Beyond Instructional Design: Where is Our Practice Today and Where is it Going?

It is an exciting and dynamic time for professionals in the role of supporting teaching and learning. Professional practices with roots in the systems model of instructional design have taken on new qualifications that go beyond instructional design. We now hear of titles such as learning designers and educational designers. What are the similarities and differences in these roles and skills sets that support these titles, and does it matter? Where might these roles expand in their qualifications to meet new challenges such as learning analytics? Learning analytics marks a new shift in how we view the critical role of data in education. As we leverage more blended, flipped, and online course formats, we see an emphasis on using data to inform our educational design practices, to design more optimized and effective formative and summative assessments, and to increase student engagement so as to improve student outcomes. The aim of this session will be to tease out the similarities and differences in these roles and skill sets as well as look ahead to broaden the skill set to meet new shifts in our design processes to include the role of data and analytics.