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Transitioning from an instructional design career from higher education to corporate training

Published: Monday, February 1, 2021

Hello fellow ATDers and instructional design professionals.

Perhaps we can get a conversation going about how instructional designers might transition from the higher education industry to a corporate training environment. A lot of the duties are responsibilities of the work are built on the same foundations, but there might be some stark differences.

  • If you switched from one industry to the other, what did you find was similar?
  • What did you find that was different or at least took some getting used to?
  • In transitioning from one industry to another, did you have to start as a newbie, or were you able to leverage your experience to a lateral move?

Any advice on job searching and interview would be appreciated as well!

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7 Comments
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Lisa,
I'm so glad you mentioned that book. I just bought it, waiting for the delivery! I would be glad and happy to connect with like minded people. You can email me [email protected]
Thanks!! Alisha
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Thanks for your comments Keith and Alisha. It seems the entry into the L&D/corporate training field derives from different paths. I just took the ATD Capability Model (https://tdcapability.org) to see what sort of knowledge gaps I might have. It was very insightful. Perhaps measuring our capabilities like this can provide some training pathways - yes - but also help us learn some of the language used in the field. In higher ed (and perhaps K12) the focus is not the same.
Happy Wednesday!
Kevin,
Thank you so much for that idea!! I am new to ATD and didn't even know there was a test. So I love that idea. I will complete it soon. Thanks again.
Alisha
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Kevin: The vocabulary is definitely different, particularly when trying to communicate with coworkers and bosses. The good news is having the teaching background it does not take long to adjust to the new language and move forward.
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I was trained as a secondary Education teacher a million years ago, and part of what I learned is that training people is different, but it shouldn't really be all that different.
Yes, in education we aim at establishing a broader base, but in both cases we should be designing to what we want people to DO that is different as they go forward.
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