Instructional Designer vs Learning Experience Designer vs eLearning Developer: whats the difference?

if you're looking for a new tech role in the instructional design training field you may have noticed that different tech companies use different job titles instructional designer curriculum developer e-learning developer learning experience designer and when you're applying to these jobs that can kind of feel overwhelming so what are the actual differences between these job titles in this video I'm going to start by talking about the official definitions of each of these job titles and then we'll kind of dive into my realistic experience of having each of these job titles at at some point in my career that sounds good to you keep watching all right so let's start with instructional designer according to ATD or Association for talent development an instructional designer applies learning theories and a systemic approach to design and develop content learning activities training and other solutions to support the acquisition of new knowledge or Real World skills instructional designers develop all instructional materials of a training program including presentation materials participant guides handouts job AIDS or other resources they're also responsible for evaluating training including assessing what was learned and whether the learning solution led to measurable Behavior change now do I agree with this yes this is pretty much exactly what I do as an instructional designer however I do think that there are things missing from this description I think this definition kind of leaves out the fact that we spend a lot of time interacting with either product lead needs or subject matter experts otherwise known as SME we build videos we create a bunch of different types of training programs we create you know they could be e-learning they could be live trainings where you're training in person we design trainings for virtual trainings all the above that's kind of what in my experience the role of an instructional designer does okay so now let's talk about learning experience designer so according to WGU a learning experience designer ensures that educational programs in are in place at their organization and they're centered on Learners learning experience designers play a crucial role across sectors ring ranging from K12 schools to corporate training environments today's Learners expect personalized experiences and experiential learning tailored to their needs as such learning experience designers are in higher demand than ever before now do I agree with this yes that is based on my experience what learning experience designers do however I will say that when I was a learning experience designer there was literally no difference between what I did as an instructional designer and learning experience designer so I would say from my experience those job titles are used pretty interchangeably You're Building courses you're training people on how to either use the product or how to learn more about the product or software I would say learning experience designer instructional designer those two pretty similar based on my experience now let's talk about curriculum developer you may see this also on LinkedIn or anywhere you're looking at a different job site and in the past curriculum developer that title was primarily used for K12 or higher education but tech companies have actually started to kind of adopt this terminology to describe basically what an instructional designer and a learning experience designer do so that's why I'm including in this list according to zip recruiter curriculum developers help a school develop and implement m a teaching plan with lessons designed to meet the educational standards of the school or District in this career you often Begin by evaluating the existing system and observing students in the classroom your responsibilities as a curriculum developer involve all aspects of instruction from the textbooks to the teaching methods honestly yes this basically reads in the context of like K12 or education in general but you can really just apply this to working at at a tech company or working like at a hospital or like working at some sort of you know big company that requires a curriculum developer you're going to be creating these training materials creating this curriculum for the audience which is usually adults for me personally I did have this role at a edtech company which is an education tech company but I have seen a lot of different roles for this available on LinkedIn that are not edte or you know education companies and lastly another job title that you might see along the lines of this whole training curriculum development world is e-learning developer according to Team Ed e-learning developers create interactive digital learning for a variety of learning experiences they design and develop interactive online modules mobile training and micr lessons the demand for this role is growing as part of the effort to make digital learning more accessible yes I definitely agree with this definition I have found that in my experience some companies use this term e-learning developer to kind of Encompass everything that an instructional designer or a learning experience designer does as well however there are bigger tech companies that have a pretty robust training program built out and they want an e-learning developer specifically to like build all of the assets like the videos or the simulations or like any of the digital content that the training team will use and they'll kind of upload it into like the learning platform and they're in charge of like maintaining and updating that so they'll work usually closely with an instructional designer who will do all like the writing and the planning and like the you know drafting out all the content and then they'll kind of pass it to an e-learning developer who will actually build everything um and then you know upload it so that Learners can take the content all this to say I would suggest if you're looking for some sort of instructional design learning experience design role make sure that you're kind of using all these different terms in your job search so whether you're using LinkedIn or indeed or some other job board consider trying these different job titles to see kind of what results come up because realistically in like application and like when you're actually working a lot of the functionality of the jobs will be very similar regardless of which one you pick if you found this video helpful please don't forget to give it a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe down below I'll see you in the next one [Music] bye n