From 20 Years in the Classroom to Instructional Design: Clair Welton's CDLP Story

After more than 20 years working in education, Clair Welton wanted to develop her skills beyond the traditional classroom and explore how technology could enhance learning. The Certified Digital Learning Professional (CDLP) program at the Digital Learning Institute gave her the practical grounding and the confidence to do exactly that.

Clair has always enjoyed creating resources, planning lessons, and thinking about how learners engage with content so instructional design felt like a natural progression. She was also curious about future opportunities within digital education and wanted to build skills that could open up new pathways alongside teaching.

The flexibility of the course, the range of content it covered, and the ability to learn at her own pace fit well alongside her professional commitments.

Clair has completed several academic qualifications and professional development courses over her career, but what stood out about the Digital Learning Institute was how practical and relevant the learning was.

The course balanced videos, written content, activities, and practical tasks, which suited different learning styles. Being able to revisit recorded sessions also gave her flexibility to fit study around working full time.

Despite her years of experience, the program pushed Clair to reconsider how she approaches learning design.

It also helped her see her existing strengths in a new light, recognizing that skills she already had as a teacher could transfer directly into instructional design work.

The clearest impact on Clair's day-to-day work has been in how she designs lessons and learning resources for her students.

The course helped her think more carefully about the learner journey, structure, accessibility, and how different elements work together to support understanding. She now applies these principles when building schemes of work, making sure activities are purposeful rather than adding technology for its own sake.

She also didn't expect to come away as comfortable with the tools as she did.

Along the way, she discovered Canva for the first time and has enjoyed exploring what it can do, with plenty more of its functionality still to try.

If there's one idea Clair takes into every project now, it's this:

Technology, she says, is a tool but the focus has to stay on the learner and the learning outcomes. That shift has made her more thoughtful about how she structures information, activities, and assessments, thinking carefully about the purpose of each element and how they connect.

The program has encouraged Clair to look beyond her current classroom role. She remains passionate about teaching, but is now interested in how her experience can combine with digital learning, instructional design, and emerging areas like AI in education.

It helped her recognize that her years in the classroom are an asset she can carry into new kinds of roles and that there's more than one way to contribute to education going forward.

Clair felt supported throughout the program, which made the experience manageable alongside full-time work. Access to resources, guidance, and recorded sessions meant she could learn in a way that fit her schedule support that made the course enjoyable rather than overwhelming.

She's not finished exploring what DLI has to offer, either.

Clair would recommend the course to anyone who wants to understand how to create effective learning experiences whether they work in education, training, or another field. It's flexible, practical, and covers a wide range of topics, making it a strong foundation for developing new skills, changing direction, or strengthening a current role.

Is the course manageable alongside full-time work? Yes. Clair found the self-paced content and recorded sessions easy to fit around teaching full time.

Is the program practical? Yes. Clair applied what she learned directly to how she designs lessons and resources for her students.

Can it help with career development? Yes. The program helped Clair see her teaching experience as transferable and gave her the confidence to explore roles in digital learning and instructional design.