This is our first assignment in EdTech 503 that aims to measure our understanding for the Instructional Designers or Instructional/Educational Technologies duties after reading chapter 1-3 in our ID assigned book. For this assignment we had to synthesize and create a fictitious position based on the elements of the job that are commonly found over the web and mainly in the aspects we particularly like so I will leave you with one of the positions that I look forward in the future.
Educational & Instructional Technology (EIT)
Manager/ X- Airways/ Job Description
About x
X is a leading airways in Y region with 10,000 offices worldwide, X provides its valuable employee with benefit packages and wide range of departments and places to work in. X offers unique opportunities for talented and challenging individuals who works in the e-Learning field. Working with X will enable you to achieve career growth and promotions you never dreamed of, currently we are looking for an Educational & Instructional Technology manager to assist in the reshaping of our training program.
If you feel that you possess the skills and qualifications we are looking for in this application, we urge you to apply as soon a possible before the deadline of this posting on 15th of October 2014, we can’t wait to meet you!
X-Airways
Job Description
Under the direction of X subject matter experts the EIT Manager will lead a team of: blended trainer, instructional and multimedia designers to create new blended effective training program that will meet the need and vision of X
This will involve but not limited to
- Designing and developing new customized professional multimedia online/offline courses that will enable employees to learn collaboratively and alone
- Choosing appropriate interactive learning management system and authoring tools that serve X business and learning requirements
- Maintaining and updating existing compliance print-based courses using instructional design theories and methods, collaborative blended learning methodologies into to web-based publishing.
- Creating new cooperative training materials for new emerging needs in different environments as assigned by X
- Create new digital community of practice between x employees to increase productivity by 40%
- Supervise and manage the online/offline courses development process with the e-Learning department members
- Lead the coaching process for the employees for effective use of technology tools and resources
- Collect and analyze employees achievements result and communicate to find new improved instructional practice to maximize employees learning goals
Education & Key Competencies
- Certified Professional in Learning and Performance™(CPLP™)
- Master degree in Educational Technology with an emphasis on adult learning or related field from an internationally accredited university
- Minimum 7 years in management, training, implementation of programs and mastering of applying instructional/educational technologies standards
- Possess outstanding oral and written communication skills in English & Arabic (third language is an advantage)
- Cutting-edge experience with instructional design theories for adult learners and curriculum building
- Robust experience with interactive Learning Management Systems and latest used authoring technologies used in creating online courses and communities
- Talented professional in generating and envisioning new multimedia materials that meet X learning and business future goals
- Strong commandment to effectively manage team members and different departments needs
Preferred Education and Experience
- A Bachelor’s degree in information technology or related field or a certification in Instructional Design
- Knowledge with HTML5, HTML, CSS, Dreamweaver or other corresponding web-design software and multimedia applications including Adobe Flash
- Previous experience in working with other international airways
- Possess effective command in leading multiple online webinars and training workshops
- Flexibility in working with various nationalities in different countries
- Compelling expertise in managing multiple projects with the assigned budget by X
- Having compassion and understanding of other employees who shows hardship in understanding how technology works
Links
Reflection
Educators cannot do instructional design job duties due to several factors:
- Educators are subject matter expert responsible on students learning process, able to teach and design lesson plans and activities only on what they know. On the other hand instructional designers can design lesson plan or activity for things they wont teach or know about, they work hand by hand with subject matter expert to extract information and understand the field
- They don’t have enough time to do meaningful analysis for students needs or performance which the basic principle in ADDIE! For example: When students get back to school at the beginning of each year they are injected with new information and so we can’t analyze the results to compare it with the past year that have totally different learning experience and result. I believe that even the pre-test that is done in some schools can’t reveal the real actual performance for students so we can’t consider it as the perfect tool to analyze students situation
- Instructors are overwhelmed with tasks related to teaching and if they have time at evenings or weekends they save it to complete unfinished tasks like grading or preparing for the next day lesson. The true thing that quizzes assess students’ performance, but that doesn’t mean for the educators that they need to assess their teaching as a result , instead students are the one who are blamed for getting these results and teachers have to move on to finish the rest of the curriculum before the end of the school year
Actually educators are expert in transferring instructional design materials (e.g. textbooks, audio files, images) that are designed and prepared by the instructional designers/curriculum developer and this is the main difference between these two job duties. Educators are also expert in helping students to master the material which is necessary for students to make a good grade and so get into college or get a diploma so unfortunately the motivation for learning is not associated to the value of the knowledge or get more skills.
To through some light about what ID are expected to do here is a few things:
- The ID are the one who design learning experience for the audience (students. Employees….)using theories and this implies analyzing the audience, environment used to deliver learning, content used, technology or process utilized to deliver the learning experience. Most importantly that they use the best practices exercised by educators (SBE’s) in designing the instructional material and this mean that they both can work side by side in order to increase the performance of the audience and this is the main target for using ID expert people
- The ID have deep knowledge of the latest technologies used to enhance instruction so their role is to choose and apply the appropriate technology if needed in building curriculum and this is another difference : educators are not asked to be technology experts or integrator they are the best expert to deliver information so they only need to be trained by the ID on how to use technology so that they can be able to bring the curriculum to students in the class or other environment
- The ID are the one who design, develop and evaluate content/instructional material that was delivered to students and this is another difference between the educators and ID expert people: ID collect data from educators about students outcomes, feedback and as a result they reevaluate their instruction once again to take the appropriate decision
- They can/can’t teach or train the material they have designed
Finally, I would like to add that the ID don’t have to be an expert subject matter in any field in order to design instructional material and this is another difference between educators and ID: Educators should be superior instructor in their specialist, but the ID can work in different fields to design diverse instructional material whether in health or army or educational sector with the help and support of SME’s in that field, because the ID’s are armed with soft and hard skill (theories and technology) that will enable them to work in any field and this is the bless
Noura Sa'd: EDTECH Learning Log 