My Professional Development - 2015

As an aspiring instructional designer it’s important for me to be constantly progressing my skills and knowledge in this subject, if I didn’t I would never learn and I would always be stuck at the same level.

Before I decide on the skills I want to develop or improve on I’m going to talk about my strengths and what I believe I am good at. As I have been in the eLearning industry over a year now I believe this is one of my strong points as I know a lot about the subject and I can create engaging eLearning materials using Adobe Captivate and Adobe Photoshop. As I have predominately used these two pieces of software it has meant I have improved on these two the most. I would also say I have very good knowledge of our VLE, Moodle, I have provided a few training sessions with teachers to go through all the activities and resources they can add as well as showing other members of my team some of the admin side of Moodle.

 

Even though I do have the above skills there is always room for improvement especially with Adobe Captivate as I don’t believe I have reached the maximum of what did software can do. Throughout the year I will continue to develop these skills as ongoing professional development and to help me with this I have completed a SWOT analysis below.

 

Strengths: I have good communication skills and I apply that to my job role by having good customer service skills and being able to assist teachers and students with any issues they may have with Moodle or any other software we know about. I do this by answering the telephone and by making sure I send polite emails back to the teacher to help them with their problems.  I also have extensive knowledge of Adobe Captivate which is helpful for this job as I use this pretty much every day, this is also good for my current Level 4 position as it means I am able to train the Level 3 apprentices in these areas and any teachers who require training on this too. The above also applies to using Photoshop because I have been using this a while now I know a lot about it and can easily help others with this software. Photoshop helps me to create high quality graphics for my eLearning packages and for any teachers who want any Moodle icons or posters creating for them. In terms of the Level 3 apprentices I think my biggest strength is being able to tell them what I already know and share my expertise with them as they are still new to eLearning and I have been doing just over a year now.

Weaknesses: I have a weakness in Adobe Illustrator this is because I mainly worked with Photoshop last year as I knew the most about that programme beforehand. I have been practising recently however I know I can improve massively and I plan to do more with Illustrator in my Level 4 position. I have been doing a lot more animations in my eLearning products I know I can improve as I don’t know any advanced features and just tend to stick to basic animations. I know I need to explore this industry more as I know new technologies come about everyday which I should be looking in to. I believe I struggle with the other college systems such as pro-monitor, pro-portal, MyDay, etc. because I haven’t used them much and we haven’t had much training. This is something I want to improve on in the future. At the moment when I am working with the Level 3's or doing training with them I don't think I am doing my best at providing them with information. To help me with this I will start to develop more of a training plan therefore I can be more prepared and confident in what I am telling them.

Threats: One of my biggest threats would be time management especially now I am a Level 4 apprentice because this means I have more responsibility. As well as managing my own projects I also have to make sure that the Level 3’s are completing their work on time. To help me with this I use Trello to keep on Track with the Level 3’s and I use my outlook tasks for my own personal projects.  As I mentioned in my weaknesses I don’t know a lot about some of the college systems which therefore if any teachers or students ring up about them I wouldn’t be able to help them at the best of my ability. Similarly to the above threat I wouldn’t be able to help the Level 3’s much with Adobe Flash or Illustrator therefore it’s limiting how much they improve in these areas.

Opportunities: I have many opportunities at work to develop my weaknesses this is because everyone in my department has different skills and have come from different background therefore they may know certain things about topics I want to learn. For example a colleague knows a lot about Adobe Flash so when I was wanting to create animations he could help me with anything I was struggling with. I also have the opportunity to research different ideas by using YouTube, Pinterest, or any other websites out there. These are useful in the digital designer role because they help me to find new ways to show information and new ways that will engage the learners I am creating eLearning materials for. As I do a few different training sessions with the Level 3 apprentices it's giving me that opportunity to boost my confidence in presenting in front of a lot of people. This will be good when I go on to get a job after this apprenticeship as it will mean I have already had that experience of training groups of people.

To help me to improve within the next year I have started to create a 'Personal Development Plan' in which I will add to as and when I feel like I want to develop a skill, I believe if you're wanting to get better in your chosen career you need to develop these plan's and analyse your own ability.

Click here to see my plan as an idea for yourself or if you just want to see what I will be working on.

'Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know' Daniel J. Boorstin

Sarah x