So, you want to be an Instructional Designer

Instructional Design (ID) is about creating learning experiences. Big experiences like eLearning courses, training programs, and onboarding, and small experiences like microlearning and job aids. It combines education, psychology, and content creation, and is mostly found in corporate L&D (learning & development) departments, higher education, nonprofits, government, and edtech companies.

What you need to make:

You need a portfolio. Hiring managers want to see samples.

If you have no experience, create a demo onboarding module for a fictional company. Rebuild a bad training you once sat through. Pick any topic you know well and design a short eLearning module around it.

Tools:

▪️ Articulate Storyline, Rise and/or Adobe Captivate (these programs are industry standards)

▪️ Canva or Adobe Photoshop for images

▪️ Camtasia for video production

▪️ Google Slides or PowerPoint

▪️ Microsoft Office

Put your portfolio on a simple website. Upload videos and walkthroughs of your courses to YouTube and add their links to your website. Don't let perfect be the enemy of done.

Skills:

Here are the skills that show up most often in job descriptions.

▪️ Needs analysis - can you figure out what the actual problem is before jumping to a solution? (Survey, feedback from managers, performance audit, focus group) 

▪️ Writing clearly – a lot of this job is writing scripts, storyboards, facilitator guides, job aids, communication with stakeholders (subject matter experts, project managers, project owners, etc.) and assessments.

▪️ Visual design basics - you don't need to be a graphic designer, but you should know how to use color contrast, white space, brand guidelines, style guides, and generally how to make a screen of content not look cluttered.

▪️ Collaboration - you will work with subject matter experts (SMEs) who are busy and not always sure what they want. Soft skills matter.

▪️ Familiarity with learning theory and frameworks - ADDIE, SAM, Bloom's Taxonomy, Kirkpatrick. You don't need to be an academic, but you should be able to speak briefly about the vocabulary and acronyms.