How to Become an Instructional Designer
If you are an expert in a particular subject, or if you would like to join the education or training and development community, a job as an instructional designer might be what you are looking for. Instructional designers create courses around learning objectives, whether they be college courses or specific industry or company courses.
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Instructions
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Decide where you want to focus your instructional design efforts. For example, if you are an expert on a particular software item, you could develop and market an online training course for the software. Or you could approach businesses and industries that use the software and work as a training consultant to design a course for employees.
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Outline the learning objectives. What do you want the learner to come away knowing? Learning objectives should be specific and measurable so the instructor and the learner can assess what expertise was gained and where the learner can improve in the future.
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Use and develop learning materials that will help learners achieve the objectives you have outlined. There are many excellent tools (some free and open source) available to instructional designers that will help make learning fun and exciting. The link to the "Learning Tools Directory" in the Resources section below will help you find something that will suit the needs of your course.
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Deliver your course and learning material to students or trainees. This will be done online, in a classroom or training room, or in a one-on-one learning situation. Instructional designers sometimes act as trainers or teachers, so you may do the teaching yourself or entrust this task to someone else. The first time your course is delivered, you should observe the learning (if possible) so that you can determine what works and what does not.
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Solicit feedback from the learner and the instructor. What did the student or trainee learn, and what was difficult to grasp? This feedback will help you to improve your courses and will also give you statistics to help market yourself as an instructional designer.
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Improve your courses and market yourself with your successes. Focus on improving and updating existing materials before developing many courses. The quality of your courses and learning materials is more important than the number of courses you have available.
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