3 Values US Course Designers Bring to Corporate America

Thanks to Tom Stanton for passing this article along to me...

Training careers take off in public and private sectors

I say article, but it's really an ad (disguised as content) for Walden University's online Bachelor of Science in Instructional Design and Technology degree program. For those of you playing 'Buzzword Bingo' this is a great find.

In a nutshell, based on vague economic growth data on they want you to enroll in their program and learn how to create online learning courses. The problem is the 'online course technology' train has already left the US station and is making it way through India right now.

"Next stop...Mumbai!" I can't tell you the number of propositions I see weekly from instructional designers and LMS SaaS vendors there.

So, before you enroll in any online instructional design program ask yourself this... 'After I graduate, what value will I bring to the table that instructional designers in India don't?' Make no mistake, the tendency is going to be for companies to just ship off their content (policies, procedures, presentations, etc) to an offshore coding house and have them translate it into courses. You'll be competing against intelligent, technologically-savvy people with a strong work ethic who'll create courses for $10 an hour. So, being "really good with computers" isn't going to be enough by half.

Can't think of any? Depressed? Don't be. Here's are three values US course designers can bring that low-cost country (LCC) competitors can't easily duplicate. And you'll need more than just courses in instructional design and programming to be successful.

1. Intimate Profile of Learners
2. Company Business Model
3. Real Time Results Monitoring

First, being onsite at a company gives you access to the base of learners you'll be teaching. You'll know their educational backgrounds, interests, previous experience, etc. You'll have access to training programs that worked and didn't work. You'll know the important stories in your company's culture and history.

This gives you unique knowledge to design courses for YOUR company's employees. Great interviewing skills will be essential to tease out information from learners that an LCC can't using an online survey or a download from HR. You need to be able to create unique training that your fellow employees REALLY EMBRACE.

Second, being an employee, you'll have access to the intricacies of the company's business model. Most companies won't spend much, if any time, teaching their Indian LMS vendor about the business. This knowledge is critical to teaching employees the right information at the right time. Courses in basic business finance will be critical to understanding the details of your company's success and setting business goals to design courses around.

And third, being on site allows you monitor the training and the results it is (or isn't) delivering in real time. You can quickly get employee feedback on the training itself, see if people are applying what they're learning and make adjustments on the fly. Using an LCC vendor, the lag between course deployment, assessing results and making changes will be measured in months, most likely quarters. You can make corrections in days, maybe hours. Courses in basic data analysis will be key to assessing your program's effectiveness and communicating results.

In short, you need to take maximum advantage of your onsite, face-to-face position to work with learners and company leaders and create training programs that are uniquely effective with your organization's employees.

If you're someone who likes computer-based work because you can hide in your cube all day and not interact with people, stay away from online instructional design! People skills are the only thing separating you from your LCC competitors.

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