Long Term Upskilling for IDs
There are many ways for instructional designers to stay current with their skillsets.
Unlike in teaching when I was required to attend a certain number of education credits annually to maintain my license, upskilling for instructional designers is up to the individual. No one is going to force you to learn or grow, so you have to take the initiative to choose an area of focus and find opportunities.
Here are a couple of the ways I have grown my ID skills over the last few years:
eLearning Heroes - I both followed and participated in the Articulate eLearning Heroes weekly challenges. Some generous participants submit their source files and I took advantage of this by downloading the source files and looking under the hood to understand more advanced interactions. View some of my submissions here.
Online Conferences - There are many free and virtual conferences to choose from. I’ve attended iDTX, TLDC events, and axe-con, among others. Plus I regularly attend one-off industry webinars, like the TSIA sessions.
Programming - I took courses on xAPI and Codecademy’s HTML/CSS/JavaScript pathways to improve my programming language skills. The logic behind programming is helpful with eLearning in a few ways. You can enhance Storyline files with JavaScript, build branching scenarios in Twine with CSS, and harness powerful data using xAPI.
PMP certification - This was the biggest commitment of all the upskilling I’ve done, but certainly worth it. If you are ready to take on more responsibility and want to advance in your career, a PMP can make you stand out on an instructional design team.
What’s next? Something I’ve been thinking about for a few years, a data analytics program with Codecademy! I’ve still got another year on my subscription so I should be able to complete the multiple courses that make up the pathway.
Why data analytics? Being able to define metrics that tell a story about a program’s impact is directly relevant to my work leading instructional design initiatives at my company. I need to be able to communicate our successes to program sponsors. I’ve got Excel, Tableau, SQL, ADO Dashboards, and PowerBI basics down but want to go a bit further with my mindset.
And I’m sure after the data analytics course there will be something else, because I am always learning and growing!
