The New Education Professionals: The Emerging Specialties of Instructional Designer and Learning Manager

Abstract

Recognizing that improvement in online education requires a better understanding of learning process, it is argued that online educators should concentrate on a level of organization higher than that of email, discussion boards and learning objects that a number of authors (e.g., Miller, Shrivastava) have called “learning management.” Thus we may replace the traditional role of the instructor (content delivery) by new roles of “instructional designer” to create courses and “learning manager” to deliver them. The core competence of both these new education professions is to combine a broad understanding of educational technology with a deep knowledge of learning.

Keywords:

• learning process
• learning management
• instructional design
• online learning

Acknowledgments

The author would like to Anne Lopes, James L. Morrison, Debra Mertz, and Phillip Nufrio for their very helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript.

Notes

1. A pseudonym to protect confidentiality.

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