Building Your Portfolio

Posted on by Judy Unrein

Great post from The Rapid E-Learning Blog, on why job-seekers should have an elearning portfolio.

rapidelearningblog

Here, thoughts to help get it done…

Ideas. Instructional designers generally don’t create because they get thunderbolts of inspiration; they create because they get assignments. A friend of mine who offered her talents pro bono to a local charity now has a portfolio piece and a great client recommendation.

Also, consider redeveloping old work projects — without proprietary info and with the cool ideas your budget/timeline/boss wouldn’t allow the first time.

Software. You know about educational discounts and trials. If those won’t work, record a PowerPoint presentation that simulates branching or invest in one application that you can use to create several kinds of projects.

If you focus more on design than development anyway, partner with a student/out-of-work multimedia developer. Violà, portfolio pieces for both of you!

  • http://christytucker.wordpress.com Christy Tucker

    I often get questions via my blog from new instructional designers or people trying to switch fields on how to get some initial experience or pieces for a portfolio. I’ve recommended volunteering work for a nonprofit before, and some people have scoffed at me. I’ve never done it myself, even though it seems logical, so I wondered if I was just being unrealistic. I’m glad to see that it actually does work sometimes.

    I like the idea of redeveloping the old projects too; that makes a lot of sense for getting around the proprietary content issue.

    One of these days I should really quit procrastinating and put a portfolio together. I’m fortunate to have a stable job now, but with this economy nothing is ever really secure.

  • Judy Unrein

    Christy — Thanks for stopping by!

    Yeah, I don’t see why the scoffing, but I’ve seen that before too. It can work though, and after I posted this, I saw that someone had suggested the same in response to Tom’s blog, so maybe it also worked for someone else!

    I’ve also had the same experience as Tom with people telling me they couldn’t show me work because it was proprietary. Now no one has an excuse — it’s a snap to redevelop old project on your own time, right? ;)

    Same here on the portfolio and job situation… I should start taking a little of my own medicine!