Episode 17 - Alison Sollars
Listen to the whole episode here:
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Alison Sollars is a Learning Experience Designer who has a myriad of K12 and corporate experience and a passion for improving organizational systems, creating training for how people actually learn things, and adding value to both the L&D community and the Teacher Transition community. She’s also the Vice President & Lead Community Manager for the TPLD (or Teaching; a Path to Learning and Development) a free online community of practice that helps educators transition into the field and find the job they want.
In this episode, Alison and I chat about the following challenges:
1) Imagine you’re transitioning from your current job to becoming an L&D professional. You want to know where to start upskilling, but you’re hearing mixed advice. Some say you should educate yourself on theory before touching an authoring tool while others argue that the application of your skills is what will get you a job. Should you begin with one path over the other?
2) You’ve been brought on by a company that wants to overhaul their training, but it doesn’t look like they have much experience or a structure to make it happen. Your responsibility is to bring courses online but also train the staff on a cohesive structure to follow when building future courses. What do you teach your team to focus on with the limited time you have between projects?
3) The TPLD has been a beacon of guidance and community for transitioning teachers and other L&D professionals. Everyone who is looking for a job has their own unique circumstances which can be difficult when you’re tasked with addressing all of them. How do you focus on topics that bring value to a large population without making it too vague for those at differing skill level?
Here are the resources that were mentioned in the show:
ATD Learning Career Competencies model
The Project Management Institute