Peck Academy

Peck Academy is a state-licensed career school for people who want to become instructional designers. It is a separate company from this site, with its own curriculum and staff: Sabrina Gonzales designs courses, Scott Schmidt leads the live workshops and works 1-on-1 with students, Lindsey Mattinson handles resumes, and Nathan Wolfe and I build the systems underneath, with an independent advisory committee of ten instructional design leaders reviewing what we teach. This page is the story of how it got built and the decisions behind it.

The choice that made it a school

Since 2018 I've helped people break into instructional design, first through free articles, videos, and portfolio reviews. Then came the ID Bootcamp, a program with one goal: to help each person build a strong portfolio that helps them stand out and get hired. I got more satisfaction out of that work than anything else I've done, and it was extremely rewarding to help people launch careers where they could work less and earn more.

Then I learned that if I wanted to formally help prepare people for a new career, I would need to convert the bootcamp into a licensed career school. I had a choice: I could just provide professional development to people in the field, or I could go through the year-long licensing path and become an actual school. Because helping people into this career is the work I care about most, I chose the hard path. I refocused the team, turned down growth, and ran leaner for a year so we could formalize every process, refine our curriculum, build the advisory committee, and earn the license.

The process was frustrating at times. It was clearly not designed for an online school of our size, but it turned out better for us and our students than I could have planned. The processes are in place, the oversight is real, and we get to keep focusing on what we do best: helping people become instructional designers in a competitive market.

Portfolio + certification

A portfolio is the most important asset for getting hired. Showing what you are capable of matters more than any piece of paper, and everything in the program is organized around producing that proof.

What the licensure rigor added is a credential worth having on top of the work. Because the full curriculum was formalized and approved by an independent advisory committee of ten industry experts, we can offer our flagship ID Professional Certification program, the tier with the most 1-on-1 mentoring support. Students list the certification in their education section, and it works the way a credential should: as a jumping-off point for talking about the projects and accomplishments behind it. Students consistently tell us they walk into interviews more confident because of it.

It runs like an apprenticeship

The day a student enrolls, they meet the mentor they will work with 1-on-1 for the whole program. Then they start the job, sort of: the applied instructional design theory coursework drops them into a simulated role as an instructional designer at a fictitious company. A training request form lands on their desk, and they work it the way they would on the job, running needs analysis and talking through the project with AI-powered simulations of stakeholders and subject-matter experts as they go. The simulations are powered by devlin.ai, the practice platform I've built, and each character has motivations and realistic resistance. Students can rerun a conversation until they handle it well.

In parallel, students work through the Storyline 360 course, building real self-paced eLearning. They also learn to embed devlin.ai simulations inside their own courses and generate AI media, so a single portfolio piece can show a hiring manager traditional craft and modern AI skills at once. The hiring market is split between teams that want classic Storyline skills and teams that want AI fluency, and one project that shows both is most effective for the current market.

To someone who already spent thousands on a certificate that led nowhere, here is how I describe the difference. This is rigorous, job-based training focused on building the highest-quality portfolio possible and giving you a real feel for the work before anyone pays you for it. Think of it as an apprenticeship mixed with a practical master's program, though it is not a formal master's degree. The goal is for you to be hireable as soon as possible for a corporate instructional design role, adding value on day one with skills that your team will appreciate.

How the program works

Every student gets a dedicated mentor who builds a personalized learning plan around their background and goals. There are no tests to grade. The whole program is organized around the portfolio, and students get feedback on their actual project work from people who have done it professionally. Along the way they join weekly live workshops and a community of current students, alumni, and mentors. The advisory committee continuously reviews the curriculum so it stays anchored to what employers expect rather than what any one of us assumes.

Most students put in 10 to 15 hours a week and finish in about nine months; people who move faster finish in under six.

The work speaks for itself

The student showcase is where graduate portfolios and stories live, and it is the best evidence for what the program produces: teachers and career changers who have landed remote instructional design roles they did not think were possible before starting, often at pay well above their old jobs. The students following our guidance on showing AI skills in their portfolios are the ones doing best in this market.

Where this goes

The five-year goal is singular: help people become as skilled and hireable as possible in the instructional design field. As AI becomes more of the day-to-day job, we will keep running the Devlin Peck research, keep meeting with and growing the advisory committee, and stay ahead of where the market is moving, so that our students walk into interviews a step ahead of everyone else.

If you want to see the school itself, visit Peck Academy. The showcase is the best place to start.