The Learned Man!

Shortage of Instructional Designers Hits Off-Shore Vendors

The booming off-shore eLearning industry in India has a few unique problems of its own to grapple with. An acute shortage of trained Instructional Designers is one. Unlike the United States, there are no institutions offering courses in Instructional Technology or Instructional Design. This usually means a great deal of time and money and effort is spent by companies in bringing their rookie ID talent upto speed. To address this problem, a Pune based custom eLearning solutions provider, Brainvisa is experimenting by partnering one of India's renowned educational institutes, Symbiosis, to offer their students of Mass Communication an optional course in Instructional Design. The students are being encouraged to consider entering this field, apart from their usual choices of advertising, print, broadcast, and journalism. The collaborators hope that this first of its kind initiative will gather momentum and go a long way in addressing the needs of the eLearning industry.

Voices on ROI

Some interesting thoughts, points of view on ROI, picked up from various articles, posts, comments:

"...ROI is not a crystal ball, a guarantee of success, or a ticket to a promotion. It is just a tool for a vendor or training manager to show that they have rationally and objectively considered the organizational benefits and costs of what they are proposing. And it is a test of whether the vendor or manager understands what the organization truly values" - William Horton, Horton Consulting

"...Consider a jazz band. People swoon to the sound of the mellow tunes belted out by the saxophone player. They hardly pay attention to the drummer. The drummer is context, while the saxophone player is content. If the band were to do an ROI analysis on each instrument, however, perhaps they would eliminate the high expense of the drummer and “invest” in two more saxophone players. How much more successful would the band be with three saxophone players and no drummer? Not much actually, because while context does not get the marquee status, there is no marquee without it." - Bob Dust in CLO

"...Making sound decisions is the rationale for calculating ROI. Often precision is not required. The back of an envelope will do." - Jay Cross, Internet Time

Responding To RFP's

Read this hilarious post on the agony and ecstacy of responding to RFP's. Have a great weekend!

Kevin Kruse's eLearning Dashboard

Drum rolls..........The Learned Man is now listed on Kevin Kruse's eLearning Dashboard! I would like to thank Kevin, my mother, my readers, and Google for making this possible!

Its a great concept, very nifty indeed. Check it out at:

Dashboard