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June 18, 2025 58 mins

In this session, Holly Owens discusses the transition from teaching to various roles in Learning and Development (L&D). She emphasizes that instructional design is just one of many paths available in L&D, highlighting the growth of the industry and the importance of transferable skills from teaching. The conversation covers various roles such as Learning Experience Designer, E-Learning Developer, LMS Administrator, L&D Analyst, Learning Consultant, Training Coordinator, and Knowledge Manager. Holly provides insights into how educators can leverage their skills in these roles and offers practical advice for researching and applying for positions in the L&D field.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hi everyone, I'm Paula, a friendand supporter of Holly and the
Ed Up Learning and Development podcast.
I am here to welcome you back toanother fantastic episode of the
show where we dive deep into thereal talk of careers in L&D,
minus the fluff. Today's episode is pulled
straight from a live session that originally aired on
LinkedIn. And let me tell you, this one

(00:21):
hit home for so many of you exploring your next move in
learning and development. If you've ever said I want to
break into L&D but I don't know where I fit, this is your
episode. In this session, Holly unpacks
the seven underrated and often overlooked roles in L&D that go
way beyond just instructional designer.
We're talking learning experience designer, L&D

(00:43):
analyst, LMS administrator, learning consultant, training
coordinator, e-learning developer, account manager.
You'll learn what these roles really involve, the tools and
skills that matter most, and howto reverse engineer your next
career step based on what you bring to the table.
Plus, all attendees snagged a free download of the L&D Career

(01:06):
Map. And good news, it's still
available in the show notes if you missed it.
Whether you're transitioning from education, nonprofit, or
just feeling curious about the roles available in L&D, this
one's for you. Let's get into it.
Hi, we're Ice Spring, an international team of e-learning
enthusiasts who help more than 60,000 clients across the globe

(01:28):
succeed with better online learning.
Our two flagship solutions are Ice Spring Suite and Ice Spring
Learn LMS Ispring Suite is an intuitive all in one authoring
tool for creating engaging e-learning content, and
ispringlearn is an innovative online training platform for
onboarding, upskilling and certifying your teams.

(01:52):
We also provide tons of free resources for aspiring and
experienced e-learning professionals, conduct weekly
webinars with top industry experts, and organize annual
e-learning conferences, challenges, and championships.
We'd be happy to get to know youand pick a solution that fits
your needs best. Go to www.icepringsolutions.com

(02:15):
to learn more about us, downloadour resources, and connect.
Hi everyone, welcome to this week's live.
I'm so excited that you're here with me again.

(02:36):
I'm going to be doing these moreregularly.
So today we're going to talk about transitioning from
teaching or any other spot in the LND industry into a role in
learning and development and theLND career path.
It's not just instructional design.
So I think one of the common misconceptions, and I obviously

(02:56):
talk about this a lot, is the fact that instructional design
is like a good stepping stone for coming out of the classroom
or coming out maybe of a corporate job or or something
like that. Instructional design is really
one where there are a lot of transferable skills with
instructional design. So I really want to get into

(03:18):
today what those roles are and looking to make sure I went
live. Only thing.
Yeah, I did. So feel free to put your
comments in the chat and I will take a look at those throughout.
I'm going to be sharing some links as well.
So if you want to give me a thumbs up if you're here and say

(03:39):
hi, hi everyone, kind of tell uswhere you're watching in from.
I'd love to see that in the comments area.
So let's let's get right into itbecause we got a lot to go over
today. All right.
So let me start by, I had this all set up very nicely, as you

(04:03):
know, talking a little bit aboutthe growth in the industry.
So by the year 2029, the education and government sector
of L&D is expected to grow by about 6% and then the training
and development specialist area part of L&D is expected to grow
by a little bit, about 9%. So it's going, it's growing.

(04:26):
I know everybody feels like the the market might be a little bit
saturated right now with layoffsand things happening and some
teachers coming out of the classroom to get into L&D.
But I still see tons of job postings for people looking for
L&D type roles. So I wanted to kind of calm
those anxieties with letting youknow that the stats that are

(04:48):
projected in the next three or four years, it's going to grow
roughly about 7 to 9%. Our industry, we're going to be
necessary. And you know, everybody's
worried about AI. That's a conversation for
another day, but we'll get to that later.
So just keep this in the back ofyour mind as you're you're
thinking about transitioning over.

(05:10):
So I talked about this more in the the previous episode or the
previous live I did last week. One of the things I'll say is
that that has now been dropped as an episode on my podcast at
up Learning and development. So you can see that you can go
out there, you can review it, you can add comments and tell me
you know what you're what you'rethinking about South.
My own career journey is not linear.

(05:34):
I talked a lot last week about how I started out as a high
school teacher. Then I left a classroom and went
into learning and development. I also started teaching in
higher education as soon as I stepped out of the K to 12
classroom, and I'm doing that since 2012.
And then I spent the majority ofmy career, about a decade in
higher education as an instructional technologist and

(05:54):
designer. And that was, that was a lot of
fun. I learned a lot in higher
education and I think that's oneof the reasons I have the role
that I have now. Then I transitioned over to
Amazon Pharmacy as a corporate instructional designer, was
there for about two years. And then most recently my
current role is I'm a director of growth marketing and I

(06:16):
transitioned into Ed tech. So now I've completed the loop,
I think of a lot of these own different LND rules and I am
using tons of my skills as a growth marketer from
instructional design, from beingin corporate, from understanding
higher education, you know, fromdeveloping different e-mail
campaigns and stuff. And then, you know, whatever my

(06:38):
next adventure will be, I'm justvery grateful for this path and
that I'm able to share my experiences with you and also
give you some of the tips and tricks that I wish I had along
the way. So I'm not going to get too much
back into my path. You can listen to that on the
episode. All right, we're not here to
talk about teaching and instructional design, but I do

(07:00):
want to take a moment to go through what like how are they
similar? How are they different?
So with teaching, really you areengaged with the same learners
majority of the time. You know, you're with them for a
whole school year, the 380 days mostly interacting in person,

(07:21):
except when Covet happened, you know, we went virtual sometimes
some things are hybrid now I hear at certain schools, but
mostly inter, interacting in person.
Whereas instructional design, it's sync async, it's hybrid,
it's high flex, it's virtual, it's online, it's, you know,
there's a variety of different modalities that happen with

(07:43):
those. You're guiding the learners
throughout the school year, you're doing different lessons
and units and the curriculum is typically planned for you.
You just have to design your lessons around the required
curriculum. Whereas instructional design and
the K to 12 learners are the younger learner.
So that's pedagogy. And then you have adult learning
through Andragoni. When you get into instructional

(08:06):
designs, there's a lot of adult learners that you're dealing
with and they like various modalities, various things,
multimodal stuff, as do the younger students as well.
But it's a little bit different as far as your engagement with
people like in your teams. K12 involves the administrators,
whereas instructional design involves subject matter experts,

(08:27):
stakeholders, You know, you havea supervisor, your team, or if
your personal 1 is just you. So really there's a little bit
of different, there's differencethere in terms of the, the
people that you're dealing with in the personalities and the
different agendas. So in teaching you focus on
grading, focus on lesson planning.

(08:50):
And then in instructional design, you're really project
managing. You're planning different
projects, you're developing themusing ADDIE from start to
finish. It's not linear all the time.
And then as far as assessments are concerned in instructional
design, it's not just a formative or summative, it's
like a you need to change a behavior.

(09:11):
So you're doing some different types of behavioral assessments
along with evaluation of the course, which is like the
Kirkpatrick model. So there are there's some
commonalities across them, but there are some different key
differences as well. So people that I've worked with
in the past have asked me like, if I'm a teacher, does that mean

(09:33):
that I'm an instructional designer?
And I'm always like, no, not yet, not yet.
You have to be in the industry and experience it live and in
person in the real world to be an instructional designer.
But we're not here to talk aboutthat.
All right? So as much as I love ID, I love
learning and development too. And that's a vast field of

(09:55):
different things. So I decided to do this webinar
with you to give you some insights into different roles
that kind of translate out of education that you could do that
are LND that are LND related. But they're not, they're not
instructional to sign. There's different things you can
do. And I've done some of these
roles. So how to, you know, like I'm

(10:19):
going to go over these 7 roles. I have some examples that I'm
going to provide of these these different roles that you can,
you can review in in the chat. And I just want you to be aware
of what exists out there so thatyou don't think that there's
only one place you can go. If you step out of the
classroom, there's more than oneplace how to choose your lane.

(10:41):
You know how you're gonna like reverse engineer, have some
exercises that you can do to kind of figure out where you
want to go based on your passions, just strengths, what's
happening in the market. And then of course, I have
resources for you. I have tons of resources and
I'll be sharing those throughoutthe the presentation.
But please, this is interactive.I know I'm live on LinkedIn.

(11:03):
I'm paying attention to the LinkedIn feed.
If you have a question, please, please, please, please put it
into the chat. I'm happy to answer that.
I just I want this to be very interactive.
I see it as of right now, we have about 18 people.
So please engage, put stuff in the comments.
I'll come and I'll answer those questions live for you.

(11:25):
All right. So one of the things that's
happening with learning and development, especially in a
post Kovat society is that we companies understand that they
need these people on their teams.
They need e-learning developers,they need instructional
designers, they need LMS administrators.
You know, and one of the things that I think is happening with

(11:48):
teaching is like so many other regulations that teachers have
to go through, the constant adding of things that you need
to do, the constant To Do List, it kind of it's traumatizing.
I'm not gonna lie. When you transition out of
teaching, you're going to have alittle bit of trauma that you're
going to have to deal with, maybe some PTSD.
And I'm not, I'm not saying thatlately because of the things

(12:09):
that you depending upon where you work and what you've had to
deal with. So there are going to be some
mental shifts and then that as well.
But one of the things educators and other people really bring to
the table, I'm not just going tothis is focused on educators,
but I want you to know if you'reworking in a different area of
L&D, this is for you too. You are great at storytelling as

(12:31):
an instructor, you have empathy.You know how to facilitate
things. You know how to build
assessments, you know how to make things engaging.
Lots of corporations and organizations may not have that.
You know, they're really focusedon like the business goals,
what's happening with the revenue, what's happening in the
marketing space, or what's happening as far as like sales
and stuff like that. But teachers have this ability

(12:54):
to come in, simplify things, tell the story, you know, make
it make it feeling like it's important, which it is.
And the learning aspect of that just gets injected with this
sense of like, this is somethingthat needs to happen.
And this is something that people need.
Like people need to feel supported.
And this continuous shifting landscape, especially with

(13:14):
things like AI coming down the line.
I mean, it's here. I'm not gonna say it's coming
down the line, It's here. So just thinking about those
different things and, and how much you can offer as an
instructor. Oh, no, it says the link to the
events not working. Oh, I posted a new one.

(13:35):
Hold on one second. Let me make sure it's it's live
on LinkedIn. People can hear me, right?
Can you give me a thumbs up if you can hear me and everything's
live. I'm seeing it, but I'm not sure
I see people in here. All right, let me provide.
Let me get that that link so people can come in.

(13:58):
Let me invite. Make sure you can come in either
to that when I do these lives. You can come either into the
LinkedIn live or you can come into my room.
Thanks, Ross. It's working for you.
OK, great. I thank you so much.
I see all the OK. Great.
OK, I'm just gonna keep going. Great, great.
This will be released as a podcast episode too.

(14:21):
So you're going to get you're going to get be able to go back
and review what I've mentioned here.
All right, let's jump into some of these roles.
So for the first one I want to talk about that is very closely
related to instructional design,but it's not necessarily
instructional design. It has a lot of components and

(14:41):
some companies see this as some companies see this as you know,
like there are instructional designers, are you learning
developers and then there's learning experience designer,
which is an LXD. So basically you are focused on
from start to finish how people are starting their learning

(15:02):
journey and how are they finished their learning journey.
And you have that instructional design aspect of helping
develop, helping design things, helping get evaluations.
You might do have conversations with some of this.
You'll have conversations with some of the stakeholders or your
work with the instructional designer who is maybe managing
the project. You'll also be very in tune with

(15:24):
the learners because you are so focused on their experience
through this. And I do want to share a link to
an LXD roll. This is one that was listed.
I'm going to put this in the chat on one LinkedIn.
Get that there. And this is a learning
experience designer role for Ring.

(15:44):
So I want you to take these job descriptions and really use them
as your research base for the different roles and kind of
compare between what what an instructional designer does and
what an LXD does. But also to why is this a great,
great area for teachers to be in?
Because as teachers, you are super focused on your learners.

(16:05):
You're focused on your students and what their experiences.
So all the different things thatyou do from lesson planning,
from differentiating instruction, making sure
students have what they need in order to be successful.
You know, you're like putting the knowledge in and then you
can directly translate that to arole in LXD because you are
going to have the experience with knowing what happens end to

(16:29):
end for things. So I think it's important that
LXD is, is another great shift from teaching to LXD.
So you can look for those roles out on the web at different
companies and you'll see sometimes LXD's do a lot they do

(16:49):
LXD and instructional design arevery similar.
And one of the other things I want to mention is that how
these look in LXD. So like for teaching, you'll see
this, I'm going to the bottom part here, I map some of these
things out. So lesson planning is journey
mapping, like what is the experience of the learner going

(17:10):
to be? And then differentiate
instruction is going to be persona based learning.
So you might have some personas throughout your learning
experience that they're following along with.
And this gives people different insights into what maybe a
customer might experience depending on what company you're
working for. Differentiating instruction also
to can include things like personalized learning and LXT.

(17:35):
So designing, you know, designing and classroom like
management stuff, all that stuffyou do for classroom management,
that's user testing, like figuring out what what's gonna
work best for the user. So you might have to do some
pilot things when it comes to LXT.
Just know that these, these rules do vary by just like

(17:55):
instructional design, the, the responsibilities and the
priorities of the role do vary by organization or institution.
Typically we see LXD using the corporate world or you know, it
may be in the government, but that is not something that I've,
I've have not yet. And I'm not, I'm not saying that
doesn't exist. I have not yet seen an LXD in

(18:17):
higher education. I see instructional designers
and I see instructional technologists.
So those are the the most commonones that I see in the education
space, not necessarily an LXD. So things like, I do want to
have a little disclaimer on thisfor tools and metrics and things

(18:38):
to understand, especially when it comes to technology.
People people often have the misconception that technology
and knowing articulate, you know, Figma rise, all these
things inside and out is going to get you the role.
While that's beneficial as you're doing the interview
process to have proficiency in those roles, that's not

(18:59):
necessarily just going to be theonly thing that lands you the
role. Technology, and this is my, this
is my motto, always comes secondary to the person you are,
the experience that you bring tothe table.
Like any good company is going to be able to give you the time
and help you to upskill, you know, as far as the technologies

(19:24):
that you use, because all companies use different
technologies. I didn't even list, I didn't
even list all the tools here. There's a lot more that are, are
used across like there's different LMS's.
There's like I spring that can be used in of course,
development. They also have an LMS.
There's, you know, there's a whole bunch.
There's, I could sit here for days and list all the different

(19:45):
tools. And then as far as metrics are
concerned, this is where the shift a little bit is for
teachers is understanding like KPI's and understanding business
goals and understanding like what's happening.
So as far as like the engagementrate, this is this is 1 I listed
is what people are doing inside the course where they are

(20:05):
engaging, maybe where they're getting held up.
So you're going to have to get some metrics.
From those areas so that you cancontinue to refine the
experience. So this first one, LXD is most
like instructional design. They have a lot of overlap, but
LXD has more of the human component, whereas instructional
designers, we have that too. It's just more like we're

(20:27):
focused on development and, and really designing something and
we may work with an LXD to really make sure that that
experience is good. So again, very similar.
All right, let's go to the next role, e-learning developer.
And this is one that again is very is very similar to

(20:51):
instructional design. I'm going to plug Tim Slade here
because he talks a lot about e-learning development.
And if you don't know Tim Slade,you really need to go out to
LinkedIn and follow him and watch all his videos.
He talks a lot about e-learning development, instructional
design, all the different tools that are used within the
industry. So 100% go out there and follow

(21:12):
Tim Slade. So as far as a teacher is
concerned, where the e-learning development transferable skills
come in is really in your creativity.
Like you understand Ed tech. I probably could ask people in
the chat or if you want to put athumbs up or a heart, whatever
you want to use, if you've used an Ed tech, more than one Ed

(21:33):
tech tool in the classroom, put a heart or a thumbs up and just
let me know because your Ed techexperience really shows that you
can translate Ed tech and to putit in a lesson to where the
technology is really helping thelearner.
It's not necessarily distractingthe learner.
So those lessons become very multimodal and rich.

(21:57):
And I love the technologies. And I'll just say this that
you'd know you're using them, but you don't know you're using
them because the students feel the same way.
So transferring over into e-learning development is really
where you start. I see a lot of hearts and
things. Great.
If you want to in the chat, tellme some of your favorites so

(22:19):
people can kind of, you know, see what everybody's using.
I'd love that too. So there's really, if you know,
at teching, you put it inside ofyour module or excuse me, inside
of your lessons before this translates over into interactive
modules and simulations. So these are things that you're
putting in that the learner is experiencing.
I always relate. You know, I always think about

(22:41):
when I'm designing A module or if I'm a designing a learning
experience, I think about DisneyWorld and I love Disney World.
I'm a Disney adult. I'll met that right away.
What is the experience like for them?
If you think about if you've ever been to Disney Roni, you've
been on one of their rides or you're waiting in line, they
have all these interactive experiences before you actually

(23:01):
get to the big experience. So you can think about that
analogous to instructional design where you have like all
these things leading up and thenthere's like the big thing
that's happening at the end. Is there an assessment?
Is there some sort of like test you have to do?
Do you have to go through a simulation of some sort to prove
that you can complete your role?And then when you're thinking
about mapping out your skills, like the one to 1, you know,

(23:26):
like I said, creating the engaging activities,
troubleshooting the tech for students and maybe fellow
teachers too, that completely translates.
You are strictly working in the development phase.
You might have some influence over design and some other
phases and you might be working with an instructional designer
or an LXD, but you were like youare a techie.

(23:46):
You know the insurance and outs of the tools like I spring that
you were you were authoring, youwere authoring things, you know,
to say e-learning development isn't you know, what authoring
tool do you use? So like storyline captivate I
spring you also have a little bit of insight and data.
That's the thing about LND roles.
There isn't a, there isn't a strict like this is where it

(24:08):
starts and this is where it ends.
Because I've seen e-learning developers who were also
instructional designers and I see job postings that say
e-learning developer and instructional designer and they
put those two roles kind of together because they're
thinking about in a similar fashion.
So just know there's no start. There's no really end.
And you're not just when they list your job description, it's

(24:29):
going to be something in the long the lines of like other
duties as assigned, you might get into more of the
instructional design aspect of of of e-learning development
then you, you previously anticipated.
So let me go back. I'm going to take a quick peek
at the live and see what's goingon there.

(24:50):
Everybody can hear me. That's great interactive circle
time, you know, like that is great for learners.
Like how can you turn that into an interactive multimodal
experience online? Tara, That's that's awesome.
Smart board. Dreambox Seesaw Lexia.
Yep, all of these different things.

(25:10):
So these also too, what's interesting is in my mind's
going everywhere right now because I love talking about
this stuff. So I'll, I'll calm down a little
bit. But I've brought a lot of the Ed
tech tools that I used in the classroom into like the
corporate realm. Like I see corporate using like
cahoots and stuff. You know, I've always like

(25:32):
leaned on some of those tools and I brought them into the
corporate space. Oh, it looks like my video
froze. Oh, let me fix that.
Hmm. Well, you can still hear me.
Oh, there I am. Just a little pause.
So I've might use my experience with the Ed tech tools and

(25:54):
brought that into like as suggestions for the corporate.
Like if you want people to have fun and you want them to be
engaged, you need to make sure that you're using different
technologies that that do that. So maybe as an e-learning
developer, you can and you're coming out of the classroom, you
can recommend some of those tools and maybe work with the

(26:14):
team. So I'm back, I just saw on
LinkedIn, I came back. So again, another great role to
transition out of for, for a teacher going thinking about
jumping into the LND industry. All right, next one LMS
administrator. So as an instructional

(26:36):
technologist, I one second I gotto put in.
So I have a example of an e-learning developer role.
And of course, I'm going to share all these notes when I
release the episode. So I'm going to put that in the
chat so that you can see an example of an e-learning
development role. I definitely need a moderator
for these sessions. So there's an example of an

(27:00):
e-learning developer role. Now let's talk about LMS
administrator. So an LMS, if you're not
familiar, is a learning management system.
So think of in education, think of Canvas, think of Blackboard,
think of bright space, the noodles of the world.
In corporate, think of things like Cornerstone, talent, LMS,
Decibo. Those are learning management

(27:21):
systems. Those are used to house, you
know, courses and content. And that's the experience that
the learner logs into to go intothe course and to complete any
sort of required training. So I've been an LMS
administrator, but I've also been an instructional
technologist. So sometimes this role sits by
itself, depending on where you're at and corporate and

(27:44):
education. Do you have various expectations
when it comes to what an LMS administrator does?
Oh, and you know, as far as teachers are concerned, if you
know grade books and like you'vepulled reports and your grade
books for your students, you're going to need to pull reporting
for people. It might be a little bit more

(28:04):
challenging and different types of reports than you would pull,
say in the classroom if you're using a certain type of grade
book, but that reporting is essential.
I forgot to mention Google Classroom because I know a lot
of K to 12 institutions use thatas well.
It's just not one that I I typically encounter when I am in
my travels from higher educationand a corporate in the Ed tech.

(28:27):
So just making sure that you know that the reports and things
and data that you're pulling outof your grade book that can
translate in this reporting and things you're doing in the LMS.
So and admin really means you'rethe person like controlling the
back end of things. You're not necessarily at the
front, but you're controlling the back end also to providing

(28:48):
any support for students or end user support.
As an LMS administrator, you're going to be seen as the expert.
You're going to be seen as the person who knows how to do these
things. And nowadays it's really easy to
kind of get become an expert in those things because all of the
different LMS is offer like helpsites or knowledge bases to get
you started. And then you can work with your

(29:10):
your Rep from the company. They will walk you through and
offer different types of trainings, but you want to be
sure that you are able to answerthe most common questions.
And teachers do this stuff all the time.
So making sure that you are the technical expert, like I said,
the one to one road map, you do the grade book stuff, setting up
your course and then providing that Technical Support and the

(29:31):
key tools here, like I said, there's Moodle, Cornerstone work
day, knowing about SCORM, that'smostly for corporate user
adoption, up time, data and analytics.
And different institutions and organizations see these
differently. So an LMS administrator, you are
just focused on the LMS and all the different things that your
organization or institution might need to see as first data.

(29:54):
For example, how many, how much up time do we have?
Is it 100%? Is it 99?
When do things go down? How do we manage that or
mitigate that? How many students are currently
users in the system? What are their various roles?
How are they interacting with the different courses and maybe
some of the tools? So I really think that you as an

(30:15):
instructor can definitely take on this role.
And I am now going to put a linkin the chat to an example of an
LMS administrator role. Again, these vary widely
depending upon what institution or organization you are going
to. Let me just make sure this the
OK. So this is not like set in

(30:37):
stone. These jobs are all really
flexible as far as how far they overlap with other things like
instructional design or e-learning development.
You know, one of the things thatwe did an institution I worked
out we had a primary LMS administration administrator,
then I was a secondary. So I knew everything that the
other person was. So sometimes again, you'll see
this role combined with other roles.

(30:58):
Oh, so when you said in the chatshe used Google Classroom during
Cova, but after that they transitioned to canvas, where I
teach, we currently use canvas. I know, I know canvas, bright
space, D2L, Blackboard, like they've all been around for, for
quite a while. So I'm glad to hear that people
are using different things as they're, as they're in the

(31:18):
classroom. I, I really feel this is
beneficial to you when you're wanting to translate into or
transition into a role into LND.All right, got a couple more
roles to go through. Let's keep going and feel free.
Like I said, if you have questions, put them in the chat.
If you have any statement, whatever, put in the chat, I'm

(31:39):
checking it. And I love that we are talking
about different things. And this is also a networking
opportunity. So talk to people in the chat or
connect with them on LinkedIn. All right, next role LND
analysts. So it sounds exactly what it is.
It's an analyst role that deals with data.

(31:59):
And I think that as instructors and educators in the classroom,
we unintentionally deal with data.
You know, maybe if there's like county or state scores things
that come back from them or likeas a school how you overall did.
We don't necessarily pull the data, but we analyze the data
that we are getting from our from our schools and from our

(32:21):
administrators. So one of the things that you do
as an educator, you're able to take that data and what's
happening and and tailor your teaching to that.
So that directly transfers into a skill is where you are able to
look at the data and then correlate it with a business
goal. So if you have a KPI, say of

(32:42):
your spoke, your pipeline says to be a certain amount, what's
the business goal there? When how much is your company
looking to grow over the next one, five years, whatever that
may be. So you can take that skill and
you can translate that into an LND analyst role.
So like I said, testing scores, talking to parents, and I know
people set up their own data like within, within Google stuff

(33:03):
and they, they track different metrics, formative assessment.
So that that all translates intothis LD role.
So if you're somebody that likesto, you know, look at those test
scores, look at different charts, look at different graphs
or do pivot tables and you're just a data nerd.
I would say this is this is a great role for you because one

(33:24):
of the things that you're responsible for is reporting
this information to let's say this.
The higher ups, we're reporting it to different LND teams,
explaining to them what might behappening within the E learnings
that you're developing or the instructional design team and
give them some insights into what's happening with the users.
And most commonly used tools andmetrics here, the Power BI, the

(33:47):
Tableau, the Google data stuff, dashboards, heat maps, you name
it, return on investment. It's it's all a part of this
particular role. So let me go ahead and share
that role in the chat so that you can get a better
understanding. So if you were data person, this
is a role for you. If you're like teaching, like

(34:09):
teaching, I love looking at all the data.
I love seeing all the stuff, then this is 100% a role for
you. All right, moving right along,
learning consultant. And I would say that this even
has some freelance type feel to it, depending upon how you're

(34:31):
doing it, because there are people who exist in corporations
as a learning consultant, they're consultant within the
organization, but there are people that come from the
outside and we call those freelancers or consultants that
come in and they make recommendations based on what
they're seeing internally. So basically you're coming in
and you're like, this is where gaps exist and this is what the

(34:54):
solution should be. One of the things I wrote here,
it's not always training. If you read Kathy Moore's book
Map it training is not always the answer.
It might be something that as simple as a, as a job aid or you
know, something where there's a one-on-one conversation
happening between an end user and a supervisor.

(35:15):
It really does depend. So you come in as a lonely
consultant, you look at the top level of things, you get down
into the details and then you recommend like solutions that
are going to stimulate things and going to make things better.
And one of the reasons this is agreat role for teachers is
because you have to really, you get, you get, what is it?
Oh gosh, what's it called? It's escaping me now.

(35:38):
You get, so the administrator comes into your classroom and
they kind of review your lessonsand they give you feedback on
that. So you really have to analyze
those conversations and then align that again with tailing
your teaching. And that transfers over into
business where like I said, I'vebeen mentioning KPI's.
What's your key performance indicators?

(35:59):
I'm sorry, I forgot to say what that was.
So you really have to understandlike how it's impacting what the
business is doing as far as the learning consultant role goes.
And one of the things you'll notice that in the key tools and
metrics here, Addy is a part of that.

(36:20):
Addy is a huge part of that. So you really, you really need
to understand Addy. So as a consultant, you have to
have some of those skills and knowledge of an instructional
designer. HPT models, client interviews,
time to competency. This is something I definitely
experienced inside the corporatespace.
NPS scores, how are we doing, how our customers think we're

(36:42):
doing? How are things, how are we
performing? Basically like what is their
opinion? And then again, the teacher like
the the mapping, the one to one skills needs analysis,
understanding your conversation,what's going well for your
students, what's not talking to administrators, what needs to
change like analyzing those conversations and maybe some of

(37:03):
the data and then aligning it toany curriculum.
And another thing too, I know a lot of teachers who do
professional development things outside of teaching, like not
outside of maybe they do within the school or they do at the
Board of Education, but you alsotrain other people.
So this is a great skill for a learning consultant that you can

(37:25):
translate into and you can do your own thing.
You can do some freelancing stuff, make some, you know,
money on the side and, and really help companies and
organizations or your own schooltranslate that.
So here's an example of a learning consultant role.
So this can be a variety of different things.
You really have to be well-rounded instructional

(37:47):
design LXD you learning, you have to have the knowledge of
these things to perform well in this role.
All right, next one training coordinator and program manager.
I am seeing this more and more and more out on the on L LND
sites or organizations that are looking to hire people in LND.

(38:09):
So if you're, if you're a coordinator or your program
manager, you're basically you'retaking like there's, there could
be multiple. For example, when I worked our
pharmacy, we had multiple different programs running at
one time, like for customer success for our pharmacist, you
know the pharmacist and we had awhole bunch of different
programs and you are responsiblefor them to keep running and

(38:34):
want a budget. So that's where the little bit
of the difference come in. You have to understand like what
the budget is for it. Of course, that involves time to
competency for your saving time.That usually saves money.
So this is a role where you do have to focus on, you know,
every role you have to focus on the money, but this one

(38:55):
specifically has that as a part of it.
So why it's great for you as a teacher.
If you look at the one to one road map, you know, you schedule
field trips and then you schedule, you know, you schedule
like everything as far as parentconferences and things are
going. The cohort scheduling that

(39:15):
involves like when is this particular group is if it's new
hires, when are they going through the training?
And what does that, what does that time frame look like?
Of course, communication emails,having again, those parent
teacher conferences as a training and program manager
going to be constantly communicating with your
stakeholders and telling them where things at.

(39:37):
There might be a spreadsheet of some sort or a Smartsheet of
some sort that you have to manage, and you might be using
things like a sauna or cello to manage your different projects.
And as far as like planning out your own course for the year,
that's project management and that's timelines.
So if you're somebody that enjoys planning stuff out and

(39:59):
managing the project start to finish and really being able to
quickly solve problems as you meet them, maybe barriers and
stuff, you, this is a great rolefor you.
So again, I already mentioned some of the tools that are used
here. Attendance rate, who's actually
in completion rates, who's actually completing the program

(40:19):
and if things are happening on timers there delays, how do you
mitigate those things? So again, this might be a role
where there is involved some data definitely you're going to
have to talk to the LND analyst about that.
So as you can see these various roles they do have, they do have
some overlap or you will have another person on your team that

(40:40):
has a similar role. All right, so here's an example
of a training and program coordinator role.
And again, for those listening to the podcast episode, I'm
going to put all the links in the in the show notes to these
so that you can go back and review these so that you can get

(41:00):
a better understanding of what these actually are.
The last one is a knowledge manager or content curator.
And I'm also seeing some of thiskind of bleed over into a
community manager too. So what I would say to you, this
is where you were kind of managing the knowledge base or

(41:23):
where people are going to find help information.
So you want, if you're somebody who's good at sourcing
crowdsourcing resources, I'm going to get content curator
role. If you're somebody who's good
at, like I said, crowdsourcing resources, this is a, this is a

(41:44):
great job for you. This is something that
instructors do very well. When you need to plus and plan,
you need to find the resources and the documentation or the
links or whatever as far as whatyou, your learners need to do or
need to have access to in order to succeed.
But they also need to be able tounderstand what they have to do.

(42:06):
So if they're engaging in some sort of Ed tech, what does that
technical stuff look like? So again, this is a great job or
a role for XTX teachers because you do a lot of that curation
already, you know, are you usinglike a certain Ed tech that
maybe does it for you? I did a project with my, when I

(42:28):
was teaching with my 9th gradersand they had to do a full blown
research paper. So one of the things I had to do
is, and like this mentions here is I had to work with the
library to curate resources to get them to understand how to
cite sources. And you know, of course, being
able to design something like a knowledge base that makes sense,
that's searchable. So some of the different tools

(42:49):
here, you'll see Confluence, you'll see what other ones, it's
a SharePoint. There's, there's a whole bunch
of different ones that can can house your knowledge base and
you want to be able to see how people find your resources.
If there's a rain, I don't know if you've ever clicked on

(43:10):
anything like Microsoft or some of the other Ed tech tools that
you use and gives you give it a rating, a thumbs up or thumbs
down or common. If this was useful, is it
something that people are clicking on?
So that doesn't mean that might be a common problem and you
might have to report that to your product team and then
article freshness rate. So getting things up to date

(43:31):
like like ASAP, like if there's a product change or there's a,
there's a change in workflow fora certain business, like maybe
the customer care agents have todo something different within
their workflows, then you need to make sure that that article
is up to date. This is probably one of the most
challenging parts of this role. Let me go ahead and share the

(43:55):
here's an example of A and there's more out there, content
curator. This one specifically has to do
with live a library. I know a lot we think of when we
think of curators, we think of like museums and libraries and
resources, primary sources, all the different things.
So basically, you know, it's important for you to understand

(44:16):
how to organize things here. So teachers are great
organizers. So this would be a great role
for somebody stepping out of education.
Let me take a moment to pause and check some of the live
stuff. All right, awesome.
Let's keep going. All right, so those are all the

(44:43):
roles. Those are 7 different roles you
can have in your pocket for whenyou're doing your LinkedIn
searching, your job searching. And again, these are all
organizations and institutions, all see them differently.
They might have different titles, but they might have the
same characteristics of the role.
So just make sure that you are researching out there and

(45:03):
looking at the different roles. That's one of the things I tell
people when they first are thinking about transitioning to
role Ality. Research what the roles are.
See what you like about the role, what you don't like about
the role. You know, what are things that
you think like, Oh, this will directly like lesson planning to
project management directly is atransferable skill for a program
manager. So you have to think about all

(45:25):
those things before you actuallystart doing the applying because
if you apply to everything, and I always use this analogy, just
like the lottery, if you get 1000 tickets or you get 50
tickets, you still have the samechances.
So I don't recommend applying tomillions of jobs to see if
something sticks because it's not.
It's probably not. There may be anomalies out

(45:46):
there, but it's probably not. So one of the reverse engineer
paths activities I recommend is a three circle Venn diagram.
And I honestly recommend Googling this and going through
the process. So basically what you're doing
here is you're reflecting about like what your passions are, the
skills that you have, some of the knowledge that you have, and
then looking at what the industry needs and then relating

(46:09):
that. Like, you know, the three
circles, like in the middle is you and then all the different
things. And then writing that down.
You can do this different ways. You can just write down what
your passions are, what your skills are, what your, your
expertise knowledge is in and then go out and research like
what are the, what are people looking for as an LXD?
What are people looking for as far as any learning development

(46:30):
and kind of get an idea of what those are.
So you can go on and search for roles that apply to those
things. And that's going to do 2 things.
That's number one. It's going to make you more
aware where some of your, where your strengths are, maybe where
some of your gaps are, but #2 you're not going to be applying
the roles that you may not want.You're not going to be applying
to things like I shouldn't applyto that.
I've seen so many people come out and they've applied your

(46:51):
role, they took it and they're like they took the first thing
out and they didn't like it so they had to transition again.
So please do some of the research, please do some of the
self reflecting. The next is an exercise that you
can do is you're taking your topthree teaching skills and then
you're matching them like doing a little match activity to the
relevant L&D roles. So how directly that expertise

(47:16):
that you have, the skills can transfer over into whatever role
or whatever area you're looking to get into.
So these two things are really easy to do.
You can just sit down for 15 minutes and do one of the other
or both. And that way it gives you more
of a path and a starting point to what you're looking for.
Because most times everybody's like, I want to be an
instructional designer. And my, my response is, what

(47:39):
industry do you want to go into?Because the instructional design
is huge. You learning development is
huge. You want to be in corporate
education, government, freelance.
Do you want to, you know, develop your own business?
So just it, you really have to know where you're going with
these types, these types of situations.
And all right. And I want to pause real quick

(48:01):
and tell you about some of the things that are happening in the
next couple of weeks. Like, I have some things going
on as far as I'm going to give you the access to the guide, but
I also want to encourage you to join this ICE Spring community
where I am. I am posting some exclusive

(48:23):
content. So I put that link in the chat.
And then I also too want to encourage you as you're thinking
about your role, one of the things you're going to start to
see is you probably need to update your resume.
So I'm doing a free live resume workshop where you can come, you
can join. And we're just going to make

(48:44):
every, your resume. So I encouraged you, if you
haven't already signed up for that.
It's, it's completely free, no strings attached.
There's going to be like stuff given away and it's going to be
fun. And I just want to, I just want
to help. So please sign up for that as
well. And I think it's, it's really
important for you to connect with me on LinkedIn too, if you
haven't already. I share tons of content out

(49:06):
there. So if you haven't followed me on
LinkedIn or you haven't connected with me, I still have
some connections. I think LinkedIn limits to
30,000. I have a few left that I can
connect with you. So please, please, please, I'll
put my LinkedIn in the chat as well.
Please connect with me on a LinkedIn world.
Join that learning exchange. And when this comes out as a
podcast episode, share with yourpeers.

(49:28):
And I just have to shout out ispring for sponsoring this for
me. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to
do this live with you and help you and share all the
information, the guides, the knowledge, the things that I
know about so that you can learnfrom my mistakes and my missteps
to find the role that fits you also want to mention.

(49:52):
So now it's time for QA. I'm going back to look into the
chat. Also mention to you that you can
join. So one of the communities that
or one of the places I absolutely love is Chelsea Avert
site Ed Skip, where you can finda variety again of these LND
type roles that I've mentioned. And some of those links were

(50:14):
from her site. And you can get 10% off of Ed
Skip and her subscriptions. Super affordable.
I used them when I was transitioning out from Amazon to
the role I currently have now. If you use the code Holly, you
get 10% off. So be sure to write down that
code. Use that code.
It's going to be important for you to save some money in this

(50:35):
these economic times that we're having.
So definitely 100% go out to Ed Skip, you know, use that code,
Holly. And now it's time for live QA.
So I'm going to go back to the chat and I'm going to see what
people have been asking. All right, So Danielle says I'm
a school librarian to transitionand this seems like a perfect

(50:56):
role for me. I love the one I shared about
the librarian David has asked. Any advice for someone looking
in transition LD with no education injury?
I come from children's media background, currently working as
a content moderator, curator butenjoy entry liver while working
with curriculum lectures to develop education content.
So I would say you would probably look for a curriculum

(51:19):
designer role or like a curriculum curator role that
might be good for you. But also too, if I would
recommend taking a peek at the e-learning development.
If you do like technology stuff,that could be a role for you as
well. And these positions again, are
called different things. So that might be 1.

(51:39):
I would recommend looking at e-learning development, but also
looking for what did I say, likean Ed, like a content curator,
like you're already doing that. So maybe look for that more in
the education space. And it's also good to to look at
Ed tech companies because they're always looking for
people to kind of make their their education stuff like their

(52:03):
nod bases and stuff or their experiences when they're
ombudding people sound better, like not sound so much and full
of jargon and things like that. So that might be a good idea for
you. I have to think about that a
little bit more. Yay.
You come to the webcar. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think I saw another question in here.

(52:23):
Let's see, let me go back. All right.
I mean, if you have that media stuff to you learning
development or video production or I have somebody who's on my
team because a social media specialist, but they do like

(52:44):
they do do some video stuff. So I mean, you could look at
those different roles and just see what, what works best for
you and kind of do some of the research out there.
Yeah, Ed Skip is amazing. I love it too, Tara.
It is absolutely amazing. Chelsea has just, she's outdone
herself with, with Ed Skip as far as like just the rules and

(53:04):
the vast diverse amount of rolesshe shares.
And they're all 60K or more and most are remote.
So it's amazing. All right, that's a great
question, Jessica. So Jessica's asking in the chat,
do many or any of these roles require additional
certification? It depends.

(53:26):
In the corporate space, they don't really see academic
credentials. They do like to see those, but
they don't weigh heavily as muchas they want in the education or
an academic space. So the certificate might be for
you to get some knowledge and some skills that you may not
have if you're coming out of theclassroom to kind of get a
better understanding of that. But one of the things that I say

(53:47):
is I wouldn't invest in something that's paid for until
you've exhausted all their free resources first.
So exhaust there's free resources 1st.
And I'm going to put a link again in the chat and this will
be in the show notes as well. I'm not sure how many of you,
you've probably seen this and I'll share this tab instead.
My curated resources, which I'm going to go in and update soon.

(54:09):
I have a couple things to add, which if you're stepping out
into instructional design or anyof these LND roles, this is a
great place for you to start andthink about where you're where
where you're gonna go. Like where you gonna gonna go
join an Academy or you do need to read some books.
What are the things that you need to do?

(54:29):
And of course, my computer is freezing because it doesn't want
me to share things. All right, let me put that in
the chat says we can't access your video, but my videos right
here. All right, I should have should
have had that link up. All right, let's get that in the

(54:53):
chat as well. And I have a shorter bit lately,
but that's the longer 1. So please, please go ahead and
you know, use that as part of your when you're going and
looking for different roles, usethat, use those resources and
they're free and paid for thingsin there.
So all right, I think we've cometo the end of the presentation

(55:18):
here and make sure this goes in the chat.
All right, all right, I'm so excited.
This was such a great session. I even learned some stuff by

(55:39):
just talking through those various roles.
Make sure that share, if not everything's going to be in the
show notes And people often ask me, and this is the final thing
that I'll say before I shut downthe live is like, do I help
people? I do help people.
I have some like 30 minutes, 60 minute sessions that I do
outside of the work day that youcan sign up for that are paid

(56:02):
for opportunities. You know, you can do a free
discovery call, but if you want to, we can sit down and have a
conversation. I am so happy to do that with
you to kind of get you on that path to where you want to be and
give you advice. Just my experience, what I've
seen out in the industry, you know, transitioning into these
various roles. So, you know, come join me and

(56:25):
I'd love to have a one-on-one with you.
All right, thank you so much forcoming to the session.
I saw about 30 people join. I had about 141 registered, but
I'm so glad there is an interestin this sort of conversation.
I'm going to keep having these conversations and sharing these
out as podcast episodes. So make sure you follow my

(56:46):
podcast. Make sure you follow me and
LinkedIn for all the latest and the greatest.
Thanks again for joining and I'll see you next time.
Hi, we're I Spring, an international team of e-learning
enthusiasts who helped more than60,000 clients across the globe
succeed with better online learning.

(57:07):
Our two flagship solutions are ISpring Suite and I Spring Learn
LMS. I Spring Suite is an intuitive,
all in one authoring tool for creating engaging e-learning
content, while I Spring Learn isan innovative online training
platform for onboarding, upskilling and certifying your
teams. We'd be happy to get to know you
and pick a solution that fits your needs best.
Go to www.icepringsolutions.com to learn more about us and

(57:31):
connect. Thanks for spending a few
minutes with Holly, she knows your podcast queue is packed.
If today's episode sparked an idea or gave you that extra
nudge of confidence, tap follow or subscribe in your favorite
app so you never miss an episodeof Ed Up L.
And D dropping a quick rating orreview helps more educators and

(57:52):
learning pros discover the show,too.
Want to keep the conversation going?
Connect with Holly on LinkedIn and share.
Your biggest take away? She reads every message.
Until next time, keep learning, keep leading, and keep believing
in your own story. Talk soon.
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