Well, they design learning, right? But what does that actually entail? What does it look like in practice? Well, as I’ve already mentioned, that’s not the easiest thing in the world to describe. In fact, based on everyone that I’ve talked to about this new Graduate Certificate, there’s real confusion about what it is that learning designers actually do. I think that’s fair enough – it’s not the easiest thing to explain. And often, when I do my best to explain what it is that learning designers do, I get perplexed looks. Teachers will often say to me something along the lines of, ‘Well, isn’t that just good teaching?’, and I must admit, I don’t disagree with that. Other people that I’ve spoken to – especially in industry – seem to think that this a kind of invented job – a bit of middle-management paper shuffling and box-ticking. I can understand that, too. Sometimes, people think that a learning designer is a film-maker, or a visual artist, or a graphic designer – and while I have a little bit of experience in all of those things, I would be very hesitant to suggest that I’m any kind of designer in that capacity. Instead, learning designers work in a much more ephemeral field – we deal, not so much with products or outcomes in a physical, tangible sense, but rather with the process of condition, learning and motivation.
Of course, none of that goes any further in describing what it is that learning designers actually do. I’ve been toying around with my own experiences of learning design, and I’ve come up with a bit of a framework for the work of a learning designer. It’s not meant to describe how learning designers might go about their work – that’s a much deeper and more fascinating conversation to be had – but rather what they might do in the course of managing a project. I’ve tried to be as generic as possible here, so that learning designer, as I use it, might very well apply to teachers in classroom settings. It might also apply to teachers in online settings. And it might apply to people working in training and development settings in industry. I don’t mean to suggest that learning designers do all of these things all of the time; rather, these are some of the different skills or ‘hats’ that learning designers might be called upon to wear at any given time.
As a final note, I imagine that this model will develop over time as I spend more time discussing and reflecting on the work of learning designers and the research into that work. It’s even possible that much of this work has already been completed and instead I will adopt a different model based on someone else’s research. You might note that, based on my reading of design based research, I have already added another item in the list – cycle.
So, in short, here’s what learning designers do:
- Consult. Learning designers are not usually subject matter experts in the fields they are designing learning. Of course, there are differing levels of expertise, and often teachers are considered to be somewhat expert in their field by virtue of their academic studies, but for the sake of this framework I am going to say that many learning designers need to consult with subject matter experts (SMEs) in order to best design learning experiences. This is interesting because there is a great deal of academic discussion about the importance of teacher content knowledge for good teaching and learning. Certainly, in terms of developing expertise, there are some arguments to be made that skills are content-driven, and hence you can’t develop generic skills. Regardless of that, I think that learning designers are more than capable of consulting
- Curate. Another thing that learning designers are required to do is curate materials and resources. This is much more the case presently than it eery used to be – there is simply far too much content available for learners for anyone to be across it all. So, in this case, the role of the learning designer is to become a guide, identifying appropriate content and directing the learner towards it. The key word here is appropriated and it is applicable on a number of different levels – the resources must be ethical and they must be suitable for the learner.
- Create. Of course, should there be no appropriate material, learning designers can create their own resources. Of course, this is a mediated process; that is, there are a variety of different tools that do some or all of the heavy lifting necessary for the creation of new content and, again, there is nothing particularly revolutionary here: many teachers and trainers have always created their own resources. I’m using the term resources here, but I think that I should mention that I would consider the learning environment – both the physical and digital space – to be a resource that the learning designer creates.
- Commission. In non school-based roles, learning designers often end up working in a de facto project management role. This means that they are often required to work with other creative professionals in order to develop learning resources that are suitable. This can be everything from film producers to graphic designers to developers – and it’s perhaps not surprising that this kind of role is often confused with the role of learning designers themselves. Much of this is taken up in the next ‘c’ in the framework (coordinate), but the part to which I am referring to here is the commissioning of new learning resources.
- As described above, learning designers coordinate projects and activities. I mean this in a couple of different ways. Firstly, in industry and often with designing e-learinng materials, a learning designer might design a course (fully, through consultation and iteration, see ‘cycle’ below) and then leave it to operate without the further involvement of the learning designer. I’ve done this in the past with some work that I did for tutors at a local university. I designed the course, wrote the content and then left it to run on an as-needed basis, with no further input from me. In this case, I co-ordinated a few working parts, managed a few contributions from key figures and subject matter experts, developed some content, some evaluation materials and an assessment. In this role, I was like a project manager (admittedly on a very small project). However, I also think a part of coordination is the facilitation of learning experiences. I’m conscious that the term facilitation is difficult for some educators, who aren’t fans of the notion of the ‘guide on the side’, but I mean it in a much broader sense – as in someone who organises, manages and even directs learning activities. In one sense, all teachers working in schools are coordinators in this fashion. While much learning design work is now online, I don’t think that’s all that it’s limited to.
- Cycle. Finally, learning designers iterate – they repeat, develop and continually improve their work.