Introduction
As I began to make the transfer from a career as a secondary English teacher to that of an instructional designer, I realized that there were many skills from my previous career that smoothly transferred over to the new one; however, I discovered that there were some skills and knowledge that I did not possess. I also realized that the industry lingo was very different from that of public education. For these reasons, I decided that there was a need for me to educate myself on some of the industry-specific skills and knowledge. I chose a learning path from LinkedIn Learning called "Become an Instructional Designer" (www.linkedin.com/learning/paths/become-an-instructional-designer) to provide me with the background knowledge and the lexicon necessary to gain access to this industry. The goal I set for this learning path was to gain a basic understanding of the various ID models, of how to conduct a needs analysis, of how to form productive relationships with SMEs, of how to cater my training to adult learners, of how to create successful, engaging video training, of how to storyboard e-learning and communicate my plan to stakeholders before building e-learning modules, and of how to measure and evaluate learning effectiveness. Once I completed the path, that would allow me to evaluate which areas I feel require more in-depth exploration. My hope is that the completion of these eight courses in the learning path will make me more desirable to companies who are hiring instructional designers.
You may access my LinkedIn profile here, which shows evidence of my having participated in this course of learning.