*** Please do not reply to this message. ***

Thank you for your interest in opportunities at Trifus. We are reviewing your qualifications against our open positions. We will contact you if we believe there is a strong fit between your experience and an open position at Trifus. If you have not done so already, we encourage you to visit our Web site to gather more information about our company at www.trifus.com. Thanks again for your interest.

Regards,


Trifus Recruiting Team

This message board needs some life! How many people actually view it?
Yes I'm a member and have attended several meetings; this group is great and run by top notch people. Honestly!

It would be great to hear a little something from everyone on this message board. I don't think we as a professional group do enough conversing with each other.

Perhaps a subject which all of us have dealt with would trigger a little discussion?
Maybe a subject that has a little fire?

This is my attempt:
I have been fortunate to have worked for fairly long periods of time as a salaried employee developing and building online content for several years.

However since May I have spoke with many companies in the Bay Area and interviewed several. I won’t get into the details of my interview experiences.
Though I do want to share that some have been so horribly bad I couldn't see how any job candidate would consider the company serious about filling their position.
Then again jobs are scarce and face it all of us need a paycheck.

The meat of this message:
The perception many people have of an Instructional Designer is down right scary. This has always been a big snag in our field of work, but I thought I would bring it up.
I fully understand some of the perceptions I've encountered and have tried very hard to repackage and reintroduce aspects of instructional Design and what it has to offer.

But, my recent experience over the last 8 months really worries me. I can't tell you how many people I've talked with that felt that they or their team had been unable to work with, or were burned by an "Instructional Designer". Virtually every case has been related to the delivery of an end product or lack of delivery that completely missed the mark.
This has included everything from a fast paced training solution being needed ASAP and the Instructional designer saying sure give me a few months 6ish, let me storyboard it and see what I can do for you.

Ahhhh! So guess what? When I meet with this person the first thing they say is look I don't need an Instructional Designer I want someone to work with team X and help them create a quick training solution on demand. After asking a few questions I realize they are very bitter toward anything I may say which includes the word instructional design. Yikes!

Don't even get me started on "Instructional Designers" selling expensive, complicated education solutions to groups that really only need to document a linear process and provide a simple step by step check list and an effective method of distributing it. (Again faulty needs assessment and the wrong solution resulting in, "Dang that instructional designer guy is expensive and I have no idea what the heck he wants us to do, we just need to show team x what comes after step 1"

Now the flipside, for some reason when I've met with several people looking to hire a Instructional Designer and know about methodologies, processes and all that stuff we use. Their focus and concern is on a whole different level. In short the Instructional stuff is trivial (we already know it) is basically the attitude.

In a few instances the discussion has gone like this. Ok so we know all about Instructional Design and face it anyone can be taught enough of the basics to get by, we want to know if you can sell our product to customers and manage the projects being built for them.

Don't get me wrong, but doesn't an experienced Instructional Designer employ a process which includes managing projects from just about every aspect even the smallest details that many people don't think of? We are even concerned with good needs assessment, ROI, along with feedback systems to help judge value and success.
Plus many of us get down and dirty and create the actual material with our own hands! So what are we missing? Last I checked many teams and groups have several people to perform all of these tasks.

Why is it that we are constantly protecting our field and trying to prove our worth? Are we selling our selves wrong or by stroke of misfortune share a similar character flaw?

Having said all of that: You could say I'm really concerned how we are perceived by others.
If the outside business world thinks that we are all round pegs and they are dealing with slots of every shape I think all of us are in big trouble.

Good story,
Have you tried posting this one on the International Society for Performance Improvement Web site? www.ispi.org Im sure it would provoke a reply. :-)
The flip side of this is of course, Subject Matter Experts, who won't use an intructional designer. Instead they come up with their own "training." In the case I am thinking of it is a 74 MINUTE streaming powerpoint presentation on the highly interesting topic of a corporate purchase order system .NO BREAKS, much less learning objectives or practice. nice....
So there you go. How do intstructional designers (or whatever we call ourselves on and offline) serve our clients. There is a good article by Sivasailam (Thiagi) Thiagarajan called Faster Better Cheaper that speaks to these ideas. http://www.thiagi.com/pfp/Generic/january2002.html#TrainingDesign
QT - One of many <qtopic+7-LeiBAQZ72V3N@quicktopic.com> wrote:

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< replied-to message removed by QT >

Your instructional design story is frightening ("One of many")! Will we all have to create new titles for ourselves in order to find our next position? This would make it difficult to write a clear objective for the top of one's resume, too.

I guess in any field we'll run into potential employers who have been burned by someone else with the same title or credentials. It's really tough if they've been burned so much, though.

Maybe we should really get behind ASTD's efforts to create a credentialing system, so we can ask, "Was that a certified instructional designer?" and explain the difference in our own qualifications, methodologies, and potential to benefit the employer.

I agree with you about this discussion board needing life and having great potential if we'll all just use it. It also needs a filter to stop all those out-of-office replies from posting. What a nuisance they are.

Good luck finding a great employer, "One of many"!

Ahhhhh... Now that’s the spirit I'm familiar with!

Good news I may be employed though as we all know it isn't a done deal until the paperwork is finished.

I was one of the original students involved in becoming the 2nd official ISPI college chapter. So yes I'm familiar with ISPI. I like ISPI though over the years I feel that some of the original people who pushed for quality have been forgotten. ASTD's license/certificate idea is interesting I do remember looking into the details of it. I can't remember all of my thoughts at the time, but I remember there were some major snags that I disagreed with. For something like that to work in our community the license should not be a source of $ for the sponsor. It should be based on some type of performance rating system which can indicate areas of weakness and strengths like one of those Consumer report car reviews. An online rating for consultants would be very cool from both aspects. As a company looking for someone I could check out the list, flag the people with for instance Healthcare experience. As a consultant I can make sure that all of my areas and specialties are noted so customers will pick me. If I do a crummy job my customer can ding me for points on different aspects or if they really like me and I did a great job they can boost my rating X number of points.

For those of us whom have been salaried employees we could have previous employers, review us in different categories with our levels posted. Then we could send potential employers to see our breakdown/grade.

I think the most important thing is for all of us to continue doing our best in providing quality and to always/ ALWAYS listen to our client no matter if they are internal or external.
Accepting a "training" project only to discover it isn't a training issue (using needs assessment) be a Pro and offer non training solutions! Chances are they will love you for saving them big $'s and really want you to work with them again. Training is our passion, but we are also responsible for knowing when a solution isn’t training.

Have a good week everyone

The classic SME gone instructor. I have thought about this for years. The fix isn't easy. If an instructional designer can coach and help develop systems that are simple and fast for a SME to use then your onto something. Developing a good rep with the SME/ instructor types and then pushing for improved systems seems like the only way it will work.

Just to clarify. ASTD's CPT's Certification is a piggyback on ISPI's work. ISPI however didn't really know how to market it well. (full disclosure) I have my CPT, It is performance based, but its more like submitting a portfolio of work than a review by a boss. In fact I used work that I did a previous job as the core of my submission. For more on certification endorsed by both ASTD and ISPI visit
http://www.certifiedpt.org/ ( a jointly sponsored site)
 
I do think that given the two stories, the question remains for me.
If good ID does add value how can it be better positioned to be seen that way?


QT - One of many <qtopic+7-LeiBAQZ72V3N@quicktopic.com> wrote:

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Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free web site building tool. Try it!
< replied-to message removed by QT >

*** Please do not reply to this message. ***

Thank you for your interest in opportunities at Trifus. We are reviewing your qualifications against our open positions. We will contact you if we believe there is a strong fit between your experience and an open position at Trifus. If you have not done so already, we encourage you to visit our Web site to gather more information about our company at www.trifus.com. Thanks again for your interest.

Regards,


Trifus Recruiting Team

Edited by author 01-29-2004 11:32 AM
I am looking for any advice regarding pricing models for e-learning at Coporate Universities. I have a client looking to re-engineer their corporate university from a cost-recovery model into a profit center. I would like to assist them with pricing strategies for delivering e-learning to their franchises across the country. These franchises already receive training and e-learning rolled up into an annual fee they pay for services from corporate, which include the university's training. While many of the courses this particular division produces require additional costs, they are finding it difficult to figure out the model for chargeback, particularly regarding e-learning. I'm interested in understanding if anyone else in a corporate university has been through the same type of scenario and has developed a pricing strategy for e-learning, particularly audiences that are "external" to corporate, but "internal" to the company (such as the case with the franchise model). I'm NOT interested in vendor e-learning pricing models, as I have plenty of information regarding that topic.

THANKS!
susan
susanm@licensedlearning.com

*** Please do not reply to this message. ***

Thank you for your interest in opportunities at Trifus. We are reviewing your qualifications against our open positions. We will contact you if we believe there is a strong fit between your experience and an open position at Trifus. If you have not done so already, we encourage you to visit our Web site to gather more information about our company at www.trifus.com. Thanks again for your interest.

Regards,


Trifus Recruiting Team

Is there anyway we can have this Trifus thing blocked? Then again maybe I can reroute all my junk email to their contact address on their website? If they were really looking for somebody they would have contacted people that have posted in the job wanted section. I know they haven't done that so...

They are using this as a free advertising section.

Due to a glitch in the Trifus automated response system, this message board has recently received several erroneous postings. We have addressed the technical problem and apologize for any inconvenience.

Trifus Support
support@trifus.com

Well, this long untended forum is a sign of something, although of what I am not sure. Childish graffiti (thanks, Chicken). Automatic mail responders people forgot to cut off. Silly debate. Self-promotion. And a few legitimate questions. And even some decent responses to them.

If you want to grab anything from this board, now's the time to do it. The new Emergent Learning Forum has set up a double opt-in discussion board to serve its members. I expect to close this QuickTopic down in a few days.

Edited by author 08-22-2004 02:49 AM
To whom it may concern,

I am so delighted to be able to access into this kind resource of providing information, discussion, consultation, experience exchange etc. I am a student at Kobe university, Japan. I am really interested in information technology. I would like to learn more about how to do business in IT. E-learning is one of my interests. I want know that can you provide me some case studies on doing business in IT? Full documents.

Thank you for your cooperation in advance.

Phoutthasinh
phoutkvz@yahoo.com

Edited by author 08-24-2004 03:12 AM
The 8th China International Fair on E-learning, co-sponsored by Education Management Information Centre, Ministry of Education, P.R.C and China International Enterprises Cooperative Corporation (CIECCO), organized by China Enterprises International Exhibitions & Advertising Co., Ltd. (CEIEAC), will be held at the National Agricultural Exhibition Centre in Beijing from November 12 to 14, 2004.

This Fair, will become an annual ceremony in the education field, after having been held successfully for seven times. It will present distance education and training, distance education and e-learning products, technique and services, and aims to provide a new communications platform for the rapidly-developing Chinese distance education market.

As the demand of both schools and enterprises for distance education keeps growing in China in recent years, this huge market is of great interest to relevant companies and online schools. Moreover, European Association for Distance Learning (EADL) has been invited to be an Overseas Supporter of the Fair.


Contact: Elan Wang, Johnson Chi
China Enterprises International Exhibitions & Advertising Co., Ltd.
Tel: 0086-10-88361773, 0086-10-88382247, Fax: 0086-10-88382248
Website: www.ceieac.net, E-mail: domestic2@ceieac.net, cn_elearning@yahoo.com