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bullet CBSE > Career Options in India > Instructional Design

Career in Instructional Design

Instructional Designing

The global need for customised e-learning packages has opened up a host of exciting new career opportunities for instructional designers. With instructional designing (ID) services being farmed out from UK and US, instructional designing is emerging as one of the fastest growing fields in India.Instructional designers draft the blueprint for a whole multimedia project — from determining the educational design and content of the project to deciding how to present it.As an instructional designer, you will work closely with subject matter experts to organise information in such a way that a learner can easily comprehend it.Be prepared for extensive brain storming sessions on pre-design activities such as content design, analysis of context, content and learner needs. While teaching and training skills are desirable attributes, it goes without saying that you need excellent communication skills in English with a good understanding of web-based training. As a trainee instructional designer, your main responsibility will be to implement design specifications. You can also work as an integrator, animation, graphic artist or visualiser. Today, the need for instructional designers is being felt in corporate training institutes, in the public sector as well as in educational institutes.Earlier, the role of an instructional designer was restricted to designing curricula for instructional books or manuals. Now instructional designers are much more tech savvy and offer consultation in fields ranging from educational TV, computer-based teaching, instructional video, business training and multimedia to print media and classroom design. Starting out as a trainee instructional designer, you could rise to the level of e-learning project manager and eventually to a consultant.Although there are a number of formal courses in ID, many courses are actually run by e-learning companies. As lots of global e-learning projects are outsourced to India, companies have their own in-house learning departments as they feel the need to constantly hone their designers’ skills. Refer to www.elearningguild.com, www.articulate.com/ rapid-elearning/www.e-learningguru.com/articles.htm, www.clarktraining.com) for more information. Training to be an instructional designer is not easy. Over and above your core training, it could take anywhere from six months to two years to get a clear understanding. And even then, there is no end to learning in this field. You need to upgrade your skills and keep abreast of new developments in the field.