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eLearning professionals are a talented professionals who are dedicated to helping people and organizations learn and apply knowledge on a daily basis. In fact eLearning covers everything from corporate training to sports ethics for battle ready parents who lack tact. Talent leaders and learning stewards are often stuck trying to understand and demystify what are all the different classifications of eLearning skillsets.

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Understanding the Top eLearning Job titles

Here are some fundamental responsibilities given to each of the top eLearning roles. A quick caveat though, that roles may be interchangeable in certain organizations due to the expansive scope of one individual.

eLearning Developer/ Designer (technical) :

• Primarily focused on coding and configuring the eLearning course
• Tasked with technical understanding of course authoring tools like Moodle, Captivate, and Articulate
• Responsible for coding  the story lines for the learning courses
• Supports interoperability  different industry standards like SCORM or xAPI so that courses can be tracked and managed by a corporate learning management system
• Manages and implements after the logic and code behind the courses
• Turns the instructional design document into a real living and breathing course for team members while requesting clarification for logic gaps

Learning Strategist (Corporate Advisor / Sales)

• Help corporations determine the learning solutions they require
• Quasi-sales responsibility
• Develop sales proposals for learning solutions in the corporate setting
• Develop client relationships and stay on top of industry learning trends
• Serve as a coach to help prospects and clients navigate the different approaches to eLearning for corporate training

Learning Strategist (Academic)

• Tasked with developing strategies to empower students online, anxiety, and  developmental disorders to achieve learning goals
• Understand how students learn and propose strategies to increase knowledge acquisition
• Work with program developers to incorporate best practices in enabling a comprehensive and conducive learning environment
• Develop strategies and plans to incorporate technology in helping students with disabilities or learning impediments
• Work with students to determine alternative learning approaches to overcome impediments

Instructional Designer (Business professional):

• Go to person for designing the story board and narrative for a course
• Advises stakeholders to understand what behaviours and models they really want to emphasize
• Determines which business processes are refined in order to develop learning content
• Creates the instructional design document, which captures the learning strategy and approach for training content
• Determines the best channels and mediums to deliver course content
• Adapts course content to achieve optimal learning outcomes based on audience and skillset
• Develops story board and conceptual narrative for the learning content
• Recommends best practices and technologies to delivering impactful learning outcomes
• Focus on creating an optimal and engaging learning experience

Learning  and Development Specialist (Hands on Trainer/Support ):

• Delivers training to employees including new hires to promising leaders
• Supports quality assurance and testing of eLearning courses prior to formal launch
• Provide input to course development and deployment scheduling
• Provide training and development plans for staff
• Provide subject matter expertise in the leadership or development of eLearning tools to grow staff competency
• Work with third-party vendors to meet learning and development needs

eLearning Consultant (General / Freelance / Independent):

• Expect to see a mix of skillsets from the precious eLearning job titles to fall in this category
• Typically this role is served by niche or an extensively experienced resource
• eLearning consultants are helpful in auditing or creating comprehensive technology driven learning programs

Key Skills for eLearning Professionals

Here are the key skills required for every eLearning professional:

1. Visual design: creating visual appeal and impact is a sure fire way to get participants to acquire knowledge and have it stick
2. Business consulting: understanding how to diagnosis symptoms from root causes is important when reinforcing and delivering training to thousands of employees
3. Project mangement: whenever budget, scope, and schedule show up eLearning professionals should not be intimidated by what it takes to ensure smooth project delivery
4. Negotiation skills: during the course of a project or story boarding exercise, influence and tacit negotiation skills are important to help find the right balance between learning outcomes and budgets
5. Course authoring: having at least one course authoring toolset under your belt is helpful be it Moodle, Captivate, or Articulate to help provide guidance to business leaders on what is feasible
6. Instructional design: eLearning for corporate training benefits significantly from having learning outcomes and experiences tailored for specific audiences, which incorporates optimization of flow for participants
7. Legislation knowledge: understanding accessibility and employment laws will help eLearning professionals suggest more refined solutions to their clients

Mindfield and Partners

Clients are continuing to utilize learning and development to create to future proof their teams. Mindfield helps teams create high performance and share culture with our distinguished learning and development solutions, from eLearning development to technical design. We work with clients to understand their learning needs and chart a clear and concise path to the finish line. Mindfield Consulting specializes custom software development, eLearning corporate training, and home of JIRA experts.