Frequently Asked Questions
What is Educational Technology?
What are the duration and timings?
What are the future prospects?
What are the various types of organizations where Instructional Designers work?
How are MET-CA graduates placed?
Which soft skills are essential to work as an Instructional Designer?
What role an ID has to perform?
Is the term ID is used as a synonym to GD?
What is Educational Technology?
Educational technology is a complex, integrated process involving people, procedures, ideas, devices, and organization, for analyzing problems and devising, implementing, evaluating, and managing solutions to those problems, involved in all aspects of learning. It is the use of multimedia technology or audiovisual aids as a tool to enhance the teaching and learning process. It is the use of technology to support the learning process.
What are the duration and timings?
A credit is a unit that gives weighting to the value, level or time requirements of an academic course.
In the METCA course 1 credit = 15 hrs of teaching learning session and is allotted 25 marks. Each semester comprises of 16 credits and the entire course is of 64 credits. The advantage of credit system is, students can carry forward their credits if they leave the course in between and join back. They do not need to appear for the same paper again. Likewise these credits can also be transferred to another course which has same papers and follows credit system.
What are the future prospects?
Educational Multimedia development is a rapidly growing area and there is a dearth of qualified professionals. Indian e-learning industries have gained a great deal of acceptance internationally for developing on-line courses. The industries are looking for trained professionals in the areas of instructional design, content development and story-board development.
Instructional design is a discipline which focuses on the systematic process of planning any teaching-learning process and developing an effective educational system. It also involves micro-planning and material development for actual teaching-learning activity. Instructional Design is essential for developing an effective educational multimedia or a web-based course.
An online course is the one in which a computer and internet are used to deliver lesson and also to carry interaction between the student, instructor and other students. An online course allows flexibility of time and place while the objectives and content of the course are essentially the same as those offered in traditional classroom setting. The class format is very flexible for busy schedules due to the fact that you can log on the course at any time of the day.
What are the various types of organizations where Instructional Designers work?
There are two main areas where Instructional Designers work: corporate/organizational and education.
Corporate sector include e-learning firm, corporate training organizations, e-solutions company. They also work as training designers and/or developers in the military, government, healthcare, banking, or any business or organization which requires systematic and frequent training.
The education sector includes, universities (face to face or online education), Distance education institutions.
How are MET-CA graduates placed?
The students work as Project Trainees during their fourth semester. They earn a monthly stipend of about Rs. 10000/- during their internship. Most of the students are immediately absorbed in the same industry or are employed by other industries immediately after the completion of the course, even before their final results are declared. They are generally placed on the starting salary ranging from Rs. 17,000/- to 19,000/- and above. The e-learning Industries where our students are working are Tata Consultancy Services, Accenture, LionsBridge, Reliance, Aptech, SchoolNet (IL&FS), Tata Interactive Systems, Gurukul Online, HexaVarsity, and many other known corporate.
Which soft skills are essential to work as an Instructional Designer?
Any organization is manned by people; therefore soft skills are very important part of the set of skills of an Instructional Designer. They are all about how to deal with people and present oneself. Primarily an Instructional designer is required to be a team player with good analytical skills. As most of the work is done with a team, interpersonal skills are very important. One may also be leading the team & managing various tasks for which behavioral traits like attitude, motivation & time management are required. An Instructional designer also has to deal with clients, thus soft skills like social grace, business etiquette, negotiation skills are essential.
To grow in an organization, these soft skills & personality that matter, more so in large organizations where several people with similar technical expertise will compete for a promotion.
What role an ID has to perform?
There are several responsibilities commonly recognized for the instructional designer in an industry. These are:Initial responsibilities:
Further responsibilities:
Higher responsibilities:
The ID may also work on higher leadership positions which could be:
Is the term ID is used as a synonym to GD?
The term Instructional Designing is different from the term Graphic Designing.
Instructional designer have an understanding of both learning processes and advanced technologies, cares about facilitating learning and believe that technologies can play an important role in realizing certain instructional objectives. They design the overall educational multimedia project whereas Graphic designers develop an educational multimedia project. Graphic designers work in three major areas: (i) developing a visual concept, (ii) developing effective visual communication, and (iii) developing conceptual ideas. To develop the projects they use a variety of very complex computer programs in their day-to-day work. Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and PageMaker are just a few of the graphic design programs commonly used. After the initial design they may be required to modify or edit it based on the request of the instructional designers or project manager.
