I am a teacher and I love designing lessons, the creativity and research. HOWEVER we are not given enough PAID time to do it well. And this is my line in the sand. I do not want to give up my personal life to do unpaid work designing lessons. I think many teachers could produce higher quality lessons if we wre given more prep time and fully paid for our time. I am on the verge of leaving this profession for this reason. I think you hit the nail on the head for those of us who love teaching and help others learn but maybe don't want to deal w the downsides of teaching in a brick and mortar building with all the administrative expectations and human complexities involved. I am an introvert and sometimes feel overwhelmed w many aspects of teaching. ID sounds like a great fit for introverted teachers.
I strongly agree with you! I spent a total of 9 years in the academe as a teacher and 2 years of that as a school admin as well, and we always sacrificed personal time outside of work hours to prepare slide presentations, modules, etc. There were times I had 3 hours of sleep or no sleep at all because of the quality of output that I wanted to achieve. I eventually left the academe just last year due to burnout. 😭
This video is a goldmine for teachers who are looking to switch careers. Your tips on avoiding these mistakes are invaluable. I'll be sharing this with my fellow educator friends who are considering a change. Keep up the fantastic work!
The roles can share a lot of similarities depending on the company. An ID role may do more development behind the scenes, while corporate trainers may focus on facilitating trainings or delivering instruction. But often there is overlap and you'll need a lot of the same skillsets in either role. Good question!
It's hard to say this early on. We've collected some data from hiring managers on how it's currently impacting their teams (and their forecast for how it might impact them in the future) Feel free to check it out: www.devlinpeck.com/content/id-hiring-manager-report
Former teacher turned ID here. I cannot express the importance of skill building and a portfolio! Giving any sample of your work (that is not directly education based) is going to be one of the biggest steps you can take to advance this transition.
Quick question, did you have to go back to school for Instructional Design, what classes do you take? I just dont want to jump into something and not be able to get a job after putting in work. Just wondering because you were a teacher no Instructional Designer.
One of my struggles with making the career change was that part of what I loved about teaching was the learning. What I mean by this is that I am always studying something so trying to narrow down where to focus - finding my niche - has been difficult at times. I'm still figuring it out! Sometimes you need someone to look from the outside and give you advice on where you really shine :)
Yes, there’s always more to learn! And your speciality within ID can change from month to month or year to year…it’s all a big trial and error process 😃
It's refreshing to see someone discussing the challenges teachers face when transitioning careers. Your video provides valuable guidance and encouragement. Keep up the excellent work!
Teacher is just a short term employment as offered by most school. It require many resources and many of those needed to be bought by the teachers, The teachers need to performs thousands of interviews until retirement for a contract and short term jobs, how can one deal with this problem or decide to change to another working field please?
If you want to work in ID you'll have to upskill in the tools, showcase your ability to solve real-world problems for adult learners, and build a portfolio! But there are plenty of careers you can transfer into with your classroom skills. This article might give you an idea or two: www.devlinpeck.com/content/career-change-for-teachers
@@DevlinPeckYT the only part that I'm not confident about are the knowledge gaps. For instance e-learning programs which I would have to learn for the role.
With the job market so competitive in 2024, it's easy to feel lost without the right approach. My RU-vid tutorials are here to help educators transition smoothly into new careers.
I’m a college professor (who loves your videos), and I’d like to point out a couple of things. For one, good teachers already are instructional designers. They just don’t necessarily design online instruction. Secondly, however, teachers who DO offer online modalities can do their own ID work. Why must it be either or? I personally am learning ID in order to create my own online materials. And to be honest, the last thing I’d ever want to do is corporate ID work. From what I’ve seen, the bulk of corporate ID work is things like sexual harassment compliance courses or safety training that hover on the very lowest end of Bloom’s taxonomy-there is no challenge for me in such perfunctory, mechanical learning. Higher education that requires critical thinking and ID for language learning materials, (where the interaction itself is the means toward learning) are the real challenge: Going beyond routine multiple choice assessment and simple regurgitation of some policy the corporate employer needs workers to spit back so they can avoid law suits. Yes, teachers should become IDs-not to leave teaching, but to enhance their teaching.
Thanks for sharing your perspective on this! You can definitely use ID skills to design better classroom experiences. And corporate work can be bland at times but some teams are doing some really good work!
Wow! Former teacher here and I can't stop watching your videos. Short and easy to understand. Someone close to me recommended I apply for an ID position at her company. After reading more into it and watching some videos, I'm not sure I'm quite qualified for the job... yet. I am excited to dive into this and really educate myself before hopefully applying for some jobs in the near future. It seems there are a ton of opportunities in this field. Thank you!
You’re welcome! We look forward to helping you make the transition successfully 😄. And feel free to book a call with my team on my site if you haven’t done so already, we’d love to talk through your goals and discuss how we can help even more closely
Hey Devlin! I want to transition into freelancing, but I’ve noticed that some of these programs- especially Articulate- are expensive! (Articulate is subscription based 😩). I know there are free trials, but what do you recommend for offsetting or dealing with the cost of these programs if you don’t yet have clients? I love your content by the way, thanks so much 😊
Thanks Sarah! I’d suggest using the free trials to create your portfolio website, and then incorporate the cost of the license into the pricing for your first freelance project 😃
I was a classroom teacher (community college mostly, some high school) from 2008 to 2020. I've been an instructional designer for the past year and a half, working for two different universities (one full-time, the other part-time). I work from home for both and I am SO much happier. I'm also two classes away from being finished with an M.Ed. in instructional Design (Digital Learning) and getting great at Articulate Rise & Storyline using Devlin Peck videos, LinkedIn Learning, and Articulate 360 webinars/training. I think I got my position as an ID (without ID experience) in large part because I made my resume sound as ID-like as I could, I did my homework and practiced for interview questions, and I created an ePortfolio that was far from fancy but showed that I'm willing to dig in and try to create things. Even though my title at work is Instructional Designer, we're allowed to work with Articulate 360 Rise & Storyline so much (we have a newly-acquired team license) that we're becoming eLearning developers too. Thank you, DP, for all the videos. They are so helpful. I used one of them over the weekend to do a custom drag & drop.
Thank you for sharing, Jane, and we're glad to hear that you're so much happier :D. Also, congrats on the upcoming graduation! You're doing a great job. Nice observation about your resume, too. That's a big part of the process: reframing your teaching experience as ID experience. Teachers do many of the tasks that IDs do...it's just learning how to talk about them! Keep up the great work and thanks again for sharing your perspective here :D
Delvin, this is the best description of what and ID is. Do you have a direct way I could use to contact you? I’d like to talk to you, please let me know. Thank you so much.
My Pathways to ID roles are: Multimedia Design vs Presentation Design. (for Training Materials) Curriculum Design vs PM Quality Assurance vs Testing. (for Edtech Products) Research, Analysis Vs Evaluation, Measurement. (for Needs, Assessment feedback & ROi)
Tbh I get where he is coming from, but making that portfolio is wayyyy too much work just to get a job lol. I would just focus on making a resume that includes the key works in the job listing so that you can make it through ats and get seen. I'm not going to pay to create mockups in all those software programs. You can learn that on the job...
(under the "Why Not ID") How do you know your process/product was effective? Do you get feedback? For freelancing, do you have any advice on negotiating a contract? Which may be more complex than working for a company. Thanks for sharing.
Good questions! Evaluation is a very important part of ID but it is often overlooked. Evaluation can consist of reviewing metrics, survey data, interviews, direct observation, and more. I have some freelancing content on the channel but we’ll have more coming throughout the year.
Does a ID transitional provide instruction? I love to teach and I would like to keep doing it once I transition to whatever my next job is going to be.
I went into teaching as a second career. I dislike it because teaching is about 10% of the job. I'd like to get into Instructional design but cannot take the time to get another degree.
Based on what we've seen, hiring managers want to see hands on skills and applied theory in your portfolio, rather than a formal degree. A degree never hurts, but when it comes down to it, the skills and solutions you build are what really matter!
From the data we've collected so far, it doesn't look like AI has too much of impact on landing an ID role (yet!) But getting comfortable with AI tools may help you stand out!
Devlin, as I search for my post teaching career that I can do remotely, I ended up here and want to look further into instructional design as a possiblility. I've been teaching for 33 years and have been ready to retire from the profession for some time now. Since I teach a non-academic subject which requires nearly 100% direct instruction, I haven't had to use technology as much as academic teachers. With that said, can you send me links to any videos of an ID actually creating a teaching unit, etc.? I'd like to see exactly what's involved in the process so that I can better understand the technology aspects of ID.
