Teacher transition

May 14, 2014

I have been teaching for 10 years and want to transition into e-learning design. I don't have lots of technical practice but am proficient with ms office. I would prefer to work from home, but it's not mandatory. What is the best way to find a company that will not discriminate against me die to my lack of technical experience. I have created almost all of my materials as a teacher, just because that's what I enjoyed doing (borderline OCD). I have provided technology training for professional development for several years but don't have experience with Adobe suites, articulate, etc. FYI I am currently learning flash and photoshop but don't feel confident enough to state that on a resume

18 Replies
Joshua Roberts

Good afternoon Ladele.

Welcome to the forums.

From my perspective I think you need to begin focusing on some authoring tools, such as Articulate Storyline. Whilst Flash and PS are great tools they are really supplementary to E-Learning creation until you have learnt the absolute bricks and mortar of development.

Currently, and truthfully I think it would be difficult for an organisation to take you on without any authoring tool experience/proficiency. Are you currently employed or looking for work? And as Nicholas has eluded to - are you looking to work on a freelance basis or is your preference to secure work within a company?

Nick n/a

I guess job description(s) would help to give a clearer idea. I'm not sure how I'd apply for an eLearning developer job without a portfolio in an authoring tool. It really depends on the company. Is there a reason you want to leave the education system Ladele?

Personally, I find the Freelance Heroes thread very helpful:

http://community.articulate.com/forums/t/16452.aspx

Try reading through all of it a few times to get a clearer picture.

Jerson  Campos

There are actually two main positions in the eLearning industry (IMO) Instructional designer and Instructional developer. Some people interchange them and use either to refer to a single position. Most companies though will have these two as separate and distinct roles. The instructional designer designs the structure of the course, the course flow, and the content. The Instructional developer (think media developer) creates the course in an authoring software. This position is more technical demanding. With your teaching background, you can look for positions that ask for instructional designers and less development skill. Once you are hired on, you can expand your skills and become familiar with the development software.

Ladele Taylor

 I am located in the richmond Virginia area. I would prefer to work from home while designing. I am still classroom teacher. I don't all do the differences between the developer job and freelancing, but I definitely think that I would prefer freelancing where I have the flexibility of work hours, location, and job choices. I love the planning and implementation behind e-learning, but I also don't want to stop there.

This year while teaching, I have been taking online classes to learn how to use adobe flash, photoshop, and learn HTML coding. If anyone else has ever been a teacher, with a family and tried this transition you clearly understand that there isn't enough time in a day. I may not be proficient in the authoring tools just yet but it's only a matter of time. I learn quickly and I heard that you can do a lot with ppt. I am very proficient with using it. As a teacher curriculum and design has been my job. I create job aids and I love to learn and use new technology. 

Ladele Taylor

Thank you all for such great responses!

Joshua and Nicholas

I am currently trying to build a portfolio. I would like to use articulate but I am waiting until school is out to use my trial month because I know that I''ll have more time available to explore and learn. In the classroom my excitement has truly been with the creation of resources. Don't get me wrong I love my students but in the urban setting that I work in, students lack motivation With all of the energy that I put into lessons, the love it for the moment and don't study do hw etc. to remember. So much more has been added to the workload of the teachers that takes away from our planning great lessons. 

Thanks Jerson, that is really helpful to know.

Joshua Roberts

Ladele Taylor said:

 I am located in the richmond Virginia area. I would prefer to work from home while designing. I am still classroom teacher. I don't all do the differences between the developer job and freelancing, but I definitely think that I would prefer freelancing where I have the flexibility of work hours, location, and job choices. I love the planning and implementation behind e-learning, but I also don't want to stop there.

This year while teaching, I have been taking online classes to learn how to use adobe flash, photoshop, and learn HTML coding. If anyone else has ever been a teacher, with a family and tried this transition you clearly understand that there isn't enough time in a day. I may not be proficient in the authoring tools just yet but it's only a matter of time. I learn quickly and I heard that you can do a lot with ppt. I am very proficient with using it. As a teacher curriculum and design has been my job. I create job aids and I love to learn and use new technology. 


Both true and false.

By using PPT you're going to be creating some pretty basic E-Learning packages which may fit the brief for some clients but it's going to bore you immensely. If you are truly in this for a new challenge and want to focus on design I would try to eliminate this preconception.

By using Storyline you will be able to create games, quizzes, interactions, engaging content, animation and much much more. Whilst it's possible to use PPT most designers I know start with a presentation which is then turned into a Storyline project. Some may just be carbon copies which are designed in a more effective way but the majority are just the boring presentation that is brought to life through the aforementioned channels.

I would also recommend learning about video editing or animated video production using a tool such as PowToon or VideoScribe as these can be invaluable resources for you. As I mentioned previously it's brilliant that you will have experience of other software packages however they will not be your key calling areas. 

As Jerson has eluded to there are a couple of roles within the industry and it's not quite as clear cut as Developer or Designer. In most organisational roles you may not be so lucky as to work with an instructional designer so the E-Learning developer will have to adopt those principles as well, this may suit you with your knowledge of designing for pupils already.

I'm sure you have the right attitude to make a success of everything, get yourself on board with the software as soon as you can, follow lots of blogs, read the forums religiously, contribute in design challenges and begin to build your expertise. 

I've been fortunate that I can divert my E-Learning delivery into niche markets that have remained largely untapped through the experience I've had in an organisational role.

Mike Jones

Hi Ladele,

As a former K-12 teacher myself, I might have some insight to share that would be of value to you. I used to teach Music (enough said on job prospects there) in Pennsylvania and made the leap to Instructional Design when I wasn't finding any full-time prospects in the classroom.

To tack on to the discussion about roles in the industry, I've actually experienced the opposite from what Jerson and Joshua have referred to as 2 distinct roles. Working internally within an organization, I've been the "1 stop shop" for designing and developing learning solutions. (ILT, WBT, Job-Aids, Webinars, Multimedia, etc.). Just this week I was part of a discussion where the organization thinks I should be doing 3D modeling/animation for 3D simulations...so that is another potential hat that I'll have to learn how to wear.

So I really think it comes down to a few factors in the end.

  • Internal Employee vs. External Freelance Consultant
  • The specific organization you're working for/with (some places only outsource, while others prefer internal production)
  • Your skill-set and what you bring to the table

As an internal employee, more and more organizations are expecting us to do more and more. Whereas a consultant can carve out a niche, but if you're only doing the planning and rolling out pieces, you might have a harder time finding work or would have to subcontract for the development pieces that you may not offer. Granted it depends on the industry, but I've seen quite a few people without the technology/authoring tool/multimedia skill set be let go; and those that are traditionally paper-based developers scramble like crazy to get up to speed on the eLearning development part of the job.

Although planning for a K-12 lesson is similar to what an Instructional Designer does, there are some big differences depending on what audience you are designing/developing for. If you're working for a K-12 institution like a virtual charter school, then your classroom lesson planning skills can be very useful. However if you're designing/developing for adults, the type of information design that you are used to isn't as appropriate for the way that they learn. Where the Pedagogical methods you use in the K-12 space relies more on you as the teacher to "dump" information into the student's empty brain, adults learn best by tying their past experiences to new information which requires a somewhat different approach (Andragogy). It's not so much a new skill set from lesson planning to designing for adult learners, it just requires a different approach to how you present the information. 

My recommendation would definitely to focus on bolstering the eLearning/technological portion of your skill set. Although PowerPoint is a good starting point, it is not very practical outside of the academic sector for delivering instruction. Also, don't limit yourself to one authoring tool - when I went through my Master's degree program (Adult Education & Communications Technology, IUP) they made it sound like the only authoring tool out there was Adobe Captivate. When I got out into the workforce, I immediately found out that there are many other tools, and I had to learn them on the fly (Articulate Studio, Storyline, and Trivantis Lectora being the ones that I've had to use). If you limit your skill set to a small subset of the available tools and resources, you're ultimately going to limit your prospects in this field.

Flexibility and a diverse skill set are immensely valuable in my experience.

Hope it helps and good luck!

Bruce Graham

Ladele Taylor said:

.

Michael, you definitely pointed out some great points. I would love to learn more (lecture, articulate, etc) but it's costly. Lol! Anyone have extras? I have previewed and looked into numerous but haven't put my hands on anything other than Adobe.


Yes - it is costly.

It's called an investment. If you want the benefits and success in this, or any career, you need to put in some "skin".

That's just the way it is.

And to be successful in this career, you will need to keep on investing in many other things, mostly business knowledge.

Frankly, at this point, I would forget about what "tech" you want to work with - do you have the BUSINESS knowledge to succeed? THAT is the main thing to being a successful freelancer.

Being a freelancer does NOT give you "freedoms", it gives you necessities - pay the mortgage, feed yourself and your family - most of the time.

You need to have the hunger to succeed.

I have one product that I decided to start learning 11 months ago - I am now considered an expert and have been commissioned to write a book on it. That has NOTHING to do with my knowledge of the product, but a whole lot to do with how I behave as a business person and salesperson.

Ask yourself some hard questions around THAT area before deciding to go freelance.

Always happy to mentor via PM if you want that.

John Nixdorf

Jerson Campos said:

There are actually two main positions in the eLearning industry (IMO) Instructional designer and Instructional developer. Some people interchange them and use either to refer to a single position. Most companies though will have these two as separate and distinct roles. The instructional designer designs the structure of the course, the course flow, and the content. The Instructional developer (think media developer) creates the course in an authoring software. This position is more technical demanding. With your teaching background, you can look for positions that ask for instructional designers and less development skill. Once you are hired on, you can expand your skills and become familiar with the development software.


IMO Jerson may be technically correct, but a lot of companies expect you to be able to do both. Especially smaller ones.

You can get hand's on practice with e-Learning tools by downloading the trial versions. Take them one at a time and work hard during the trial period to produce actual work samples. Convert some of what you did as a teacher to eLearnings.

You can test out, and make eLearning objects available for prospective employers to look at without setting up a website by using SCORM Cloud https://cloud.scorm.com/sc/guest/SignUpForm

While I would agree leave Flash alone for the time being, I would list Photoshop as absolutely indispensible for editing graphics. Illustrator next, then Audition or some other sound editing tool before you even think about Flash. Camtasia is probably as much of a video editing tool as you're going to need to be able to manipulate.

If you live in or near a city of any size your probably avenue to breaking in will be doing contract work. Be warned that the industry is moving to a contractor model so if you are expecting to find a job with medical insurance, vacations, etc. understand it may not happen right away.

Renee Minium

Lynda.com is a great resource for learning programs and it's inexpensive. If you decide to invest in something, Captivate is the least expensive option (to my knowledge). It works best for software simulation. Brief +/-

Captivate

+inexpensive, excellent for software development

-buggy, buggy, buggy and hard to use

Storyline

+easy to use, not buggy

-not enough keyboard shortcuts, more expensive (but the lack of bugs gains about half of your development time back-in the long run worth it)

Mahesh Misal

As you are a teacher and want to transition into e-learning , I suggest you to look around for e-learning companies seeking for SMEs of the domain and teaching subject in which you are proficient with. You can start with offering your services as Subject Matter Expert (SME). This can be your entry point into the e-learning industry. From there you will have lots of avenues to learn from the industry so as you may become a full fledged Instructional Designer. A short term term in Instructional Design will add to your skill set and will be a plus point in your career advancement.

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