In India, as we know there are many career fields which are
not sp well established or commonly known. Problem arises when anyone tells us about
new career or job field and our reaction is like “what?” Similar thing happened with me…Whenever I tell people
I am an Instructional Designer, they
react like” Okay! You are designer, so it must be like Fashion designer or something” or “what you design”.
I seriously don’t blame them. As a few years back, I have
also asked the same question when recruited in this field. I remember, in my
childhood, my mother used to make me learn, poems, stories with the help of
actions, pictures, and off course with sound effects how an owl speaks, bird
fly etc. And the miracle is I do remember those till today. How intelligent this
technique is and so are our parents.
Today, in this hi-tech world there is one virus, which has
almost affected each and every person’s mind, known as “Internet”. With the
time and technology, Education has also got an advance make over and E-learning
came into existence. So, here new concept evolves known as Instructional
Designing- actually it is an art of designing web-based/CD based/ Classroom
training materials and the one who develops and designs such
instructions/e-learning’s/any training material is known as Instructional
designer.
Without investing more time on understanding the ID in
theoretical sense lets first understand it practical sense i.e. what exactly we
do?
It’s the basic human nature that we learn by experiencing
and through the things we see and hear…
An Instructional
Designing is more than just putting learning material in front of learners;
this work can be done by Subject Mater
Expert (SME). SME’s are an expert of their domain. In this case students
will be passive recipients of the course. An instructional designer adds experience and ideas to make learning
better. It’s the duty of the instructional designer to create a strong
experience in the learner’s minds that learning will be able to actively
practice what learner has learned. Instructional designers do not just write,
they visualize, think, and implement to make course better & better and …
Basic overview of roles of an Instructional Designer:
- Need Analysis i.e. identify what is the purpose of designing the course; assess the training needs, qualification of target audience or learners
- Work with Subject Matter Experts (SME), to extract their knowledge and information that needs to be imparted
- Develop objectives, plans, structure of course, list of resources, checklists etc. on the basis of SMART scales
- Develop the course, storyboards, training program, assessments etc.
- Course is delivered to the learners; it includes tasks like setting up the course in LMS etc.
Keep visiting for more posts on Instructional Designing. If you think I missed any major points,
please let me know in a comment. Do provide feedbacks also!
