One of the most notable developments in higher education (HE) in recent years is both the growth of interest in the practice of learning design, and the creation of more learning design roles. 

But why is it that learning design is being talked about much more and why do universities feel that they need more people to engage in this work?

Perhaps the first thing to acknowledge is that much of the work wrapped up in learning design isn’t really anything new. The work of thinking, planning and preparing for teaching and learning experiences in the form of courses & programmes is not some entirely new endeavour. In fact, some might argue that this is legacy work with new branding and there’s certainly something in that. 

Learning design is definitely a more recent label than say instructional design but cam before learning experience design. Whilst there are many that get very worked up about definitions, labels and their boundaries, clearly this development is about an interest and demand for work concerned with designing education experiences irrespective of what we call it. 

The growing use of the language of design in education

One contributing factor to the growth of learning design, has been the increasing use of the word and idea of design as it relates to educational experiences. This can be seen in the work of academics like Peter Goodyear, who has been researching and writing about design in education for many years. 

Some of his and others' work have drawn analogies between design in education and design in other professions. The promotional copy for “Teaching as a design science” a 2012 book by Diana Laurilliard encapsulates this:

“Teaching is now a design science. Like other design professionals – architects, engineers, programmers – teachers have to work out creative and evidence-based ways of improving what they do. Yet teaching is not treated as a design profession.”

As well as seeking to learn from fields in which the ideas and practices of design are more established, design discourse has also been driven by a sense that education is changing, becoming more complex and demanding. Peter Goodyear’s 2015 paper “Teaching as Design” states that:

“higher education needs to find ways of investing more heavily in the planning phase and…teachers’ planning needs to take on more of the qualities of design for learning. This is both an economic and an educational argument….Shifting resources towards design for learning, and adopting more effective design practices, is a credible strategy for improving the quality of higher education while managing with tighter funding”

So whilst the pre-work of preparing for courses, programmes and other forms of learning experience isn’t exactly new, there has been a growing emphasis on this being an act of design that is analogous to design work in other professions.

Alongside this, in the UK there have been a number of initiatives in recent years to bring learning design to the fore. Jisc’s curriculum design programme (2008-2012) is cited as catalysing new design models, and since 2015 UCL’s ABC learning design approach has been adopted by a number of universities. 

The popularity of an approach like ABC can in some ways be put down to a growing interest in learning design and an aspiration to take this more seriously in universities. The fact that it’s a lightweight model that can plug neatly in to a HE educational support paradigm that struggles to break free from a “one and done” intervention approach also helps. Or to put it another way, it enables universities to display a greater sense of seriousness about learning design, without having to fundamentally change. 

Is the UK learning design-lite?

What is interesting about the growth and interest in learning design, particularly in the UK, is the extent to which this is perceived as a new, more localised movement. 

Although not a solely UK endeavour, the rather grandiosely titled Larnaca Declaration on Learning Design published by a group of academics in 2016 talks of learning design as being a new field with the goal of conveying “great teaching ideas among educators in order to improve student learning.” 

It’s indicative of a rather strange culture in the UK that seems to want to reset the clock on work concerned with designing education experiences. This mentality has also led to a disregard for other work, knowledge and scholarship that sits very comfortably within activity geared towards improving student learning.

In particular, the UK seems to have a hang-up with instructional design and I’ve heard odd dichotomies being espoused towards it such as it being pedagogic and learning design being andragogic, as well as it being concerned with content whereas learning design is concerned with well…learning.

This seems representative of attempts in the UK to squash instructional design down to something that can be discarded as being ‘not how we think or do things around here’ rather than allowing oneself to be enriched by a wider body of work. 

Whatever the underlying reasons are, some parts of UK HE would greatly benefit from moving away from this parochialism if it wants to seriously improve student learning. Not least because in other nations and other parts of the education sector the greater and cumulative dissemination of research on learning and the learning sciences over the years has also undoubtedly played a role in the growth of interest in, and the practice of, learning design . 

In the US, Professor James Lang in his 2016 book Small Teaching, describes this development:

“The past several decades have brought us a growing body of research on how human beings learn, and a new generation of scholars in those fields has begun to translate findings from the laboratories of memory and cognition researchers to the higher education classrooms of today. Their findings increasingly suggest the potency of small shifts in how we design our courses, conduct our classrooms, and communicate with our students”

The findings referred to have given further ballast to learning design and its importance. Giving a greater sense that this work can really bring results if it’s cognisant with a growing body of research in respect to learning.

This mindset might be described as being evidence-based and it is an approach that more and more people advocate for. On the whole, this seems to be a positive development but we should guard against the term “evidence-based” becoming a superficial stamp of approval to any and every approach regardless of its validity. 

Growing complexity and diversity of modalities

Whilst some of the areas covered thus far have had a significant contribution to the rise of learning design, it’s impossible to downplay the role that growing complexity and a diversity of modalities, such as blended, hyflex and online distance learning have had in developing the perceived or actual need for learning design.

Few would dispute that education is more complex now than it once was, especially due to becoming more entwined with digital technologies. There is a real sense that intentional, deliberate, well-thought out design of educational experiences is needed more than ever before due to the growing complexity that exists and technological developments

A manifestation of this complexity is in modalities of teaching and study. The pandemic driven shift to a form of online distance learning followed by a stronger desire for, or the actualisation of, a blended learning model in universities, inevitably elevated learning design and the role of learning designer.

It’s been easy to anecdotally observe the growth in the number of learning design roles during this period, but this graph shared by Leonard Houx shows that from 2012 to 2021, UK HEI job postings mentioning "learning design" on jobs.ac.uk increased significantly.

Whether it’s universities or education providers as a whole, the post-pandemic period has resulted in much stronger emphasis, desire and actual moves towards a blended learning model. It has also resulted in many UK universities becoming more serious about developing or growing their online distance portfolios. 

One could legitimately argue that these modalities need design no more than the traditional face-to-face model, but blended and online distance have invariably resulted in more learning design resource and energy being invested in them. This undoubtedly also accounts for the rise of learning design and the increase in learning design roles.

More distance to travel in HE learning design

But the injection of more emphasis on learning design and more education support professionals in the form of learning designers within HE is still an uneasy and immature combination.

Approaches to designing courses and programmes that involve multidisciplinary teams which combine academics with professional specialists are by and large still an uncomfortable cultural fit in most universities. 

Equally, many educators still don’t see themselves as designers or view their work in that way. There is also a persistent reported supply problem of experienced and impactful learning designers in UK HE. Or to put it another way, it’s hard to get a “good” learning designer.

This is understandable as learning design is not, say, a field like graphic design, where you might study an undergraduate degree in the subject before progressing through junior, middleweight and senior design roles - it’s a bit more of a free for all. 

This has meant the demand has led to moves from other professions or roles into learning design. Learning technologists have also taken on learning design roles either directly or tacitly.

What has been observable in the UK over the years is both a growing frustration of those in tech focussed roles not getting the pedagogical respect they crave, alongside a kind if idolisation of “pedagogy”. This might be a bi-product of years of hearing simplistic dichotomies such about pedagogy first not the technology.

These things have contributed to giving learning design a sense of greater cachet amongst some education support fraternities and a means of gaining pedagogical respect and movement in a field where it's very easy to enter a professional cul-de-sac.

To make a further point on this - universities face a dual and significant challenge in relation to learning design. On the one hand, they need to effectively and meaningfully embed this into their institution culture and processes, and on the other, they need to recruit and equip learning design professionals to do this work well. 

Education support roles are challenging and as described earlier there isn’t a clear, specific professional route or pathway to competence. There needs to be a growing understanding that education support professionals should be pro-actively equipped to develop their knowledge, skills, confidence and practice in the absence of much scope for that more widely or weighty routes into these professions.

Still the hottest job in education?

In spite of those challenges, the learning design role still has appeal and demand both in HE and other spheres. During the pandemic it was referred to as the “Hottest job in Higher Education” - but given the dip in the graph I shared earlier and big recent developments in AI, one might wonder whether the tide is beginning to turn.

A recent post by David Wiley argues quite the opposite stating that:

“As the role of SMEs changes from author to editor and their time commitment to projects decreases, the role of instructional designers will grow in importance and effort….Using LLMs and other AI effectively (e.g., creating custom images) will be a key part of preparing instructional designers for the next decade – a decade that looks to be an absolutely incredible time to be an instructional designer!”

This perhaps hints at another direction in the interest and trajectory of learning design and the learning designer role. Either way discussion, debate, interest and the real work of marrying learning design with higher education teaching and study is unlikely to fade for some years to come.