2016 Annual Conference

When industry experts and university instructional designers establish cooperative partnerships, industrial training benefits greatly. This presentation uses an international training course developed collaboratively between an industry expert and an instructional design graduate student to highlight key lessons for those interested in industrial training.

This session is intended for:
• Industry experts who develop and deliver technical training and desire increased learning and expertise in the area of industrial course design, as well as in acquiring strategies to form partnerships with university instructional design students and faculty.
• Students of university level instructional design programs who are interested in gaining experience in authentic instructional design projects.
• Experienced members of university instructional design programs wanting to offer their services to help industry professionals develop effective training.

This session topic is important as it relates to cost effectiveness of industrial training course development as well as the instructional effectiveness of the training itself. This session focuses on both actual and opportunity costs of industrial training. These hidden costs may include not meeting course objectives due to poor design, excessive industry expert time spent developing training materials, and the associated opportunity cost of the industry expert devoting less time to core business. The positive impacts of improved collaboration between university instructional designers and industry experts include lower training development costs, an increased chance of meeting training objectives, improved student enjoyment of the training, and more job satisfaction by both instructional designers and industry experts as they focus on what they do best. While the concept of collaboration is not new, it is the personal experience of one of the presenters, an annuitant of a major international corporation, that industry-university collaboration could be more effectively leveraged. With ever increasing pressures on training budgets, the need to train newcomers in a wide range of topics, and newcomers’ expectations of up-to-date training methods, innovative solutions that universities offer combined with industry’s needs is a timely topic.