Learning designers are leading the charge for a reconsideration and reconceptualization of their roles in higher education, spearheading a new discussion on the composition of the future HE workforce.
A new paper by QUT’s Steven Kickbusch and colleagues states that learning designers are pushing to be recognised as design professionals “distinguishing their roles from those of mere technicians,” and an integral part of the education process.
That the paper needs to exist at all appears to emerge as a result of a long-standing issue in the HE sector – the lower status and inferior perceived value of the work of professional staff, which is undoubtedly one of the drivers for learning designers to attempt to reclaim some organisational status by claiming to exist in a third space straddling the professional and academic realms.
There has been a lot of discussion about the third space for staff – moving beyond the traditional academic/professional dichotomy to a point where the capacity and responsibility of staff to contribute to both sides of the equation is recognised.
While learning designers have been some of the loudest proponents of this third space concept, many recognise that the evolution of roles in tertiary education may well require more people to exist in roles that blend the academic and professional. Many academics have remarked that poorly executed restructures have left them with no choice but to take on traditional professional staff duties such as aspects of student administration and marketing in addition to their academic roles.
The paper seeks to more clearly articulate the role and value of learning designers in education pathways, identifying their work as critical to more effective educational experiences.
This is valuable work – while there is a broad swathe of literature on the experience and place of academic staff, the role of professional and ‘third space’ staff is poorly understood and researched, despite the fact that they represent a majority of HE workers.