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Moving from teaching into instructional design means showing how you turn a learning need into a clear, usable learning experience. Your teaching background can provide relevant foundations, but employers may also want evidence of digital design, collaboration, accessibility and particular authoring tools.
Before enrolling in a course, try designing one small learning experience for an adult audience. The exercise can help you decide whether you enjoy the work behind the lesson as much as delivering it.
What changes when you become an instructional designer?
Instead of being the person who teaches every session, you may create resources that someone else delivers or that learners use independently. You might interview a subject expert, organise complex information, write a storyboard, review a prototype and revise it after feedback. The mix differs between universities, employers, training providers and agencies.
Read the actual advertisement. “Learning designer”, “instructional designer” and “digital learning developer” can describe overlapping work, but the balance of educational design, media production and technical development is not identical.
Translate teaching skills into design evidence
- Planning: show how you connect the learning goal, activity and assessment.
- Differentiation: explain how someone with a different starting point can use the resource.
- Feedback: show how a learner finds out why a choice works or needs changing.
- Evaluation: describe what you would observe to decide whether the resource helps.
A colourful slide deck on its own does not explain your design judgement. Include a short rationale: who needs the resource, what they should be able to do afterwards and why the selected format fits the task.
Try a small practice brief
Practice project: design a five-minute introduction that helps a new volunteer identify which enquiries they can answer and which they must refer to a supervisor. This is a sample brief, not a claim about a real client.
- Define one observable outcome: correctly choose the next action for three common enquiries.
- Write down what you would need to ask the organisation before designing: approved responses, escalation contacts and privacy boundaries.
- Create a six-screen storyboard: purpose, example, explanation, two practice decisions and a summary.
- Add feedback explaining the reasoning behind each decision.
- Describe a simple user test and what you would revise if instructions were misunderstood.
Use a document or presentation tool you already understand for the first version. If an advertisement requires a specific authoring tool, research that tool separately and decide whether learning it would strengthen your applications.
Build accessibility into the first draft
Use meaningful headings, clear instructions and sufficient contrast. Do not rely on colour alone to communicate the correct answer. Provide text alternatives for important visual information and plan captions or transcripts where audio or video is necessary. Test the actual interaction as well as its appearance.
ADCET’s guidance for learning designers is a useful starting point for thinking about inclusive learning. Its TAFE SA accessibility-by-design case study also shows how accessibility can be embedded in planning and delivery. Neither replaces checking the requirements of your actual project.
Do you need another qualification?
There is no single answer that applies to every advertised role. Make a comparison sheet from several current Australian advertisements: required qualifications, preferred qualifications, software, portfolio expectations and sector experience. Separate “essential” from “desirable” and contact the recruiter if a requirement is unclear.
If the position involves delivering or assessing nationally recognised vocational training, investigate the relevant credential and industry requirements. ASQA’s Standards for RTOs include a Credential Policy; do not assume a teaching degree alone covers every training and assessment role.
What should your first portfolio entry show?
Include the brief, a few storyboard pages, your design rationale, accessibility decisions and next testing steps. Clearly label self-directed work. Do not invent completion rates or say a practice resource improved workplace performance when it has not been used.
Our career-change portfolio guide gives you a reusable structure for presenting the sample without sharing confidential school materials.
Questions to ask before applying
- How much of the role is writing and learning design versus media production?
- Who supplies and approves subject-matter content?
- Which tools would I use in the first three months?
- How does the team test accessibility and learning effectiveness?
- What support is available while learning the organisation’s systems?
If you discover that you most enjoy facilitating and helping people practise together, explore learning and development roles too. Comparing the everyday work is more useful than choosing a title because it sounds familiar.
Image: AI-generated editorial illustration. Sources are linked throughout this guide.