Skills for elearning professionals
Back in July, Tony over at The Learning Circuits blog (connected with ASTD), offered up the “Big Question” of what are the skills elearning professionals need. In particular, the discussion centered around elearning 2.0, or elearning in light of Web 2.0 and the culture of informal learning and wisdom of crowds. In addition, a number of weeks ago Michael D., a student and colleague, sent me a post about how instructional designers rely less on theories and models (Someone please extract the stake from my heart.). Instead, they are using rule of thumbs and heuristics, among others. So, it got me to thinking: just what do elearning professionals need?
Well, again this week, my course in Technology Tools to Support Learning is focusing on the overview of elearning. So what I’d like to do is to broaden the questions for novice and expert instructional designers, teachers, trainers, and elearning professionals. Here’s a few questions for us all to consider.
- What are the knowledge and skills that elearning professionals need today?
- How much do you see these skills changing in the next 3-5 years or 5-10 years?
- What are the expectations for elearning professionals with regard to learning management systems and Web 2.0 (e.g., blogs, wikis, social media, etc.)?
These are some springboard questions for us to jump off from. I’d really like for you to add in your thoughts, experiences, and understanding of what’s important for a designer/developer.
