2024 has seen an unprecedented number of educators, both at the K-12 and Higher Ed levels, deciding to leave their current positions and transition into the Learning and Development (L&D) space. We welcome these new recruits into our ranks with open arms, valuing both their years of professional experience and the insight that they will bring into the field, but it is crucial to establish that education and L&D, despite being related, are still two distinct disciplines, and as such require the development and display of different skills. As someone who made the move from K-12 to Instructional Design several years ago, I know very well the attributes that a transitioning educator needs to strengthen to land their first L&D job.
Here are 5 skills someone entering the Learning and Development industry needs to develop:
1. Analysis & Design Process
Although education and L&D are related fields, which share many skills, it is crucial to understand that there are still some fundamental differences. Like Football (The American kind!) and Rugby, we are dealing with two different ball games where even though certain skills transfer over, each of these disciplines are centered on an entirely different philosophy.
Education often follows a pre-established path of learning. In my experience in K-12 there was a set curriculum that I had to cover, going over books and English Language Skills established by the State and district. I had the freedom to create my own lessons and figure out how to cover the various common core objectives, but the destination had already been determined for me.
In L&D the curriculum and learning objectives are created by the training professionals in tandem with the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and stakeholders. The one deciding what needs to be taught will ultimately be you, along with creating the courses and the various activities the learners will participate in.
When you are making the transition into L&D from education, understand that in education you are teaching by a curriculum and meeting the students’ needs to absorb the content and in L&D, nearly every project you take on you are starting at the very beginning content wise.
So, what does the start of this process look like? Any L&D pro usually begins a project with a well-structured plan like this:
· Gather data from the stakeholders and SMEs about the project details, learner needs, and timeline
· Analyze the learner needs and synthesize those needs into Learning Objectives
· Organize the course into topics and sub-topics
· Determine the most effective delivery system for the content, whether it be a Storyline course, video, etc.
This process is an incredibly rewarding experience, and it is often the best part of any Training Professional’s project. Despite this, this whole process is contingent on whether you can evaluate Learner Needs. A Training Professional must be able to analyze and decide what the gaps in employee knowledge are and how the training they are developing will bridge those gaps.
To this end I would recommend researching and learning more about how to conduct a Needs Analysis. Where is there a current learning need that can be rectified with training? How will the training elicit the desired response or results from a company’s employees, and what kind of plan are you putting in place for the training?
Sometimes you might find that, based on the Needs Analysis, robust training is not what’s needed, and a current knowledge gap can be fixed with a simple checklist or graphic aid. Because of the broad range of solutions that can be designed and developed in this industry, someone transferring into L&D needs to know how to assess learner needs.
2. Ability to Work Effectively with SMEs and Stakeholders
I have written previously about the best ways to maximize time with Subject Matter Experts, but its importance cannot be overstated. When working in education, the learning material is already set out for you, and you enter the classroom as the resident Subject Matter Expert. During my days teaching English, I was the authority on how to structure an essay, or the greater themes of Catcher in the Rye. In Learning and Development, often you are starting a project as a novice, with no prior experience or knowledge in the field you are training. This will be especially true if you are a freelancer and jump from project to project and industry to industry.
The ability to explore and deepen your knowledge about content across all industries is certainly one of the most gratifying parts of our line of work, and it is one unique to our trade. To ensure that we can get the information we need to develop training materials effectively, we need to be able to work effectively with SMEs and stakeholders. This means coming to meetings equipped with the know-how to get the most out of the experts that you are talking to.
A shortlist of how you can do that is here:
· Research your topic (ChatGPT can be your friend) and review source content if available
· Come with readily prepared questions
· Be considerate of their time
· Be prepared to extract information in a variety of ways
· Record the conversation – you can even generate a transcript of your recording so that you can refer to it in narrative form
Building strong relationships with the SMEs and stakeholders and knowing what questions to ask and topics to cover will go a long way in building the knowledge that you need to create your courses. The Learning and Development team serves as the bridge between the technical knowledge provided by the SME and the person who is learning the material for the first time. Once you finish consulting with the SME, consider how you are going to convert that information into something that will be digestible for the learner.
3. Authoring Tools
L&D comprises a vast array of disciplines, but a great deal of modern instructional design has become synonymous with eLearning, or online training. It is important to note that a lot of people in the Learning and Development space do not make frequent use of authoring tools, and instead occupy different parts of the industry like project management, curriculum mapping, live training, etc.
Even still it is important for someone starting out to develop a baseline ability with the industry standard authoring tool Articulate Storyline 360. Storyline is easy to learn and watching a couple of instructional tutorials will give someone new to L&D a basic understanding of the tool. A good idea is to take some preexisting content that they worked on in their previous job and develop it into a storyline course. Someone from a teaching or higher education background likely has a myriad of PowerPoints and courses already developed. It is not a massive task to take what they already have and see how they can turn it into eLearning. This would also give someone practice in taking preexisting slide content and turning it into something interactive, experimenting with the various dial, timeline, and layer features that promote learner engagement.
At the minimum, someone entering L&D will need to have two or three storyline samples developed to show prospective employers. It is essential that you display that ability to at least get your foot in the door. Even though one must develop a portfolio, keep in mind that authoring tools are just that, only tools that you utilize, simply a means to end. Authoring tools are needed to convey the content you are training on, creating interactions for the learner, and devising assessments to ascertain how much your audience learned. Simply demonstrating expertise in authoring tools does not make you a skilled L&D professional. Portfolio samples need to be made to show your ability in Instructional Design, like how content is chunked and delivered, and how you took foundational knowledge of the subject and turned it into a course that tells a story in its script and the narration.
The samples you built should show those two things, not only the ability to use authoring tools, but also your expertise in taking content and turning it into a logical flow of information that engages the learner and showcases your individual voice in guiding your audience through a lesson in an asynchronous way.
4. Development Processes
Since L&D as a field is a lot more freeform than Education, someone entering this industry should be aware of the phases that go into a typical project. Any course that you design will fall into the same stages of analysis, design and review, with some deviations depending on the type of project or the company you are working with. The aspiring L&D pro needs to know about the 5 phases of Development – Storyboarding, Alpha, Beta, Final, and finally Implementation (which could vary depending on the different types of learner modalities you are touching on in your training).
On top of knowing and understanding these various phases of the process, an L&D aspirant should know what their specific role will be in a project. Depending on where you are, you will have different responsibilities and tasks assigned to you. Are you going to be the lone contributor to a project and expected to do everything yourself? Or, and probably more likely, are you going to be put on a team and given a set part to play, like Lead ID, eLearning Developer, or Quality Assurance Provider? Those three are just some of the many roles that one can play on a project team.
After a few projects, one can begin to see where they best fit in in the L&D world, and the kind of work they want to take on in the future. Are you a person that enjoys managing a team and coordinating the deliverables with the stakeholder? Then maybe being a project manager is the right role for you. Do you not enjoy creating eLearning in the slightest? Then you may just find that Instructor Led Facilitation and in-classroom training is your forte. Wrapping your head around the various types of work that can be done in L&D and more specifically how it is done will help you figure out what your specialty in this industry truly is.
5. Deliverables and Quality Product
The final skill someone entering L&D needs to develop is understanding and adapting to project timelines and deliverables. When it comes to projects, L&D is a constantly changing landscape, and anyone in this industry can tell you how due dates shift, client priorities change, budgets for projects inflate or deflate, and any number of other factors that add to the delightful chaos. All this is to say one must come prepared for anything when creating training in the corporate world.
The educational sphere usually follows a rigid structure where curriculum is taught, and content is covered to reach certain milestones. Lessons and timelines are set, and while there may be changes and shifts you will account for, for the most part your task is set on solid ground. When you are entering into L&D from Education you will need to know how to ensure quality deliverables in a fluid setting.
To guarantee that your work meets high standards amidst a high degree of variability one must know how to successfully manage their time and set expectations with not only clients and stakeholders but also members of your internal team, including the Project Manager. You need to be aware of how much time it is going to take to do something and how any proposed changes will affect your work’s overall quality.
While you will create worksheets and other types of content for your learners in the educational sector, that is not going to be the metric by which you are judged, since you are still presiding over your students’ development. In L&D you are measured by the quality of deliverables you provide to the client. An L&D pro creates and hands over content for the learners to a client for their training. For this reason, it is essential that you cultivate the skills of quality assurance, checking and editing. While you might have someone running Internal QA on your team, due to the speed at which things move in this industry, having the ability to check your own work is crucial.
Conclusion:
The transition from education to L&D is not nearly as daunting a task as someone would initially believe. A Higher Ed or K-12 professional already has many of the skills that a company would desire, however there are several other attributes that they need to strengthen to make the transition effectively. Because they are entering an industry that is going to be very different from the one that they know, they need to be ready for the new expectations for what they need to accomplish, as well as the change of environment that they are going to be working in. Although education and L&D share certain similarities, one cannot simply leap into the industry unprepared. By familiarizing yourself with the five skills mentioned above, a job transition is not only possible, but it also becomes very likely that you will thrive in the dynamic field of L&D.