Introducing myself, and would like suggestions on creating a portfolio?

[marieo10463503]

Hello, I'm fairly new to the world of eLearning and training development. It came about by accident; I was originally a budding web designer when I was offered a position to create online tutorials for field personnel. It was a new position and completely separate from the corporation's training department, so I am self-taught in Captivate as well as Articulate Storyline. 

I held the position for three years, during which I created about 10-15 tutorials targeting a specific team. In addition, the training department "borrowed" me twice to help them for longer term projects that targeted a much wider audience. Thus began my entry into the world of training development. While I had no problem learning the two different softwares, I don't  have any formal education in the training/teaching field. All I know how to do is create WBTs and CBTs based on information given.

My contract ended last week and I'm searching for another role within the training development industry. It's going to be a challenge without any degrees. I also don't have a portfolio, which is why I'm here.

Where do I start? What do I build? Most importantly, without a Captivate or Storyline subscription, how can I showcase what I've done in the past three years? 

I have PS images and some Premiere Pro video work I can include as well. 

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Marie

[Paul Wilson CTDP]

Hi Marie,

Your story sounds a little like mine. I too am the accidental eLearning designer, developer. I was originally hired by the L&D department at my company mostly because I was a subject matter expert. I fell in love with training and eventually started to develop elearning courses for my company. I first started to use Adobe Captivate in 2005 and I've used it ever since.

Adobe offers a unique opportunity to those that participate in the Adobe eLearning Community. In exchange for participation, you are rewarded with a complimentary license of Adobe Captivate. see the link for more details. because of my active involvement in the community by posting weekly tutorials about Adobe Captivate and other eLearning-related topics, I have earned enough points to not need to purchase Adobe Captivate. I've been using a complimentary license for many years now.

Combine that with a relatively free account of the Amazon S3 service (webserver), I can host as many fully functional eLearning projects to share with my stakeholders and potential hiring managers. You can even embed these courses in your own web page for all visitors to your website to see. Here are two videos that will be helpful to you with those steps if you decide to follow my example:

https://youtu.be/TLla3t2rmo4

https://youtu.be/wajNZA9oVnw

[marieo10463503]

Thank you so much for the suggestions Paul. I will definitely follow up on these. 

I attempted to start a portfolio using the app, but I'm still at a loss as to how to lay it out, what to include, etc.