Instructional Design 101: An Interview with Read Coburn Part 2

In continuation of our last week episode with an interview with Read Coburn, this week he shared his journey from being a teacher to an instructional designer. He stated that his master's degree in instructional design was the most important thing that helped him transition to the new career path. The program he chose was practical and hands-on, which helped him develop his instructional design portfolio. He emphasized the importance of developing a portfolio with an instructional design process to back it up, with all the theory, steps, and different instructional design theories.

He completed his portfolio throughout the program, which was project-based, and everything was built around creating a portfolio. He recommends finding projects to work on, even if it's for free, to apply the instructional design process to solving a problem or performance gap, recording everything and keeping all notes, plans, storyboards, deliverables, and anything related to evaluating or implementing the solution. He added that working on these types of projects will make one feel more comfortable with the design process and have something impressive to show potential employers, which is the key to getting any instructional design job.