One of the tools I use in small group projects for the courses I develop is wikis. Since the history of a wiki shows which individuals contributed what, it’s much easier to see when someone waits until the last second and lets the rest of the group complete a project.

Collaboration is part of instructional design work; I can’t do my job if I don’t collaborate well with SMEs. A program that doesn’t provide opportunities to learn to collaborate may not actually prepare you as well for a job as you think.

I also appreciate your advice regarding gaining entry into the field of instructional design. I have not yet entered this field. However, I am currently pursuing the direct route that you described in this article.

Presently, I do not have any teaching or classroom training experience. What I do have is technical writing and one-on-one training experience. My technical writing experience consists of writing job aids and solutions documents in the field of information technology support. My one-on-one training experience consists of teaching users how to use software and/or operating systems.

So far I am very pleased with the instructional design education that I am receiving from Walden University. I have compared Walden’s instructional design graduate program with comparable programs at other universities. I have found Walden’s course content to be very relevant and the tuition affordable. Another great aspect of Walden’s program is the lack of group projects. There is a lot of interaction with fellow students and the professors. However, projects are completed on an individual basis. This prevents students from “social loafing” while one or two other students do all of the work. In my opinion, the only thing that group projects accomplish is demonstrating that one can only count on themselves. I realize that this might come accross as a pessimistic view. Unfortunately, I was burned by group projects several times while pursuing my undergraduate degree. I would recommend Walden’s program to anyone with the desire to enter the instructional design field.

One observation that I have made while pursuing the instructional design graduate degree is the amount of psychology in learning theories. I would imagine that someone with an undergraduate degree in psychology and a graduate degree in instructional design would be perfectly positioned to excel in this field.

Glad you found my blog! There is definitely some confusion here in the US sometimes too, and not every company expects the same thing from IDs. I hadn’t heard of instructional design myself until 2003.

If you’re looking for more instructional design blogs, check out Cammy at Learning Visions and Natalie at Design for Learning.

I did journalism, it was even before I received results for my masters, I took up this job without knowing what instruuction design was..Later I got hooked, I like designing training programs, it gives me a hiigh and sense of creativity…We plan to soon bring out a blog on easy to use ID strategies…sumthng taht had ready to information…

I have seen people move from tech writing into instructional design before, although not as often. It seems to be a different enough approach that not everyone can make that transition successfully. Obviously, you have, which is great. That’s a path which I didn’t include here though, and perhaps I should have.

I found an interesting article called Identifying the gap between technical writing and instructional design that talks about this difference between tech writing and ID.

I do not have any experience teaching or preparing course material. I just got started with instructional designing and learnt a lot on job.

I have written a short post on the role of an instructional designer here: http://writersgateway.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/the-role-of-an-instructional-designer/

Please do check that out.

Cheers
Rupa

That said, I have known a few tremendous instructional designers who went the first route. One in particular really helped bring up the level of instructional design in the whole team, partly because her own work provided great examples for others to build on, and partly because she was willing to share and coach others.

I’m curious, Shweta, what your experience has been with the technology skills. That created some debate here. Where do you fall in that discussion? Do you think instructional designers should learn technology skills and work at all stages of the process, or should we focus on just a narrow stage of the development and let programmers and graphic designers do what they do best? I wonder if the situation in India is more similar to what I’ve experienced or what Cammy Bean has experienced in her career.