LXD > ID: Expanding our Profession’s Definition and Skillset

About a week ago, a fellow learning pro (thx Julie Dirksen @usablelearning!) posted a link to One Mind, a great blog about Learning Experience Design (LXD) from Joanna Wiebe. I have always preferred that title over ID for many reasons, some of which are articulated by Joanna as she describes her role as LXD. A portion of my career was spent as a User Experience Designer (UXD) and Information Architecht (IA), which was the main inspiration for my preference for the title, and it made me think a little more about why.

Instructional Design as a descriptor of this profession has made me cringe since grad school when I learned the difference between behaviorism and constructivism. Even back then, the title sounded outdated as it seemed to harken back to the roots of the profession, when didactic delivery of instruction was the norm.

Constructivism has long intrigued me, even before I knew what it was. When my sister became a Montessori teacher and I became familiar with Maria Montessori’s teachings, I saw a departure from the traditional forms of instruction, where the teacher has the majority of responsibility to ensure learning takes place in the classroom.

As in Maria Montessori’s teachings, and the theory and methodologies of constructivism, the onus of learning shifts, placing more responsibility on the learner to achieve the goals. As learning design professionals, we need to shift our own focus from designing delivery of instruction toward design of an experience or environment that fosters, supports, and encourages the learning that will accomplish our goals. We need to allow our learners to take on more responsibility, which will inevitably lead to a sense of ownership and therefore added motivation to succeed in the stated goals. How can we do this? By designing more holistic learning experiences that incorporate strategies such as social learning, authentic practice, and opportunities for experimentation. We also have a lot to learn from other professions and disciplines, such as UXD.

This is not to say that behaviorism and more traditional methods of instruction don’t have their place – I do believe that they remain relevant and have their place in appropriate learning strategies. I also believe that now more than ever we have the ability to provide our learners with holistic learning opportunities by taking advantage of new technologies and design strategies.

Is this simply a matter of semantics? Perhaps. But the exercise of pausing to think about the meanings that the titles evoke reminded me of the broader scope of our design challenges and I hope it gave you pause and inspiration as well. In my next few posts, I plan to highlight other professions (including UXD) as well as learning theories and strategies (like social learning theory) that can inform our processes and outputs in learning design, ultimately helping us create more holistic learning experiences.