Is there a skills gap in learning design?
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For many years universities have been aspiring to change the teaching and study experience. Before the pandemic, lots of university strategies expressed a desire to better incorporate digital technology and make changes to assessment and teaching methods - to name just a few.
The pandemic has no doubt accelerated some of these changes and made them more important to more people and less easy to simply ignore. However, changing the teaching and study experience fundamentally and for the long term requires significant and continuous design and planning.
Unfortunately though, there’s been scant recognition of the importance of design and planning in higher education teaching over the years.
Do teachers have the design skills needed?
In a study that explored higher education teacher design work, one of the conclusions was that
“teachers do not consciously think of their work as "design", nor do they articulate or conceptualise what they do in design terms. This suggests that there is scope to do much more to develop the notion and practice of teachers as designers”
There will be a number of reasons why this is the case in higher education. Obviously one is the fact there is a systemic lack of teacher education, and where it exists it’s unlikely to cover design and planning adequately.
Another reason is that the time allotted to this important work is often so piecemeal to mean irrespective of your ability, the time you have to invest in it is pitifully small.
Are Learning Designers equipped with the skills they need?
Another deficiency in higher education has also been the dearth of support there is for learning design. Roles such as Learning Designer or Instructional Designer have been relatively niche in UK higher education, they have tended to exist only in online or distance education settings.
This seems to be changing a little and there’s been more of these roles created over the past two years. Hopefully, as a result of growing recognition of the design and planning work that’s needed in higher education as the teaching and study experience grows in complexity.
Whilst broadly positive, this has thrown up another problem - the inconsistency and variability of skills amongst those that might refer to themselves as a Learning or Instructional Designer.
What I’ve heard throughout the last two years from a range of sources is that organisations are struggling to find Learning Designers that have the necessary skills and experience in working closely with educators on the design and planning of courses & programmes.
One of the most commonly reported issues is those referred to as Learning or Instructional Designers come only with experience in working with digital content.
So this might be constructing slide decks, or building something via an authoring tool, creating educational video or populating a Learning Management System (LMS) or other digital learning platform - but crucially, without the experience of being able to engage with an educator to plan and design a course or programme way upstream of the realisation of some of that into specific types of content.
Now it’s worth saying at this stage that those activities, and the skills needed to do them well are very important. This isn’t about role hierarchy - a good organisation and operation should have people that have the broad range of skills needed to create excellent learning experiences. But what seems to be apparent are significant deficits when it comes to design and planning or envisaging and blueprinting a teaching and study experience.
Some organisations have sought to address this gap by targeting and recruiting teachers as opposed to those working in education support roles, or have accepted that they will have to invest in up-skilling people from content-focussed roles.
Is there a mismatch between the change needed and what’s needed to get there?
It seems that one of the many by-products of the pandemic accelerated change of education models, has been a growing spotlight on learning design. Whether through the lockdown driven pivot or subsequent organisational desire to change teaching and study models, there’s been some recognition and appreciation of teacher design and planning work.
Whether as a consequence of these things or through a desire to branch out into developing an online education portfolio, there’s also been a growing recognition of the need for professionals who can effectively support the design and planning of learning experiences.
But I think this has highlighted pre-existing skills gaps both in some educators directly teaching students and amongst those who might be in roles called Learning or Instructional Designer.
This is a problem. Which is an obvious thing to say, but the confluence of growing complexity of teaching and of learning experiences as a result of things like different modalities emerging and technological developments - alongside more education providers wanting to change their teaching and study model makes this a more significant problem than it has been before.
Do organisational models and cultures enable learning design support at scale?
In large organisations like universities this becomes a challenging problem to address due to sheer scale. It’s apparent that no university is in a position to recruit and up-skill a ratio of Learning Designers able to meaningfully work with all of its educators.
In addition, both the organisational models and culture that prevails means that education support work within universities is conducted at arm's length and characterised by a one & done workshop approach through the dominant centralised support model adopted by UK universities.
The popularity of interventions like the ABC learning design workshop format is telling in this respect, as it highlights a prior void of learning design methodologies within education support teams and it is a small, partial part of a much bigger domain and process.
What is increasingly clear is that now and in the future, the design and planning of teaching and learning experiences is only going to become more important. Organisations will at least need to achieve a quorum of those with a high level of skill and expertise in learning design to offer excellent learning experiences, and those individuals, particularly in large organisations will be relied upon to equip others.
Those who don’t attend to this seriously may find that whereas an older model of teaching might have gotten away with neglecting this - new and aspired models of teaching and study could make its absence glaringly and jarringly obvious, such that students might actually vote with their feet.
The sharing of off-the-shelf activities and workshops act as a sticking plaster and aren’t a substitute for deep expertise in a professional area. The over-reliance on these things can unintentionally act as dilutions of a broad area like learning design.
Will those who take learning design expertise seriously be better set for future developments?
To be skilled in learning design requires much more than an ability to run the same kind of activity ad infinitum. If I can borrow an example for learning itself, this strikes me as similar to the difference between near transfer and far transfer. Which I might explain by using this quote from Howard Gardner:
"An individual understands a concept, skill, theory, or domain of knowledge to the extent that he or she can apply it appropriately in a new situation."
An expert Learning Designer is able to develop processes and continually draw upon conceptual models, theories and research to inform their approach. They are reflective and iterative and are able to effectively document and represent their design work. They are also able to engage supportively and creatively with educators, to question, influence, understand, empathise and design.
The organisations that understand this - that deeply understand this and are able to recruit and/or equip people in these skills, may in the future become positively differentiated from others as a result.
To put it crudely, differentiation based on the quality and effectiveness of the learning experience does not always happen in higher education, as reputation, status and brand still tend to have a larger influence.
I see small signs that more organisations - either outside or ancillary to universities - understand this more manifestly than universities themselves, and it will be interesting to observe what happens if other providers start to deliver demonstrably better learning experiences.
In any case - what should be a high priority for educational institutions in the years to come is learning design - the equipping and developing of more people with the skill and knowledge to design and plan experiences that provide a context for learning to happen.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of my work over the past year has been coaching and working with Learning Designers in different organisations to do exactly that.
Learning design is complicated and hugely variable based on a range of factors. It isn’t an exact science but can be hugely enjoyable and professionally fulfilling - whilst I’ve highlighted many challenges and issues that exist, I look forward to seeing the field of learning design develop in the years to come, to play a part in that and to learn with and from others.
References
Bennett, S., Agostinho, S. & Lockyer, L. The process of designing for learning: understanding university teachers’ design work. Education Tech Research Dev 65, 125–145 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-016-9469-y
Gardner, H. The Disciplined Mind: What All Students Should Understand. (1999)
