What does a learning designer actually do?

Welcome! This is the first in a series of posts aimed at teachers who are interested in learning design. Hopefully, it’s interesting to others as well.

We all get asked the question at parties, "So, what do you do with yourself?" (actually, in my case as a parent of two young kids, it gets asked at playgrounds). When I was a high school teacher the answer was easy, and most people would understand what that meant.

Now when I respond, it's something like "oh I'm a learning designer… we design online courses and things like that". That's not even a particularly true answer at the moment, but it gets people on the right track.

So, what is a learning designer, then?

About 18 months ago, when I applied for a job as a learning designer, I wasn't entirely sure myself. Like many teachers, was a bit uninformed of jobs outside of the schooling world.

An example might help. Imagine someone who knows a lot about a subject. Let's say, motorcycle maintenance. They need to teach 200 people a year to fix motorcycles but they've never taught before. On top of that the students are expecting digital resources to save time and refer back to later - now more than ever before, students are demanding engaging material and activities. How should our motorcycle expert go about doing this? What will be the most efficient, engaging and effective way for the students to learn from our expert? That's where a learning designer comes in.

For anyone reading with a teaching background, a colleague reminded me recently of the TPACK model: Technological, Pedagogical And Content Knowledge. The idea is we need a bit of all three to teach something successfully. Our motorcycle subject matter expert sits in the Content Knowledge part of this model. Our learning designer provides Technological and Pedagogical Knowledge. Together we have all three.

Reproduced by permission of the publisher, © 2012 by tpack.org

This is an oversimplification of course, because subject matter experts will always have some level of pedagogical and technological knowledge, and many times a great deal. Additionally, learning designers may have some level of content knowledge depending on the topic.

So on a daily basis, what does a learning designer actually do? If we think about the two dimensions of pedagogy and technology from TPACK, here’s a short list.

Pedagogy

• Meet with a subject matter expert to decide what goes in a course, and in what order. This part is akin to the planning side of teaching, and where teaching experience comes into play. You need to plan assessments that are in line with the learning objectives, and then design a variety of activities in a sequence to help students learn what is required for the assessments. (Side note: in tertiary education, this is called constructive alignment, something I’ll write about in future.)

• Review and edit written content for clarity and readability - like explanations, video scripts, assessments, and quizzes. This is a large part of the job, that I didn’t expect. I enjoy it though.

• Write content that doesn’t rely on subject matter expertise - e.g. text guiding students from one activity to the next.

Technology

• Help design graphics, videos, and interactive resources.

• Design the user experience for online learning (like, where should menus and buttons go, what should they do, and so on).

• Assist with using technology in learning, for example, online polling tools.

At the University where I work, we also have specialist digital education developers who are focused on implementing the technological aspects above. However many learning designer roles will also require skills in graphic design software, video editing, building interactives (using tools like Storyline), editing HTML, and so on.

Note that you might also come across the job title instructional designer. This seems to be interchangeable with the term learning designer, but used more in the corporate world and linked to designing workplace training.

A common misconception, and one that I might sometimes accidentally perpetuate, is that learning designers are only concerned with online learning. This is not always true. In the University world, learning designers are involved heavily in blended course design - that is, a blend of online and face-to-face learning.

In the coming posts, I plan to elaborate more on what I've picked up in a year and a half of learning design. If you're a teacher interested in learning design, I'll write more about how the two jobs compare.