Are you a creative person who likes to help others learn? Do you enjoy working in a variety of tools while identifying potential training opportunities? Then a career as an instructional designer might be for you! In this article, I will share my tips and tricks on how to become an instructional designer based on my 20+ years of corporate experience.
For an overview of several Learning and Development positions, check out I Want To Be in L&D: Getting Started in Learning and Development.
What is an Instructional Designer?
When you think about a training class or a job aid or an e-learning course, they didn’t just appear magically out of thin air. Someone had to design and build them. That person is (typically) an instructional designer. I realize that is a pretty simplistic way to explain it and I’ll go into more detail as we move along. At the most basic level, though, that is what an instructional designer is. They are the person who designs the instruction.
For the purposes of this article, I am going to focus on jobs where the main responsibility is instructional design. Throughout most of my career, I held positions where I did a lot of instructional design but I also did other things like facilitate classes and/or administer the Learning Management System. I will spotlight those types of positions in a separate article, though.
Also, a lot of the cool kids are calling themselves “Learning Experience Designer” or “LXD” nowadays. I have also seen “Learning Designer”. Those are basically the same as what I will be describing here. I do like those titles and think they probably more aptly describe the role but, most job postings and companies that I’ve seen still use the “old school” term.
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