Your portfolio is one of the most important elements of your job search materials. And even if you are not actively looking for a new opportunity, it’s key to keep your resume and your portfolio up to date and current so that it’s ready when you need it. But if you are building a career in learning and development, your portfolio looks nothing like a design portfolio. Here are a few things to keep in mind to make sure you are marketing yourself as an eLearning expert in the modern age.
4 Ways to Use Your Portfolio
1. Showcase Assessments
Learning and Development as an industry is inevitably dependent on assessed progress of the students within the programs you develop. Those assessments are a key part of your profile because they showcase your results as a training developer. Quizzes are common, but think of ways you can create a few different types to exemplify your range and creativity. Make your quizzes look different and engaging through modification, customization of default settings, and anything else to bring out the impact of the material in a portfolio setting.
2. Highlight Scenarios
Share interactive scenarios that you have developed within your portfolio. They are some of the most engaging experiences you can create in a learning environment, so they should be showcased front and center in your portfolio. Their ability to mirror real-world interactions makes them a powerful addition to your job application or networking material.
3. Build in Fun Interactions
Once you build the general structure of your portfolio and cover all the basics, go deep and feature the valuable interactions that you have worked hard to enable. Consider building some modules that demonstrate your skills in creating different interactions for eLearning experiences, such as clicking, hovering, dragging, whatever the case may be. Your portfolio is the last place you want to fail to demonstrate your skills in strong user experience. Make sure you keep your audience engaged.
4. End with Technical Training
Of course, your resume will list out all the software and other technical skills you have at your disposal, but your portfolio can benefit from an example or two of this experience in action. If you specialize in any software you should be showing off those skills as you build your portfolio. Consider building in a short screencast video example of an interactive software simulation. Video is an amazing tool to bring your content to life, as you well know if you are in the learning and development industry.
While simple themes do work best for presenting your portfolio, don’t shy away from creating an engaging experience for your viewers. Provide samples of your work, with a brief overview of the project objectives, how those objectives were achieved, and what your role in the project was. Then make the learning experience fun and engaging to really showcase how great you are at your job. Your audience will surely be impressed.
Your portfolio is one of the most important elements of your job search materials. And even if you are not actively looking for a new opportunity, it’s key to keep your resume and your portfolio up to date and current so that it’s ready when you need it. But if you are building a career in learning and development, your portfolio looks nothing like a design portfolio. Here are a few things to keep in mind to make sure you are marketing yourself as an eLearning expert in the modern age.
