Getting Started with Instructional Design

Lately I’ve been asked by a few people on how to get started with a career in instructional design and elearning. Here are some of the questions I received: Could someone suggest that how to start my career in Instructional Systems Design field?I'm interested in joining the field of Instructional Design. I've done my MA in English and also a diploma course in multimedia. I would really appreciate it if you could guide me on which companies to approach and how, to secure an entry level position. I am looking…

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Results of Unofficial Salary Survey of eLearning/Content Development Jobs – 2008

Update: See 2009 elearning and content development salary data here.Announcing the analysis of the Unofficial Salary Survey of elearning and content development jobs in India. This was a direct survey of individual respondents. No company response was sought. I used viral marketing to promote survey. This included an initial direct mailer and then posting on eCube Facebook and various Orkut groups. Orkut seems to have a larger Indian audience.The survey received total 62 responses, including 8 incomplete responses. Most responses were from the NCR region, followed by Mumbai. Pune, Bangalore…

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Can eLearning Help Change Behaviour?

As part of judging entries for the Brandon Hall Awards this year, I encountered an elearning module that attempted to teach the company’s sales people its new service orientation and its service oriented products. The elearning module was very well made, full of videos (actually it was practically a ‘video-based-training’ disguised as elearning) with very well written script and extremely professional production quality. The script and production quality was so good that I would have been proud of the product if it had been made by my team. I went…

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What is Blended Learning?

Clive Shepherd redefines his own definition of blended learning in his recent post.A blended learning solution mixes social contexts for learning (self-study, one-to-one, small group, larger community) with the aim of increasing learning effectiveness, and/or mixes learning media (face-to-face, online, print, etc.) to increase efficiency, in the context of a particular learning requirement, audience characteristics, and practical constraints and opportunities.Clive’s does a great job in separating the method and the medium. I quite agree with Clive.In my view, blended learning can be simply defined as a combination (blend!) of self…

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Unofficial Salary Survey of eLearning/Content Development Jobs – 2008

Update: See 2009 elearning and content development salary data here.Last year I initiated the unofficial salary survey for elearning and content development jobs in India on my blog. I invited responses as comments on my blog post. The post got 10 unique responses. While the number of responses were not enough to consolidate and provide any trends, what was apparent was that the elearning salary range in India is quite varied. One year down the line, it will be interesting to know what’s the situation now. What are the salaries…

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eLearning and Content Development Trends for 2008

Learning Circuit’s January Big Question is about predicting trends for the year 2008. Here’s my take on what we can expect in the coming year.Web 2.0 in LearningWeb 2.0 will be the killer buzzword for the year 2008. Everyone will want to use the technology for learning and training. Bersin report for 2008 talks about it, Brandon Hall has announced new categories of awards, and most bloggers are talking about it. I believe 2008 will continue to be the year of discovery and experimentation with Web 2.0. Web 2.0 techniques…

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Death of the Instructional Designer

Fifteen years ago when I joined the profession, Instructional Design was a new profession. Friends and family asked about what I really did for a living. Customers were surprised to find Instructional Designers in India and after a few years of struggle, getting business was not so hard. We were grudgingly accepted as Instructional Designers without any formal qualification in Instructional Design. As Instructional Designers we spent time in learning about the underlying theories of instructional design, did our research on the project content area and spent hours in brainstorming…

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Unofficial salary survey for elearning/content development jobs

Update: See 2009 elearning and content development salary data hereThere's an interesting debate raging in various forums about salaries in elearning/content development jobs in India. So here's starting an unofficial survey about salaries in this field. Nothing official about this survey -- all inputs available here are completely anecdotal and open to interperations by the readers. I do not make any claims about accuracy of these figures.Add your comments in this blog about the salaries you have seen for various roles in various companies in India. And while you are…

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