Professional Foundations in LDT Overview

Why this supra-badge matters. 

Professional Foundations are the backbone of my practice—it’s where craft meets character. It’s not only about producing clear, accurate training materials; it’s about showing up as a collaborator, a researcher, an ethical practitioner, and a reflective professional. Framing my work through this supra-badge helped me curate artifacts and experiences on my portfolio page that demonstrate the habits behind the outputs: precise writing, purposeful presentation, disciplined research, and steady engagement with a professional community. 

Sub-Badge 1: ID Professional Communicator 

Competencies & what they look like in my work. 
This sub-badge asks for evidence of clear, audience-appropriate communication across formats (visual, written, and spoken) and contexts (individual, team, and stakeholder). In practice, that means I translate complex SME input into concise storyboards, streamline slide scripts, and keep design notes actionable so downstream development is faster and cleaner. The sub-badge requirements on my portfolio underscore this “evidence mindset”—multiple artifacts per challenge that prove clarity, consistency, and polish.  

Personal achievements. 
On my site, I highlight storyboard sets that chunk dense content into bite-sized sequences and script snippets that illustrate tone and audience alignment. I also point to process reflections (e.g., a post on scope control) that show how communication tools—expectations, agendas, decision logs—help prevent rework. Together, these artifacts show communication not as “nice to have” but as a project-risk control. 

Sub-Badge 2: Applying ID Research & Theory 

Competencies & what they look like in my work. 
Here, the goal is to select and apply theory with intentionality by using heuristics to match models to problems. My artifacts include a literature review on AI’s impact on soft-skills development and case-based write-ups that justify design choices (e.g., when to lean on behaviorist practice vs. cognitivist scaffolds). The sub-badge page on my portfolio frames this as “explaining key concepts and applying them to authentic problems,” which is exactly how I approached these projects. 

Personal achievements. 
My lit review, The Impact of AI on Soft and Traditional Skills Development, synthesizes current research and distills implications for design decisions (e.g., where AI coaching augments deliberate practice, where social presence is non-negotiable). That analysis now informs my microlearning patterns and assessment strategies. 

Sub-Badge 3: ID Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes 

Competencies & what they look like in my work. 
This sub-badge emphasizes sustained professional growth—participating in PD, reflecting on practice, and demonstrating a growth mindset. The page outlining these challenges begins with my engagement with my local Association for Talent Development chapter and aligns with my active engagement in local professional communities and ongoing skill refresh (tools, methods, facilitation). By participating in monthly “Learning over Lunch” meetings and in person get togethers, I am building my network and increasing my “net worth” by doing so. 

Personal achievements. 
I document Personal Development touchpoints and translate them into portfolio artifacts (e.g., updated templates, revised design checklists). I will never forget some of the interviews I have conducted in this program! That loop—learn → pilot → document—has helped me sharpen facilitation strategies like using Miro to get participants involved, new AI strategies like building custom GPTs and using Claude code and learning about problems fellow IDers are having in the real world that I now reuse across clients and contexts. 

Sub-Badge 4: Ethical, Legal, and Political Implications of Design 

Competencies & what they look like in my work. 
This sub-badge holds me accountable for academic integrity, accessibility, data stewardship, and the broader organizational/political realities around learning solutions. On my site, I include my plagiarism certificate and articulate why attribution, licensing awareness, and ethical sourcing are foundational—not ornamental. 

Personal achievements. 
Beyond formal certificates, I maintain explicit citation practices in research-informed artifacts and ensure design decisions (e.g., media selection, analytics) respect learner privacy and institutional policy. This ethic shows up in my file structures, asset manifests, and “source of truth” references across projects. 

Overall Experience: What I Gained 

Working through this supra-badge tightened the through-line from problem framing → theory-informed design → ethical delivery → reflective improvement. I became faster at translating SME knowledge into usable storyboards, clearer about when and how to deploy specific learning theories, more disciplined in documenting sources and decisions, and more intentional about my professional growth plan. The portfolio structure itself—supra-badge → sub-badges → challenge evidence—helped me think like an assessor and design with evaluation in mind from the start. 

In current practice: I use research-backed heuristics from my lit review to shape microlearning that targets soft-skill performance (e.g., coaching prompts, scenario scaffolds) and I rely on my communication toolkit—tight scripts, annotated storyboards, and decision logs—to accelerate SME cycles and reduce rework. 

In future practice: I’ll continue to document ethical considerations (privacy, attribution, accessibility) inside design deliverables—not as afterthoughts—and keep iterating my PD plan so my methods and tools stay current. The portfolio’s challenge-evidence rhythm gives me a repeatable way to capture growth and demonstrate impact as projects scale. 

Professional Foundations made the “meta-work” visible: the habits that make an instructional designer dependable. The artifacts on my page don’t just show what I built; they show how I think, collaborate, research, and uphold ethics—skills I will keep refining as I take on larger, more complex learning challenges.