Priya Thiagarajan

Cultivate a passion for helping others learn. That is at the foundation of any learning & training related work. Don’t think Instructional Design is ADDIE - know that it is just a process. ID means design thinking. Knowing the cognitive neurosciences/behavioural/ psychological underpinnings of learning. Develop an abiding interest to know how humans or even living beings learn in the ever changing information landscape. Keep reading - you don’t need a certification course. Google search should get you enough and more. Feel the weight of responsibility of helping someone learn every time you sit down to create a piece of learning content.

It is important to ask how is the team structured. Traditionally, ID, media and tech functions used to be distinct and separate, but now with new tools, these are becoming fuzzy. It is important to know how your prospective team is organised and whether your skills are aligned to that. Otherwise it would lead to unrealistic expectations such as ID doing everything - content, graphics, customer management etc. it works for some people, it doesn’t for others.

E-learning saves time. As adults and working professionals, we often have a specific learning need such as “how to use the VLookup functionality in MS Excel?” Or “top tips to have a PIP conversation with an employee” or “how to use PowerBI to extract a specific report”. These are questions we usually walk up to a friend/colleague (if they are available) and ask. We don’t take a 2-day course. That’s the niche where e-learning shines. Short, micro-learning modules, meta tagged and searchable, uploaded on an LMS/LxP can give you that quick 5 -10 minute learning that will make you better at your job. And if the platform also has some AI/recommender engine in built, it is going to give you a list of all other similar training!

In addition to the great points raised here, I believe that industry level courses will be attractive only if there is a clear employability agenda and path. On one hand, organisations are struggling with lack of relevant talent. On the other end, there are millions of people joining the workforce everyday. What is the gap? Why aren’t they employable? The curriculum and content need to address this. Also, industry leaders should agree that these certifications will become a necessary criteria for employing them. Otherwise these will not be useful.

As our audiences are getting younger, here’s the fact: e-learning is passé, video is the only way to create learning content. So my advice is not to take the long route in creating videos. Use the surfeit of video production tools available, from mobile phone movie makers to AI generative tools. I find that organisations are leery about procuring these tools - don’t be. Pick up these tools (Kinemaster, Vyond, powtoon, Davinci - the list is endless). They are cheap. Enable your trainers, instructional designers, training managers, in-house SMEs and learners with them. Create a platform (again use anything - Sharepoint, LMS, vidyard) for them to publish. Create a simple workflow for content monitoring. Just get on the journey today!

Pioneer new design paradigms I don’t think we should set boundaries or levels as high/low for art and creativity. I know that there is a general feeling that fine art is for the galleries and content development is commercial so it needs to be utilitarian. Content development, especially digital content development, is pretty much a new frontier where these older paradigms need not apply. In my experience as learning content developer, we have used sand art, custom illustrations, claymation, stop motion animation, digital painting etc. to enhance and differentiate the learning experience. We had a very satisfying creative experience and our learners loved them. We have also received a number of industry awards for the same.