As I work my way through the course development process, I’ve started considering the kinds of skills and knowledge that a learning designer might need to know and be able to put into practice. Of course, this is tricky ground, because learning designers work in so many different contexts, and with so many competing priorities. They need to be, in many ways, a jack (or jill) of all trades.
This is certainly the case in the research that I’ve bene doing. I’ve tapped a few people on the shoulder to have a chat about what they think is involved in learning design (and I reckon I can smell a research project brewing), and I’ve also started working my way through a while bunch of advertisements, looking at the job descriptions that are in them, and what kinds of things employers are looking for. I’ve spoken to people in industry, people from different organisations related to learning design, people from schools and academics. I’ve also spoken to people internationally as well as within Australia. Below, I’ve documented a few of the tensions that I’ve identified that I think will be present in the course that I’m designing, and then described my current thinking in the development of the learning design course – actually, I might make that a new post.
- The tension between vocational/ technical knowledge and skills and theory.
This is a big one. One of the common complaints that I’ve seen from many graduates of similar courses is that they don’t know actually how to be a learning designer. While their courses might have covered lots of interesting things in terms of theory and expected knowledge of a learning designer, they haven’t learnt the mechanics of the profession – i.e. how to actually do ‘learning design’. Of course, I’m being a little simplistic here, but I think that it’s a valid concern. My Graduate Certificate will be a postgraduate qualification. It will articulate into Masters degrees. This means that there needs to be a certain level of theoretical engagement and higher order thinking, as well as an expectation that students will read the work of scholars in the field and develop their own thoughts about their theories.
And I think that’s a good thing, and it is essential because it informs what learning designers need to do. BUT the grad cert is only 24 credit points, and I think there is a competing tension in making sure that people who graduate from this course are close to being ‘job-ready’ – that is, they should be able to apply for positions as an entry-level learning designer, with some expectation of success. And in order to do that, there is an expectation that they will know something of the tools and practices that learning designers commonly use.
- The tension between expertise and experience
Related to the first tension is the need to make sure that learning designers have some level of expertise in some tools and processes (after all, they have just completed a graduate certificate) that they can immediately deploy. This will probably be important for those people going straight into industry, rather than those continuing on with their study. But of course, which tools, for example? Should I teach them all about Canvas? Is that within the remit of the Graduate Certificate? Or perhaps Adobe Captivate? Or one of the other proprietary tools? The reality is that I cannot cover all of the possible tools that are being used in schools, industry and tertiary education – I can’t even cover half of them. So, with that in mind, is it better to instead focus on giving students a wide experience of different tools? What might this look like? Or perhaps there is a chance for students to engage with tools of their choice, and tailor their learning experience towards their interests or organisational desires?
- The tension between soft skills and hard skills
Again, this is related to the previous two points, but slightly different. Something that has come through in all my discussions with learning designers is that a large part of the job relates to working with other people; that is, the soft skills of managing personal and professional relationships are as important as the actual learning design skills. This includes the human relationship matters, but there is also an element of project management and change management, too, as learning designers are often forced to develop these kinds of skills as part of their role.