E-Learning Design - How did you get started?

Hi Martin welcome to the community and good luck with your chosen career.

I started off life wanting to be a tennis player, realised that was never going to happen and over 15 years trained as a nurse, worked in research, moved onto be a face 2 face trainer, left to become the education lead for the East Midlands which evolved into an elearning developer, left to go freelance.

I think face 2 face training is a real asset for an instructional designer, but we all bring something to the mixing pot, find out what makes you unique and use that as your sales technique.

Anyway good luck!

Hi Martin,

Welcome to the community! I suspect you're going to get a lot of responses on this question, and each story will be very different! I started my e-learning career while working in retail loss prevention (catching shoplifters) at Kohl's Department Stores. I always say that retail loss prevention is just one step above being a mall cop (and I've done that before too!).

Anyhow, one day I was given the opportunity to go to the corporate offices and develop training for the entire loss prevention division. That's when I was first introduced to Articulate Studio '09 and discovered that I had a talent for e-learning. The rest is history really.

I agree with Phil about getting some instructional design and F2F training experience. That will help a ton. Otherwise, you can go in a million different directions. In my experience, working for a corporate organization really helped me develop my project management and instructional design skills. I don't think I could have ever made the jump to freelancing without the 5 years I spent in the corporate world.

You have to figure out what works for you and follow your gut feelings. Figure out what your end goal is and take opportunities/make decisions that move you in that direction. And hey, you made you first post here - I'd say that a step in the right direction!

Best of luck!

Tim

Contact companies looking of Freelance work. Also look into Community Based Organizations, Non-Profits, and local schools who may need instructional design work.

Hi Martin

I think you are going to see a lot of different stories in response to this question - no two roads are the same

For my part, I studied to be a teacher, worked 14 years in the gaming industry (10 of those as a trainer, training coordinator and e-learning coordinator), then moved into L&D consulting. It was at the coporate level that I was introduced to e-learning, and that was where I started to learn.

I would have to say that working direct for an organisation is a great place to start and to learn the basics. A corporate L&D team can also give you the opportunity to gain wider exposure/experience - e-Learning, paper based design and development and face-to-face delivery. I agree with Phil in that f2f experience is a huge asset in ID.

Best of luck

I applied to a course technologist job that I was very surprised to get! Previously, I worked as an Ed Tech intern where I created a little bit of training and I worked in support where I also did some training. Neither of those roles really had to do much with e-learning however. I was applying to more project coordinator and marketing assistant jobs, but somehow managed to get the course technologist position and I loved it!

Really? I was a tennis coach. Seems a long time ago now.

Martin, putting the tennis stuff aside, I'd always played around with computers and other technology so I ended up working in the field. Then I took a career break as I wanted to do something that made more of a difference to people. Trained as a CTI coach and did some career/personal coaching for a couple of years. Ended up wanting to mix in the technology angle and ended up in an elearning role. That was 7 years ago. And although that role began in sales n marketing, I used my own time to learn about the design aspects by playing with software, talking to people, getting a feel for the challenges / what works / what doesn't work etc.

Depending on what you need to earn right now, I'd recommend playing with as much software as you can (including Storyline) while contacting NGOs etc like William says.

Good luck.

Hi Martin, welcome. For networking and keeping current on topics of interest in learning technology, I recommend joining the eLearning Guild (tier one is free), and perhaps also the ATD (formerly ASTD); also to look for eLearning user groups on LinkedIn. You are already a member of this network, which is an excellent means of staying on top of new developments in Articulate. If you haven't done so, subscribe to Tom Kuhlmann's blog, and read his archives. Build up a portfolio by making tutorials on virtually any topic you can think of.

Hi Martin!

Some tips from me would be to approach a not for profit organization to build some e-learning training for them, so you can add some real experience to your resume. I would also recommend that you create a website to post your portfolio, so that you can add a link to it for any position that you apply for. (Wix.com is a free platform) Another tip would be to gain classroom facilitation experience to be a more versatile trainer/instructional designer. I facilitated Dave Ramsey classes, which helped me to gain experience. You can also look into Graduate Degrees in Instruction Design, like Purdue University's Learning Design and Technology Program. (Available as an online course.)

Hi Martin!

Welcome to the community and thanks for posting your question here! I think it's a great topic and I see you've already got some great feedback. I think the one constant when it comes to e-learning is that most people somehow fell into the field by accident, and that would include me.

I like to be really practical, so here is a list of things I would recommend to you to help you get involved and develop your e-learning skills =)

1) Take some courses or certification in Instructional Design. This will help round off your skillset. I took an amazing 3-day workshop called Instructional Design for New Designers by Langevin Learning Services and I can't recommend it highly enough. It changed my life and how I view training. They teach you how to do a training needs analysis, a task analysis, how to choose different presentation methods, etc. It's super practical and great workshop to give you good basic ID skills. Something else you might want to look into are courses on graphic design basics. Knowing how to do some cool graphic stuff (and even just basic things like removing backgrounds, cropping, adjusting brightness, adding filters, etc) will go a long way in helping you design great looking courses.

2) Develop a portfolio and a simple website for yourself. There are tons of great threads going on in the community where people share how and why they are sharing their blogs and e-learning portfolios (here, here and here to name a few). If you have access to Storyline and Captivate, develop a little 5-slide mini course in each tool that you can use in your portfolio. You can even build out a sample in Powerpoint. If you don't have any authoring tools to use in your free time try to download the 30 day free trial and create something within 30 days.

3) Take part in the Articulate weekly challenge. David Anderson hosts the Articulate Weekly Challenge where every week he posts a new topic/theme/idea and people develop their submissions using Powepoint, Studio, Storyline.... whatever they have access to! It's a great way to get inspired by others, and it's a great way to get some practice and develop samples. You can also get some good constructive criticism and feedback from others in the community, if you so choose to ask.

4) Cultivate your social media personality. Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, the Articulate forum. These are places where you can share ideas, tips, tricks and build a following and make a name for yourself in the industry. I would NOT be where I am today in my career without the blog I started (Flirting with E-Learning) and without my strong social media presence on Twitter and LinkedIn. Make sure you're putting your name out there and that will help make sure (that eventually) opportunities come to you.

5) Stay tuned to the Articulate forums and Blogs. I know this is cliche... but as they say, it's often not what you know, it's who you know. So make sure you're connecting with tons of people in your industry! One way to do this is to stick around the forums. You should also check out the blogs section to make sure you're always on top of what's new and happenin' in the world of e-learning

Good luck to you!! Hope to see more of you around the forums and on social media

Hi Martin,

Welcome. My best advice would be to create a website and create a portfolio of work that users (i.e. prospective employers) can view using the various software. Also, participating in the "weekly e-learning challenges" within this site and it would give you some experience, exposure, and courses to then load on your website. And because there is a different challenge every week, it would give you a way to practice a variety of techniques for a wide range of subject matter. The weekly challenge is where you can also see what others have created within the weekly challenges.

Hope this helps and good luck

Dana