could be limited. That is always the case, isn’t it? As you mention Rupa, a lot of development happens outside your work environment. And then using clever influencing skills and evangelism, you can over time bring these learnings to your workplace. That way, they become a part of your work day as well.
There is no silver bullet to becoming a “complete” professional, but if I was running an ID course then there are a few things to I would separate the concerns.
a) The skills and appproaches towards learning.
b) How to influence your employers to choose the right environment in a sub-optimal environment. (part of your consulting skills toolkit!)
Interest(and attention span) is a direct function of a person’s skill level. And a fresher by definition is on a low skill level. And therefore, to capture interest, you must keep things simple when you get someone started. With time and practice, a learner can be introduced to additional concepts either as part of the training or on the job.
For example, when you learn music you learn simple songs first. When you start coding, you start with a Hello World and then go onto other smaller simpler programs.
If your goal is to train a set of people new to ID and turn them into productive professionals in say 2 months, then you must give it to them in small doses. Setting challenging goals is a good way to organize the training and motivate the learner, but drowning them with impossible challenges is a recipe for disaster.
Typically, understanding the big picture comes with experience. It is true that e-learning is a lot more than just creating courses, but you cannot ask a trainee ID to make the equivalent of a 9m long jump in the first few days or weeks or even years. It takes time to get good at anything and you cannot fast track this.
People are not made equal and any training must take into account whether a trainee can assimilate the content at the pace you have set. And starting a training with human psychology and not simple elearning is not a good idea because letting people learn through mistakes is a proven way to learn. Keep it simple, stupid! That is a principle and not a dig at anybody
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Keep your training simple.
And finally, Suggestions like influencing employers might not work for everybody as it is too situation specific (company culture, manager and trainee personality, and other variables) and cannot be guaranteed to work always and it has nothing to do with learning instructional design.
Then again, I think if the big picture comes with experience then the industry should rethink the notion of “fresher” Instructional Designers. Ideally, this should be a natural career progression for trainers and facilitators.
IMO, turning freshers into “productive professionals” in 2 months is optimistic to say the least. You can make them “elearning-monkeys” (no disrespect), but not Instructional Designers.
Lastly, IMO Instructional Design is a consulting job. Influence is a part of consultant’s toolkit and I don’t know how we can separate these soft skills from the core skills of doing their jobs.
You can’t guarantee that a single influence pattern will work in all situations – there are context specific influence patterns though. So I struggle to understand the guarantee you’re talking about. Use the right pattern and you have a near-guarantee!
Look at the e-learning projects that much of the people do in the industry in India.The budget will be in lakhs only for many projects. How much money does the industry pay for IDs? 12K – 40K? (< 4 Yrs of experience). This means that you need to recruit people who work for these salary levels and in most places hiring fresh people and training them is a sound business decision, both economical and as a way to beat attrition.
On the other hand, companies like Ken Blanchard and Dale Carnegie sell productized trainings that sell for as much as 1500 euros per seat. These companies require experienced professionals.
So, if you need consultant profiles, you need to hire such guys, and such people will always be expensive. You cannot manufacture such people out of any training programs in this world.
But if you are a company that has a requirement to hire junior Ids because of business and money reasons, then you need to train them and you want them to start producing some work as soon as possible.
The sum of people employed by small e-learning companies is far larger than all the big boys put together. So, a training method to get people producing faster is always beneficial and good for business.
And the majority of the employee population will be junior Ids and not experienced IDs.
And taking your idea of training Trainers and Facilitators into IDs, this is a career option for them but is not a solution for the resource challenges for the e-learning industry.
Given these facts, your prescription is not practical because it will be very expensive and difficult to execute.Please get real.
Well I think the question for us to ask ourselves is if these skills are desirable. If they are, then practicalities of execution and cost are a later point of discussion. I don’t think we have enough data and perspectives to say its difficult or easy to execute.
I’m sure you’re coming from experience and I don’t want to discount that — this said, I’m confident that with the right objectives in mind you can find a balance for cost and execution. In any case, it would be impractical to debate this over electronic media with an absolute lack of data points and case studies.
And btw, I think we’re mixing two issues here. Business profitability and vocational education. Educational programs need to continually set the bar higher. The fact that a business has a lower need is no reason for educational institutions to be myopic and lower their bar of education.
I just thought we should go back to the original context of the discussion, which is really about ID education.
Ahaerm…
Training… the act of imparting (or making available the resources) for a person to develop knowledge, Skills or competencies (among other things).
So… how do we train the fresher IDs? (we do require them – thats for sure)
I would start (like in any learning solution that I develop) by identifying what is the expected performance from these resources.
A fresher ID (depending on which company they are in) will be required (as their first tasks) to:
- Take screenshots using a tool – and stitch them together using some tool. (companies that focus on simulation training)
- Take a look at some content – take a look at the design documentation – get a ‘download’ from the Sr. ID and then ‘script’ a storyboard (an oxymoron if there was one). (small firms)
- Follow the lead on a pre-existing project… and turn out something similar to what has already been done. (companies with large ongoing projects)
- Be thrown out into the open ocean and told to figure out how to survive in this field. (companies just starting out with the eLearning division / new firms – in this case you never know if you are cutting edge or blunt(?) edge)
Come to think of it… these are relatively simple tasks – and we don’t need to know all those ID theories or have the skills that more senior IDs have… it is a matter of being able to perform some simple tasks.
Learning to be an ID is a long term process – and much of it HAS to be through experiences… it is an implicit learning that HAS to go through the whole unconscious incompetence > conscious incompetence > conscious incompetence > conscious competence cycle…
It is when you manage to get to reflective competence that you get to be a good mentor…
And this cycle HAS to happen for each task, skill, competency that you master… you will be on different levels for different things at different things in your career – there is no end to this ‘training cycle’ so to speak…
And considering there is no ‘end’ to this training – IDs (like many other professions, teachers, leaders, musicians) require SOME skills to start off – but will pick up more based on environment, influences, interest, dedication (to the craft), and half a zillion other factors.
Some are prodigies that sustain.. some are prodigies that don’t… some get by with hard work… and some remain in the background… or perhaps fade away…?
Nuf said – I have to get back to a shit load of work… let me know what you guys think
-A
Abhinava, you have very nicely put your thoughts and they are indeed very realistic. Thank you for taking the time to write this
I had posted a comment before but then it just disappeared when I was trying to do something with this site.
Thank you all for writing in your thoughts here.
This is what I think:
Freshers need to gain some basic skills to get started with their work.
They need to get productive and do that which the business demands.
It takes sometime and quite a lot of experience to become a good ID.
Gaining good skills depends a lot on the work environment, the kind of influences one has at work, motivation and interest levels and other factors.
Freshers do not need certificates or high level knowledge or skills to get started with ID.
Freshers need to keep reading, learning, participate and attend ID sessions, start blogging.
Another good discussion. The ‘hello world’ approach is a good way to help the student understand how easily one can construct low-quality instruction. But building high-quality instruction requires some understanding of theories of learning. I agree with all the comments about getting practice, but this must be deliberate practice, with a continual ID skill improvement focus.
So IDs in India are going through a two month training program? I guess that makes sense for basic eLeaning, if a person can follow formulas for presentation, and it is better than the weekend seminars some people use in the US. But to become a full instructional designer one needs more training than that, and at least a year of regular ID training and work is required in my experience before a new ID even knows the basics well enough to construct good training materials.
To answer your question, Kurt, and also Rupa-about the initial training on ID, there are not too many ID specific courses – but Symbiosis Centre for Distance Learning in Pune, India offers a one year Post Graduate Diploma in Instruction Design. This covers Learning Theories, basic ID principles and a lot of other stuff.
Also, good domain knowledge will help in conjunction with this course, to create sound instructional material. And, of course, as always Practice makes Perfect!
