Professional Organizations and Career Options
June 14, 2007This post is part of a series about instructional design careers. I’ve been asked by a number of people how to get into this field, and these posts are largely collected from my email responses to those questions.
Professional Organizations
One question I’ve gotten a few times is about professional organizations for instructional design to help people network while job searching.
The eLearning Guild
The eLearning Guild isn’t just for instructional designers, but there do seem to be a fair number of IDs involved. If you’re interested in learning more about e-learning, this is one place to start. The lowest level of membership is free, and that gets you a newsletter plus access to their resource directory, forums, and some research. I can personally vouch for their job boards as well; that’s how I found my current position. (OK, I happened to be in the right place at the right time, and it doesn’t always work that well. Still, it’s free, so you might as well post if you’re looking.)
ASTD
In the U.S. (sorry international readers), the American Society of Training and Development is another useful organization for professional development, networking, and job searching. Membership is a bit expensive, but you can use their job boards for free and some of their resources are open. I admit that I personally have never really used ASTD that extensively, but I know that other people have found them very beneficial.
Career Options
In my personal experience, it seems like more instructional design jobs are contract than salaried; that may be more a function of what’s posted on the big online job boards though. Many instructional designers prefer to do contract work; it gives them flexibility and variety they wouldn’t find in a permanent position. I was lucky and found a permanent position, but my guess is that if you’re switching careers it may be easier to do a short contract or two to gain experience before you can get something full-time.
Many of the full-time positions are in the corporations. Businesses need the training and are more likely to have dedicated training departments where instructional designers have a place in the process. Larger companies are also more likely to have a budget to do more extensive e-learning. Some positions are a combination of instructional design and classroom training.
Other positions are in higher education. The big for-profit universities all use instructional designers, but smaller universities are starting to use instructional designers as well.
E-learning vendors hire instructional designers as well. My personal experience doesn’t include this area, but I know these positions exist. Some publishers use instructional designers and others with similar skills to develop their online content, so those are other places to explore for job opportunities.
Other Posts in this Series
- What Does an Instructional Designer Do?
- Getting Into Instructional Design
- Instructional Design Skills
- Technology Skills
- Professional Organizations and Career Options (current post)
- Is instructional design the right career?
Update: Read all my posts about Instructional Design Careers here.
Technorati Tags: instructionaldesign, career, astd, e-learning, e-learning guild
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Hi,
On this topic, I wanted to let you know of another eLearning organization that just started, The eLearning Society. It is a community to share top resources and tools, there is a career center and more. Check it out at http://www.elearningsociety.com
[...] other, both about a new site called “the eLearning Society.” One was on my post about professional organizations for instructional designers; the other was on my top ten tools [...]
Hello! I represent Pearson Learning Solutions, a division of Pearson Higher Education that delivers e-learning and onsite course solutions using excellent materials from all Pearson publication companies: Prentice Hall, Allyn & Bacon, Longman, and Benjamin Cummings (among others).
Our courses (online and onsite) are usually written by freelancers with academic and teaching credentials in the subject area.
We are launching a recruitment web site for freelancer writers, subject-matter-experts, instructional designers, and editors called CourseBuilders. On the site, it would be ideal to have a links page with great organizations like yours listed.
In return, we would provide a logo and contact information that you could post on your site. Your members could then find our site and possible extra money and experience opportunities with Pearson Learning Solutions.
Please let me know if this partnership would be appealing to you, and/or the contact information of an individual with your organization who would make such decisions about your web site content.
I can be reached most reliably by email, and you can also contact the Director of Editorial Services directly, Linda Malcak, at linda.malcak@pearson.com
I look forward to a possible fruitful web partnership!
Well, I’m not an “organization”–you really should customize the form letter when you’re leaving comments on individual blogs like this. I don’t have members, just readers and commenters. I’m one person writing a blog.
I see that you aren’t familiar with blogs at all, or you probably wouldn’t have posted that message as you did on my blog. So I’ll forgive you for not realizing that any blog hosted by WordPress.com (i.e., the address ends in wordpress.com) can’t have ads or paid links on it. Agreeing to post a link for pay would likely get my site shut down, as that would be a violation of the terms of service.
I’ll leave the comment up in case any readers are interested in the site, but that’s all I can do.
Sorry for the confusion! I am just looking for some good writing and course developer talent and thought your readers might fit the bill. I didn’t realize I was posting to the blog, but no matter, really. Happy blogging to you!
I was wondering whether ID employers would consider a candidate that is self-taught in the programs and technological requirements for an ID position. I have been a high-school teacher for 4 years. I have always had to write my own material and have designed 2 advanced courses from scratch, selected the media and print materials for each one and developed the scope and sequence. This is really the most interesting aspect of teaching in my opinion and of course, finding the best method to achieve learning for a particular audience. I am confident that ID is a great fit for me. However I already have a Masters in Spanish and have an overwhelming amount of student loans. I would like to get into the field through on-the-job training if possible or find a scholarship/ grant for a graduate program. I am having a difficult time finding opportunities that will actually provide any form of training in ID and that dont already require mastery of the technology and process. Are there internships out there? I just recently relocated to Austin, TX. I have heard this is a great place for ID. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Many employers will hire people who are self-taught, including former K-12 teachers like you and me. Cammy Bean’s survey of ID degrees currently has about a third of instructional designers reporting that they have a degree actually in ID.
Unfortunately, I have no idea about internships or the Austin market. You might want to try posting your resume on the eLearning Guild job board.
What about learning some of the technology on your own rather than restricting your job search to positions that will train you?
Christy,
Thank you for all the great information for people interested in ID!!! I started in the Instructional Systems Technology Master’s program at Indiana U this fall, mainly because I get tuition reimbursement as an IU employee, and the program sounded interesting. (I have a Master’s in Special Ed from a long time ago, and tho I only taught for a short time, I still have an interest in how people learn.)
Your site has helped clarify a few things for me, and the links to resources are very much appreciated. Something I’ve been told in the program that I didn’t notice here (maybe I just missed it)… There are areas of specialization within ID besides education versus business. For example, some designers focus on design & development, while others (in the corporate world, not education) actually focus on analysis & evaluation.
I work as an assistant at a university center that does evaluation. I’m getting experience with analysis and evaluation, so it seems like I ought to specialize in that area. But design and development sounds like more interesting and fun to me. I definitely appreciate your advise to learn html and the various software programs.
I’m still looking at 3 years of schooling (1 class/semester), so I have some time to figure out where I fit best. But I am definitely looking forward to the day when I can change careers – administrative assistant to instructional designer!
Hi Laura,
You raise some interesting points. I didn’t talk about it here, but there is a range of instructional design jobs. Cammy Bean wrote a good post about ID as a spectrum that I think you would find of interest.
Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever read a job description for an ID position that specified that it was focused on analysis and evaluation. It may be that those are out there, of course, just not where I was looking. I think in the past many IDs have focused mostly on the analysis and design while letting courseware developers do the development and implementation. That still happens in the big e-learning vendors, but I don’t see it as much in smaller organizations.
In small and medium-sized organizations, it’s more likely that you do everything. Many people seem to be one-person training departments, including some who do stand-up training in addition to all the ADDIE instructional design.
Wendy Wickham in a comment summed it up very well: “more skills = more opportunities.” Even if you find that your passion really lies with analysis and evaluation, getting experience with design and development makes you much more employable. You have this time at IU–take advantage of trying out everything you can. Get exposed to everything and hopefully you’ll have plenty of opportunities when you leave. The IU program seems really good, so I’m sure you will have a head start on the competition.
Good luck!
I found your blog, very interesting. I am a specialist ICT teacher who is looking to branch out into a change, I think you may have given me the answer, as this is what I have already been doing within the school environment.
Thank for all your information
Very interesting blog. I left teaching to go into design work and find that it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Both financially and stress wise, I am much better off.
One thing I will say is that many new IDs focus on the technology, which is definitely necessary. However, one of the most overlook skill sets is a high level grasp of professional English. I see this as one of the most neglected aspects of ID training programs and of everyday IDs. My advice to new IDs: study your English.
One other thing I’d add is that a good number of IDs work for the military or military contractors. If would-be IDs have a clean background, they should consider looking into this area. There are many opportunities, assuming you qualify for a government security clearance.