This organization under study is a research and manufacturing corporation who's main target market is the highly technical aerospace arena. A commercial division was created a number of years ago whose mission was to provide training, mentoring, and consulting to commercial organizations in software and system technologies. Traditionally, this corporation employs engineering staff. Engineers, expert in their technical areas, have little training in course development. Course development has been traditionally transferring highlights of books to PowerPoint productions.
Some courses are just updated from former courses that have been offered in the past.
Instructors are not part of the development process and just deliver the content. It is a challenge for new instructors to successfully deliver courses that are littered with pot holes, ditches, and even cliffs. Besides the internal challenges associated with new courses, customers are becoming more savvy on modern learning theories and are demanding highly structured courses. The lack of instructional design methodology is losing the corporation opportunities in the training market. New standards that bring course designers and instructors together are required.