#GuildChat for 4/5/19: When Role Responsibilities Expand

Our next #GuildChat takes place Friday, April 5th at 11am PT / 2pm ET. Our topic for this week’s chat is  When Role Responsibilities Expand.

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Inspired by a recent Learning Solutions article from Jane Bozarth – Nuts and Bolts: The ID (Job Description) Bucket Overfloweth – and our Learning Solutions 2019 panel Where is Instructional Design Heading, we wanted to further explore the expanding job skills and responsibilities people in L&D have been asked to take on, whether their job title is Instructional Designer or they have a different role.

For this week’s GuildChat, we’ll discuss the excitement of being able to use new technologies and approaches in our work balanced with the challenges of being asked to wear a large number of wildly different hats in our roles. Can we really juggle these increasing role responsibilities employers and clients are asking for (and where are they getting these lists of desired skills anyway)? Is it better for your career to be a L&D generalist and know a bit about a lot of things, or to instead specialize and go deep on just a few skills? Do new titles like Learning Experience Designer and Learning Engineer offer more clarity about what our roles do? And what lines should we, as an industry and as individuals, try to draw to establish what we reasonably can and can’t take on?

Prospective questions:

Q1  Jane’s research mentioned seeing an increase in the different role responsibilities employers are asking for in L&D job postings. What do you think is causing this shift and how do you think employers are identifying needed skills?
Q2 Is it better for your career to be a L&D generalist and know a bit about a lot of things, or to instead specialize and go deep on just a few skills? Why?
Q3  Titles like Instructional Designer can appear ambiguous. Do you think new titles like Learning Experience Designer and Learning Engineer offer more clarity about what our roles do, or just more confusion? Explain.
Q4  When a job description lists numerous skills and tools of which you only know a few well does it dissuade you from applying? Why or why not?
Q5 What lines should we, as an industry and as individuals, try to draw to establish what we reasonably can and can’t take on?
Q6 It’s impossible to do everything well. What conversations or guidelines can you have with employers or clients early on to help them better understand your personal skill set?
Q7 It’s not all on employers – What has L&D done as an industry that could have led to the bloat in requested skills for L&D roles?
Q8 What shifts outside of L&D do you see impacting our roles now and in the near future?

 

Missed this GuildChat? Don’t worry – you can still read through what happened on our Wakelet transcript of the chat!

 

 

 

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