Anyone who has been reading this blog knows that I have been on a tear about how the practices of elearning - and the professions of instructional design - are evolving, and how those of us who identify as instructional designers need to take a good hard look at what we do and where our practice is headed.
Cammy Bean recently posted a funny and thoughtful blog entry about the challenge of explaining what she does to someone while at the playground. Lots of great commentary from her followers. Clearly it bugs us that people don't get what we do.
It should bug us. Even though it's easy to laugh it off, or to say "oh, it doesn't really matter what they call us", the fact is that it DOES matter. If people can't spot us, or name us, or know who we are and what we do, then we get NO consideration when it comes to getting our unique needs met, or getting our place at the enterprise table. And the more that we split hairs ("you say m-learning, I say mobile learning, but it's not really learning, it's performance support....."), the more fragmented we appear to those who observe us from the outside. Business analysts don't care which theoretical model we use. Investors don't care about Kirkpatrick. Market researchers don't care about possibilities - they care about specifics. How much. How many.
Let's take a look at a very specific example of where I think the fragmentation of our industry has not served us well.
If there is a single company that has shaped just about every possible facet of the digital learning industry, that company is Adobe Systems. Today, if you count yourself among the ranks of elearning professionals, odds are that you probably use or have used an Adobe product or two. Adobe recently released their eLearning Suite. Maybe you thought to yourself, "hey, cool, it's nice to get all the tools I need in one product bundle".
Or maybe, if you are like other elearning developers I know, you wondered what happened to all the new stuff. Where are the products like Adobe Catalyst. Strobe. AIR. Flex. JamJar. Durango. Scene7. Buzzword.
Well, you can track 'em down on the Adobe Labs site. You can attend MAX to mingle with other developer wizards like yourself to learn more about what the future of the web is going to look like. You can join the expert communities. Just don't expect anyone to connect the dots between technology innovation and elearning for you.
Now, before anybody thinks that I am chewing on Adobe....I am not. Let me repeat that. I have no ax to grind with Adobe. I appreciate the quality of the software. I appreciate the well-run efficiency of the business operation, and the deliberate decision-making that protects shareholder value. I am a shareholder. I want this company to do well.
What I am chewing on is the fact that in spite of the fact that learning technologist and instructional designers touch virtually every school, every business that trains new hires or rolls out new products, every agency, every NGO in the world.... that WE ARE VIRTUALLY INVISIBLE. When Adobe looks at us they don't see knowledge workers. Not creative professionals. Not developers. Not digital communicators.
They see rapid elearning content authors, creating not particularly sophisticated online courses to be stored in an LMS. Not eBooks or ePubs. Not RIAs. Not mobile learning. Not games. Not virtual worlds. Not graphics and diagrams and illustrations. Not videos or Flash apps. Not Flex. Not AIR. Not video.
Should elearning practices and instructional design professionals be defined by our ability to produce courseware? Or do we believe that the thing that makes us unique as an industry is using technology to enable learning?
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