Of late there’s been a resurrection of a long term problem. While it’s true for our field as a whole, it’s also true for the specific job of those who design formal learning. I opined about the problem of labels for what we do half a year ago, but it has raised its head again. And this time, some things have been said that I don’t fully agree with. So, it’s time again to weigh in again.

So, first, Will Thalheimer wrote a post in which he claims to have the ultimate answer (in his usual understated way ;). He goes through the usual candidates of labels for what we do – instructional designer, learning designer, learner experience designer – and finds flaws.

And I agree with him on learning designer and instructional designer. We can’t actually design learning, we can only create environments where learning can happen. It’s a probabilistic game. So learning designer is out.

Instructional designer, then, would make sense, but…it’s got too much baggage.  If we had a vision of instruction that included the emotional elements – the affective and conative components – I could buy it. And purists will say they do (at least, ones influenced by Keller). But I will suggest that the typical vision is of a behavioristic approach. That is, with a rigorous focus on content and assessment, and less pragmatic approaches to spacing and flexibility.

He doesn’t like learning engineer for the same reason as learning designer: you can’t ‘engineer’ learning. I don’t quite agree. One problem is that right now there are two interpretations of learning engineer. My original take on that phrase was that it’s about applying learning science to real problems. Just as a civic engineer applies physics…and I liked that. Though, yes, you can lead learners to learning, but you can’t make them think.

However, Herb Simon’s original take (now instantiated in the IEEE’s initiative on learning engineering) focused more on the integration of learning science with digital engineering. And I agree that’s important, but I’m not sure one person needs to be able to do it all. Is the person who engineers the underlying content engine the same one as the person who designs the experiences that are manifest out of that system? I think the larger picture increasingly relies on teams. So I’m taking that out of contention for now.

Will’s answer: learning architect. Now, in my less-than-definitive post last year, I equated learning experience designer and learning architect, roughly. However, Will disparages the latter and heaps accolades on the former. My concern is that architects design a solution, but then it gets not only built by others, but gets interior designed by others, and… It’s too ‘hands off’!  And as I pointed out, I’ve called myself that recently, but in that role I may have been more an architect ;).

His argument against learning experience designer doesn’t sit well with me. Ignoring the aspersions cast against those who he attributes the label to, his underlying argument is that just designing experiences isn’t enough. He admits we can’t ensure learning, but suggests that this is a weak response. And here’s where I disagree. I think the inclusion of experience does exactly what I want to focus on: the emotional trajectory and the motivational commitment. Not to the exclusion of the learning sciences, of course. AND, I’d suggest, also recognizing that the experience is  not an event, but an extended set of activities. Specifically, it will be across technologies as needed.

The problem, as Jane Bozarth raised in a column, is more than just this, however. What research into the role shows is that there are just too many jobs being lumped under the label (whatever it is). Do you develop too? Do you administer the LMS? The list goes on.

I think we need to perhaps have multiple job titles. We can be an instructional designer, or a learning experience designer, or an instructional technologist. Or even a learning engineer (once that’s clear ;). But we need to keep focused, and as Jane advised, not get too silly (wizard?). It’s hard enough as it is to describe what we do without worrying about labels for it. I think I’ll stick with learning experience designer for now. (Not least because I’m running a workshop on learning experience design at DevLearn this fall. ;) That’s my take, what’s yours?

We have competencies for people. Whether it’s ATD, LPI, IBSTPI, IPL, ISPI, or any other acronym, they’ve got definitions for what people should be able to do. And it made me wonder, should there be competencies for processes as well? That is, should your survey validation process, or your design process, also meet some minimum standards?  How about design thinking? There are things you  do  get certified in, including such piffle as MBTI and NLP.  So does it make sense to have processes meet minimum standards?

One of the things I do is help orgs fine-tune their design processes. When I talk about deeper elearning, or we take a stand for serious elearning, there are nuances that make a difference. In these cases, I’m looking for the small things that will have the biggest impact. It’s not  about trying to get folks to totally revamp their processes (which is a path to failure).  Yet, could we go further?

I was wondering whether we should certify processes. Certainly, that happens in other industries. There are safety processes in maintenance, and cleanliness in food operations, and so on. Could and should we have them for learning? For performance consulting, instructional design, performance support design, etc?

Could we state what a process should have as a minimum requirement? Certain elements, at least, at certain way points? You could take Michael Allen’s SAM and use it as a model, for instance. Or Cathy Moore’s Action Mapping. Maybe Julie Dirksen’s Design For How People Learn could be created as such. The point being that we could stipulate some way points in design that would be the minimum to be counted as sufficient for learning to occur. Based upon learning science, of course. You know, deliberate and spaced practice, etc.

Then the question is, should we? Also, could we agree? Or, of course, people could market alternative process certifications. It appears this is what Quality Matters does, for instance, at least K12 and higher ed. It appears IACET does this for continuing education certification. Would an organization certification matter? For customers, if you do customer training? For your courses, if you provide them as a product or service? Would anyone care that you meet a quality standard?

And it could go further. Performance support design, extended learning experience design (c.f. coaching), etc.  Is this something that’s better at the person level than the process level?

Should there be certification for compliance with a competency about the quality of the learning design process? Obviously in some areas. The question is, does it matter for regular L&D? On one hand, it might help mitigate against the info dump/knowledge test courses that are the bane of our industry. On the other hand, it might be hard to find a workable definition that could suit the breadth of ways in which people meet learning needs.

All I know is that we have standards about a lot of things. Learning data interchange. Individual competencies. Processes in education. Can and should there be for L&D processes? I don’t know. Seriously. I’m just pondering. I welcome your thoughts.

As part of a push for Learning Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University recently released their learning design tools. I’ve been aware of CMU’s Open Learning Initiative for a suite of reasons, and their tools for separate reasons. And I think both are good. I don’t completely align with their approach, but that’s ok, and I regularly cite their lead as a person who’s provided sage advice about doing good learning design. Further, their push, based upon Herb Simon’s thoughts about improving uni education, is a good one. So what’s going on, and why?

First, let’s be fair, most uni learning design isn’t very good. It’s a lot of content dump, and a test. And, yes, I’m stereotyping.  But it’s not all that different from what we see too often in corporate elearning. Not enough practice, and too much content. And we know the reasons for this.

For one, experts largely don’t have access to what they do, consciously, owing to the nature of our cognitive architecture. We compile information away, and research from the Cognitive Technology Group at the University of Southern California has estimated that 70% of what experts do isn’t available. They literally can’t tell you what they do!  But they can tell you what they know.  University professors are not only likely to reflect this relationship, they frequently may not actually be practitioners, so they don’t really  do!  We’ve compounded the likely focus on ‘know’, not do.

And, of course, most faculty aren’t particularly rewarded for teaching. Even lower tiers on the Carnegie scale of research institutions dream and hire on the potential for research.  There may be lip service to quality of teaching but if you can publish and get grants, you’re highly unlikely to be let go without some sort of drastic misstep.

And the solution isn’t, I suggest, trying to get faculty to be expert pedagogues. I suggest that the teaching quality of an institution is perceived, except perhaps the top tier institutions, as a mark of the quality of the institution. And yet the efforts to make teaching important, supported, valued, etc, tends to still be idiosyncratic. Yes, many institutions are creating central bodies to support faculty in improving their classes, but those folks are relatively powerless to substantially change the pedagogy unless they happen to have an eager faculty member.

CMU’s tools align, largely, with doing the right thing, and this  is important. The more tools that make it easy to do the right thing, rich pedagogies, the better. It makes much more sense, for instance, to have a default be to have separate feedback for each wrong answer than the alternative. Not that we always see that…but that’s an education problem. We need faculty and support staff to ‘get’ what good learning design is.

Ultimately, this is a good push forward. Combined with greater emphasis on teaching quality, even a movement towards competencies, and rigor in assessment, there’s a hope to get meaningful outcomes from our higher education investment. What I’ve said about K12 also holds true for higher ed, it’s both a curriculum  and a pedagogy problem. But we can and should be pushing both forward. Here’s to steps in the right direction!