Once in a while, I will get a message from someone wanting to transition from teaching to the world of Instructional Design. I’m always glad to help others in this pursuit. I love the world of education, but I lost the energy for in-class teaching after so many years. After searching for other options, I was able to find ID and I haven’t looked back since.
At first, I was intrigued about the eLearning tech aspect, but I really fell in love with the cognitive theories and practices that come with it as well. There’s a lot of interesting psychology behind ID. My advice to anyone would be to build a portfolio, but do it in a way as to show that your modules can solve some kind of real-life problem or knowledge gap. Storyline is the gold standard in ID, followed by Adobe Captivate, so I would suggest brushing up on any of those authoring tools and start building your portfolio. There are trial versions of both. Later on, you can add additional things like video learning software such as Camtasia. But always keep in mind that technology isn’t always necessary, and that tech should not drive pedagogy, but pedagogy should drive the technology.
Richard Mayer is a big name in ID. His 12 principles of multimedia learning are very simple yet very important and effective. Also, follow these people on LinkedIn and Youtube as they have the best content for aspiring ID’s: Devlin Peck, Jeff Batt, Sara Stevick, Tim Slade, and Dave McAlinden.
If you are interested in great books for ID and eLearning development, then I would suggest Map It by Cathy Moore, The Non-Designer’s Design Book, and Design for How People Learn. However, you can get the same information from the people I listed above.
Don’t ever underestimate yourself in this field. No matter your background, you will only become better from it as many professions can be complemented by ID. You will find that it is a field you will gladly become obsessed with.