# Current Status of Bangladeshi Instructional Design Professionals

Mehedi Hasan Anik

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## To cite this version:

Mehedi Hasan Anik. Current Status of Bangladeshi Instructional Design Professionals. Universite Cote d'Azur. 2025, pp.17. hal-04924839

HAL Id: hal-04924839

https://hal.science/hal-04924839v1

Submitted on 1 Feb 2025

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CURRENT STATUS
OF
BANGLADESHI
INSTRUCTIONAL
DESIGN
PROFESSIONALS

Bangladeshi Perspectives, Comparison with
Developed Countries, Potential Challenges,
and Experts' Recommendations

by
Mehedi Hasan Anik
MSc Smart EdTech, Cote d'Azur University

January 2024
## Acknowledgement:

This report encapsulates the outcomes of a survey study titled "Professionals Who Think that Instructional Design Is One of Their Roles: Bangladeshi Perspectives, Comparison with Developed Countries, Potential Challenges, and Experts' Recommendations," led by Mehedi Hasan Anik, an MSc (M2) student from the Smart EdTech program at Côte d'Azur University, France. For encountering the challenges, two experts' recommendations have been suggested. Special thanks to teacher Vivien Lake for her encouragement and feedback to conduct such a study based on the topic selected. Experts from this field from Bangladesh also helped to enrich this study with their valuable quantitative data and recommendations. In addition, I would love to take the opportunity to show my gratitude to all the participants who participated in this study and the well-wishers from Bangladesh who helped to share the questionnaire among people who may not be reachable from France. Primarily, the key findings will be used for the AIUSMA31: Instructional Design-2 course's assignments and project purpose offered by the Smart EdTech MSc program. Later, with positive feedback from the course teacher and peer learning community, further publication as a scientific research report or research article is also a possibility.

Mehedi Hasan Anik
MSc, Smart EdTech Program
Côte d'Azur University
## Summary of the Findings:

Participants- 76 professionals from higher education (HE) and corporate learning and development (L&D) sectors participated. Among them, 49 participants work for higher education institutions, and 27 others work in the corporate L&D sectors.

Participants are diversely qualified.

* 58% hold a master's degree and 26% hold a Ph.D. degree.

* 24% consider themselves as new in the field whereas 23% admitted more than 15 years of work experience as an instructional designer.

In most workplaces, there is no independent instructional designer post.

* 71% of participants admitted that their workplaces require instructional design skills but no independent position.

They do more than just design instruction. There is a popular belief that instructional designers are IT personnel who simply move courses online. Survey respondents described performing widely varied tasks day-to-day.

* Almost 70% of the participants admitted to be involved in teaching courses besides designing instructions. Out of

which, 36% teach courses multiple times a day.

* 68% admitted to be involved in managing projects.

Diverse skills have been identified as important for the job.

* Strategic Planning (84%), Learning Technologies (75%), and teaching experiences (74%) are the three skills identified as very important for being an instructional designer in Bangladesh.

* On the contrary, only 9% of professionals believe that coding is very important for this profession which is the lowest percentile.

The professionals have significant problems in their workplaces.

* Lack of time due to work overload, lack of resources, and lack of access to technologies are the main issues identified.
Table of Contents

Acknowledgement: .................................................. 2

Chapter I: Current Status of Bangladeshi
ID Professionals.................................................. 5

The Instructional Designers .................... 5

Personas: .................................................. 6

The Workplace: ........................................ 7

Tasks Performed: .................................... 8

Skills: ................................................................ 9

People the ID Professionals Deal with:
.................................................................... 10

Tools the Professionals Use: .................... 11

Career Path .................................................. 12

Entry-Level Professionals.................. 12

Mid-Level Professionals .................... 12

Senior-Level Professionals: ............ 12

Chapter II: Barriers to Success and
Experts' Recommendations.................. 13

Barriers to Success.................................... 13

Experts' Recommendations .................... 14

Chapter III: Comparison of Bangladeshi
and American ID professionals.................. 15

Gender and Age: ........................................ 15

Educational Qualification and
Experiences: ........................................ 15

Tasks Performed: .................................... 15

Skills: ................................................................ 15

People: .................................................... 15

Tools: ................................................................ 16

Career Paths: ............................................ 16

Barriers to Success: ................................. 16
# Chapter I: Current Status of Bangladeshi ID Professionals

## The Instructional Designers

Based on our survey results, instructional designers are 57% male and most of the participants were from the 18-29 and 40-49 age cohorts. Instructional designers tend to be highly and diversely educated. For example, amongst those 58% of participants with master's degrees, and 26% have Ph.D. degrees. Among the participants, the top four disciplines from where the highest degrees earned are- Social Science, Education, Engineering and Technology, and Natural Sciences. Many instructional designers have a breadth of work experience. Participants emphasized their experience in areas such as teaching, producing multimedia, graphic design, academic research, etc.

### Participants by Gender

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### Participants by Age

<figure><img src="image_4.png" /></figure>

### Participants by Educational Qualifications

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### Year of Experiences of the Participants

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### Ranking of the Discipline/Area where the highest degree was earned:

1. Arts and Humanities

2. Education

3. Engineering and Technology

4. Natural Sciences

5. Social Sciences

6. Computer Science and Information Technology

7. Medical and Health Sciences

8. Agriculture and Environmental Science

9. Business and Economics

10. Law
Three personas have been created from the interviews with three professionals where the first one works as a university teacher, the second one is more experienced one and have experiences of working in the both HE and L&D sectors and the third professional works in a leading training organization works in the corporate learning and development sector. The name, the place where they works are kept anonymous and fake names are used. Although the age and their interview data have been mentioned carefully.

- Mehedi Hasan Anik

<figure><img src="image_7.png" /><figcaption>Mr. Alam, Age-32
Lecturer, Higher Education Institute, Bangladesh</figcaption></figure>

> 'There is no position like instructional designer in our higher educational institutions. The faculties play both roles as a teacher and an instructional designer'

Lecturer whose one of the roles at the higher education institute is Instructional Designing.

My major activities involves-curriculum development, syllabus development, semester planning, lesson planning, designing teaching-learning materials etc. Although due to lack of administrative supports, I have to do some administrative works for example-result sheet developing, students mess and canteen management for residential students etc. Therefore, I feel an overload of works at my workplace. This is the similar case for my other colleagues too. That's why there should be administrative supports for result publications and positions like independent instructional designers in higher educational institutes.

<figure><img src="image_8.png" /><figcaption>Mr. Rahman, Age-51
Professor and a UK-based e-learning project's country head, Bangladesh</figcaption></figure>

> 'The only difference I face is I get more flexibility in higher education, but for projects, I had to reshape my plans according to the policies, funders' requirements, and existing research.'

Experienced Instructional Designer who has long experience of working in the Higher Education and Learning and Development Sector.

Teachers of higher education institutes have to play administrative roles beyond the classroom which is creating workloads we lack the numbers. Therefore, with the help of University Grants Commission (UGC), I am involved in training the higher education institution professionals to act as professional learning communities (PLC) effectively. We are also thinking of assigning students the roles of pedagogical assistance that we do in terms of projects. When I get to work in corporate learning and development relevant projects, we recruit our students for tools piloting, field visits, data collection, and data entry activities. We, therefore, can concentrate on proposal development, training materials development, and arranging workshops for our stakeholders and to train our filed researchers. The university authority is also thinking of involving our students in terms of pedagogical assistance to release us from extensive workloads like we usually do in projects. Although the major problem is that in projects we can pay. However, I think offering a recognition from the institution may encourage the students to get involved. One of the differences between the two sectors is I feel less flexible but more responsible in corporate learning sectors. Although, I like the flexibility of being an instructional designer of my little classrooms' because of its' universal nature. Working in both sectors, I feel that both sectors are important and can be wisely collaborative with our positive intentions.

<figure><img src="image_9.png" /><figcaption>Ms. Nushat, Age-27
Instructional Designer at a leading training institute, Bangladesh</figcaption></figure>

> 'Corporate sectors are less aware of involving instructional designers in their training activities. Private schools, military organizations are often the main stakeholders of our services.'

Works at a leading training organization of Bangladesh as an instructional designer. Works for teachers training, parental training, psychological guidance, citizenship training etc. relevant projects.

We mainly have educational institutions as our major clients. The very new curriculum for secondary education creates new needs like improving parental involvement in schools, teacher's quality improvement in addressing real-life situations inside classroom, career counselling for private university students where the job acceptance rate is lower than the average. Although, we also develop workshops materials for promoting citizenship training among arm forces organizations. Recently Bangladesh has faced scarcity in electricity supply and big cyclones due to climate change.

We also developed training materials and arranged workshops for corporate fields (e.g., garments, electronics manufacturing companies etc.). The trainings involve reducing use of electricity in our industries, and how our industrial people can participate in our climate actions. Our main working motto is to give the first priority to the target audience. Therefore, we have to undergo action researches, need assessments etc. strategies to set our goals first. I am somewhat unhappy because our culture is less cooperative and more competitive. Therefore, collaborating with other such institutions working for the same goal is hardly observed.

Personas on professionals of Bangladesh who think that instructional design in one of their roles © 2023 by Mehedi Hasan Anik is licensed under CC BY 4.0
## The Workplace:

Almost 65% of the participants are from higher educational institutions. Although, despite being a higher educational professional, many of the participants admitted to working also in the corporate learning and development sectors.

Despite having instructional design as an important role in their workplaces, 71% of participants admitted that there is no independent position like an instructional designer in their workplace but their current jobs require the skills of an instructional designer.

<figure><img src="image_10.png" /><figcaption>Organization Types</figcaption></figure>

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## Tasks Performed:

Teaching courses, moving courses between Learning Management Systems (LMS), managing projects, and multimedia productions are the main four tasks performed multiple times in a day by many professionals. Other tasks performed by the participants are namely- administrative duty, course evaluation, technology training, and pedagogical training.

Most of the higher educational institutions in Bangladesh don't have an LMS platform, therefore, 39% of the participants never get the opportunity to work with LMS. In addition, most of the participants from age cohort 18-29, and 30-39 are deprived of the opportunity to manage projects. Comparatively older participants show such engagement.

## Tasks Undertaken by the Participants

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Skills:

Despite having 62% of participants from higher education institutions, 74% of participants consider teaching experience as very important in their jobs. Such findings indicate that some participants from corporate L&D sectors are also involved in teaching besides their job as instructional designers. Other mentionable skills identified by the participants as very important are-strategic planning (84%), learning technologies (75%), instructional design models (72%), and research (67%).

One of the participants who identifies multiple skills as a very important cohort said, *"Teaching experience, writing for publication, and research are all very important for further growth in my career as an academician. Strategic planning and learning technologies are highly important for well-organized and well-equipped teaching"*.

On the contrary, coding and graphic design have been considered not important by most of the participants to perform their job.

<figure><img src="image_13.png" /><figcaption>Importance of the Skills for the Participants</figcaption></figure>
## People the ID Professionals Deal with:

Most of the participants are from higher education platforms and the higher education professionals admit that their institutions have no independent position for instructional designers rather the institutions require people who can handle instructional design besides their other job responsibilities. The finding is also supported by the survey data where 46% of participants admit to working with faculty members and 47% of the participants work with the students multiple times a day.

The surprising thing is that 49% of the participants admitted not to work with other instructional designers. This finding is similar to the fact that 71% of participants work in a place where no independent position for instructional designers is offered whereas 21.1% of participants admitted that their workplaces have positions for instructional designers but in different names. Therefore, a lack of awareness of the instructional design and instructional designers may also play a vital role here.

## People the Participants Deal With

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## Tools the Professionals Use:

Despite being instructional designers, 29% of the participants rarely can access or choose digital tools for their professions.

Communication tools are used by every single participant. The most interesting finding is that use of AI assistant tools has increased and only 8% admitted that they don't use AI assistant tools whereas 78% confirmed using AI assistant tools regularly. Other most commonly used tools are- multimedia tools, project management tools, courseware, open education resources, authoring tools, etc.

### Technology Usage by the Participants

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### Usage of Tools by ID Professionals

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# Career Path

## Entry-Level Professionals:

49% of entry-level professionals want to progress in their current role, and 17% showed interest in obtaining a higher degree. A negligible number of participants (5%) want to transmit out of higher education institutions.

### Career Path (Entry Level)

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### Career Path (Mid-Level)

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### Senior-Level Professionals:

38% of participants showed interest in getting an admin/managerial higher position. 35% showed their motivation to progress in their current role. And 27% of the participants show aspiration to retire in their current role.

## Mid-Level Professionals

Like entry-level, many participants wanted to progress in their current roles. Unlike entry-level professionals, 27% were interested in managerial/admin roles. However, the number of participants who want to transmit out of the higher education sector increased to 9% which was 5% at the entry level.

### Career Path (Senior Level)

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# Chapter II: Barriers to Success and Experts' Recommendations

## Barriers to Success

According to our survey, the top three obstacles faced by ID professionals in Bangladesh are lack of resources, time constraints, and administrative barriers. Considering lack of time as a major issue, a participant from the higher education sector admitted, "*Time is a big issue as I have to handle 6-8 courses per semester. This means I have to spend a great amount of time taking offline classes, evaluating students, and making results. The workload provides less opportunity to do academic research work and is also a barrier to my professional development throughout my teaching career*". Another participant facing all the three barriers to success expressed, "*Overworking on clerkish tasks, maintaining unnecessary office hours at work, lack of autonomy, lack of resources are hindrances in the path of quality teaching, instructional management, and research*".

The other barriers identified by the participants are- lack of faculty buy-in, lack of access to tools and technology, institutional bureaucracy, lack of awareness, project management, and pedagogical constraints. Here is the graphical representation of the percentage of the participants who identified the specific barriers-

## Barriers to Success

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## Challenges Faced by the Participants

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## Experts' Recommendations

Two open-ended interviews were conducted involving experts who have more than 20 years of experience teaching instructional design courses in higher education institutions. While informing them about the challenges faced by ID professionals, the experts lament that most university authorities have less or no awareness of not recruiting independent instructional designers in higher educational institutions. That's why there is no independent position for ID professionals in Higher Education. Although only recruiting ID professionals is not the only way as one of the experts recommends for effective collaboration between ID professionals and faculties for better outcomes. The expert suggests establishing formal professional learning communities (PLCs) to make that fruitful.

Experts also identified the causes of workload for the faculties as they have to conduct classes, assess students, take exams, and make result sheets. To make the work flexible for the faculties works such as developing result sheets can be undertaken by the other officials from the examination and result section of the university is recommended by both experts.

One of the experts admitted that lack of access to technologies and resource constraints cannot be overcome overnight due to lack of budget. Investment and income from research and projects are not very rich for most of the institutions in Bangladesh. Therefore, awareness should be built among the stakeholders, especially businessmen and foreign investors to invest in the institutions. Asking whether we can overcome such an issue with the resources we have, the expert added, "...this is also a possibility. But we need to establish a collaborative mechanism to establish a cooperative mentality to share resources among the professionals". However, the expert also warned that if we cannot decrease the workloads of the professionals, they may not show interest in collaborating in a PLC due to lack of time.

Therefore, in short, we need to recruit more ID professionals in institutions, especially in higher education institutions. Establish a collaborative culture through engaging the professionals in a Professional Learning Community (PLC), and should seek attention from the indigenous and foreign investors.
# Chapter III: Comparison of Bangladeshi and American ID professionals

## Gender and Age:

In America, 67% of the ID professionals are female¹ whereas 43% of the respondents of the survey study are female. So female participation in this job sector is higher in America than in Bangladesh. Although 76 participants cannot represent all the ID professionals in Bangladesh.

47% of Bangladeshi ID professionals who participated in the study are from the 18-29 years cohort, on the contrary, 32% of ID professionals in the USA are from the 40-49 years cohort¹.

## Educational Qualification and Experiences:

87% of respondents have master's degrees, and 32% have doctoral degrees in the USA¹. Among Bangladeshi professionals, the rate is 58% and 26% respectively.

87% of respondents have 3 to 11+ years in instructional design¹. Meanwhile, 60% of respondents from Bangladesh have 3-11+ years of experience in instructional design.

## Tasks Performed:

73% of respondents from the USA manage projects at least once a day¹.

The percentage from Bangladesh is 39% which indicates a lack of opportunity to be involved in projects in Bangladesh. Another finding of lack of investment in Bangladesh may have influence.

American 60% of respondents train someone in technology at least once a day¹. On the contrary, the percentage from Bangladesh is 37%. It is similar to other findings indicating the lack of resources and lack of access to technology for Bangladeshi ID professionals.

## Skills:

The top three skills identified by the American ID professionals are learning new technologies, Project management, and Learning science/theory¹. On the other hand, Bangladeshi professionals identified strategic planning, learning new technologies, and teaching experience as their top 3 skills. Though, similarly, most ID professionals from both nations identified coding and graphic design as less important skills.

## People:

Almost 60% of American ID professionals get the opportunity to work with other ID professionals at least once a day¹. However, due to a lack of independent recruitment of ID professionals and heavy workloads, only 25% of Bangladeshi professionals can do the same.
### Tools:

40% of Bangladeshi professionals work on LMS at least once a day. The number is less than 5% for the faculties from Higher education. This is because most Bangladeshi universities don't have their personal LMS platform. The number of American ID professionals using LMS is much higher and is more than 80%¹.

### Career Paths:

Entry-level ID professionals from America show interest in retiring from the job which is unlikely in terms of the Bangladeshi ID professionals of a similar level. It is also interesting that senior-level ID professionals have no interest in pursuing further higher education which is dissimilar to the senior-level ID professionals from the USA.

### Barriers to Success:

American ID professionals identified a lack of faculty buy-in, time, and resources as the top three barriers to their success¹. Unlike faculty buy-in, Bangladeshi ID professionals addressed administration as a major barrier besides time and resources.

### Reference:

¹Futures, I. (2016). Instructional design in higher education: A report on the role, workflow, and experience of instructional designers.
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