Hello! My name is Jen and I will soon be graduating from Purdue's LDT program. I wanted to see if anyone else here is new to the field, remembers what it was like to first start out, or had changed careers. I am changing careers from college admissions to that of instructional design, so could use all the help I can get to set my best foot forward. One thing I need to work on is my portfolio; does anyone have any tips for organizing my work? Should I show everything or just a few things?
Hi Jen, I have just created an account with this forum and also embarking , or wanting to , start a instructional design career. I have come from a case management career although I am studying e Learning at the moment. My challenge at present is gaining work experience in instructional design and may look into volunteering work.
Thanks for your reply! I am also in the same boat: trying to build up my portfolio with as many school and work projects as possible. I have been fortunate enough to be able to intern with the ID team where I work, but volunteering was definitely on the horizon if the internship didn't pan out. Best wishes to you!
Congrats to both of you, and good luck in your new ID career! I would recommend getting as much experience as you can with eLearning tools (e.g., Articulate, Captivate), as well as Learning Management Systems (e.g., Canvas, Bridge) so that you can get your foot in the door. If you can build and publish online courses, you will get a job very quickly and your career will rapidly blossom.
Great feedback, thanks Travis. Yes I have had some home time with Captivate, Canvas, Wireframing and currently using Moodle as part of my studies. There is so much out there so it's a bit daunting. I like your Learning Design Canvas which I will purchase soon as this is a good starting point with my current work. All the best.
Thanks so much for the well wishes, Travis, and thank you for the great tips! I am happy to say that I bought Articulate at a student discount (holy moly that stuff is expensive!), and I'm learning how to use Canvas at the moment. It's all very exciting stuff! I'm glad to have stumbled upon your site here, and really enjoy comparing what I've learned from my coursework to ideas presented in the blog. Hoping to learn all I can beyond the classroom :-)
Hi, would anyone know of user friendly storyboard templates or authoring tool ? User friendly because I have never used storyboards before. I am developing an on-boarding e Learning course for the org I work for which is a Chinese company.
Hello and sorry for the very late reply! Storyboard options vary based on what you're trying to do. I've used simple tools like MS Word (for more narrative scripting), or PowerPoint for wireframing. There are also some free services like Storyboard That (storyboardthat.com) for video storyboarding.
When creating storyboards, I've found it very helpful to lay things out in a table format so I can visually see the alignment of instructional goals with activities with presentation.
Hopefully this helps!
You could also write your own paper and be a hero.