Finding Instructional Design Jobs

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While the field of Instructional Design and Technology is growing, finding a job can be difficult (in part because jobs are posted all over the place).  It is important to know the right places to look.  The following are some of the top job boards to check when looking for a job as a instructional designer, instructional technologist or basically any job related to the field of Instructional Design and Technology (IDT). I recommend searching using key words (e.g., “instructional design” “educational technology” “instructional developer”) as well as searching by position/type or category (if available).

Higheredjobs.com
http://www.higheredjobs.com/

Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/section/Jobs/61/

Inside HigherEd
http://www.insidehighered.com/career/seekers

AECT
http://www.jobtarget.com/home/index.cfm?site_id=136

AACE
http://jobs.aace.org/home/index.cfm?site_id=3855

Sloan-C
http://sloanconsortium.org/jobline

ASTD
http://jobs.astd.org/

ISPI
http://www.jobtarget.com/home/index.cfm?site_id=2637

SALT
http://www.salt.org/salt.asp?ss=l&pn=joblistall

Indiana University Job Board
http://www.indiana.edu/~ist/students/jobs/joblink.html

Indeed
http://www.indeed.com/q-Instructional-Technology-jobs.html

The eLearning Guild
http://www.elearningguild.com/job_board/jobs/index.cfm?action=viewcats&selection=doc.25

Society of Technical Communication*
http://www.stc.org

Are there other places you look? If so, let me know.

*Added based on comments

Cite — Pearson | eCollege’s Conference CFP

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Call for Presentations is now open for Cite. It will be in Denver April 11-13 and in the past has been a great conference with strong key note presentations. The deadline to submit a proposal is Jan. 14th 2011.

For more information, visit: http://www.pearsoncite.com/landing_cfp.html

Research Articles that Show Distance Education Works

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@wcet_info tweeted the following today:

“Asked to create list of research articles, journal articles, or other “credible” evidence that distance ed works. What would you include?”

I have been asked similar questions in the past. While I usually start by saying that as a whole research on distance education and online learning is still in its infancy, the following are a few articles I point to. These tend to be literature reviews or meta-analyses.

  • Bernard, R. M., Abrami, P. C., Lou, Y., Borokhovski, E., Wade, A., Wozney, L., Wallet, P. A., Fiset, M., & Huang, B. (2004). How Does Distance Education Compare With Classroom Instruction? A Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Literature. Review of Educational Research, 74(3), 379-439.
    Retrieved from http://rer.sagepub.com/content/74/3/379.full.pdf+html

  • Tallent-Runnels, M. K., Thomas, J. A., Lan, W. Y., Cooper, S., Ahern, T. C., Shaw, S. M., & Liu, X. (2006). Teaching courses online: A review of the research. Review of Educational Research, 76(1), 93-135.
    Retrieved from http://rer.sagepub.com/content/76/1/93.full.pdf+html

  • Larreamendy-Joerns, J., & Leinhardt, G. (2006). Going the distance with online education. Review of Educational Research, 76(4), 567-605.
    Retrieved from http://rer.sagepub.com/content/76/4/567.full.pdf+html

  • Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., Bakia, M., & Jones, K. (2009). Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies. U.S. Department of Education.
    Retrieved from http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf

  • Zhao, Y., J. Lei, B. Yan, C. Lai, & H. S. Tan. (2005). What makes the difference? A practical analysis of research on the effectiveness of distance education. Teachers College Record 107 (8):183684.


Did I miss any? What would you include? Please comment.

SITE 2011

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Involved with post-secondary education (ideally Teacher Preparation) and technology? If so, you should consider SITE 2011attending and presenting at SITE 2011. I am a strong believer that if you are attending a conference for professional development then you should consider presenting at it as well. The call for presentations is out for SITE 2011. You have until Jan. 3rd to submit your proposal.
http://site.aace.org/conf/call.htm

Stop Using Windows Media Video (.wmv)

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Every semester we get calls from faculty and students about issues viewing videos (almost always windows media video format) in Blackboard or eCollege (the two Learning Management Systems we use). While not always, most of the time these calls  come from Mac users.  While Mac users can use Flip4Mac or Windows Media Player for Mac OS X, for whatever reason there are times where even with these media players supposedly installed (note: these are distance students so we can’t verify easily if they installed it correctly) students can’t view the videos.

As a result, we offered a workshop yesterday about avoiding some of these problems. You can watch a recording of the workshop online: https://connect.cuonline.edu/p43536068/

A copy of the basic presentation can be viewed below. But the basic gist of our presentation was to avoid using formats like .wmv or real media and instead focus on using common formats like .flv or .mp4. We talked about the pros and cons of using “Flash Video” (.flv). We specifically went over three different tools faculty can use to convert their videos themselves, namely:

—Zamzar (great for short videos; web-based)
—Hamster (perhaps the easiest tool out there; but only available for a PC)
—Handbrake (very robust tool)

Finally, we concluded with encouraging faculty to put all videos (but especially videos longer than 5 minutes) on a streaming sever.  We talked about the benefits of using YouTube but also highlighted that faculty could use CU Online’s Flash Server.

Do you have problems with .wmv? If so, please share how you handle it.