I was happy to speak with Mark Lieberman from Inside Higher Ed a couple of weeks ago about the current state (more or less) of learning engineering in the professional world. The final product of his work is here: Learning Engineers Inch Toward the Spotlight. Aside from the quotes attributed to me, we spoke about what I saw as important to the role of someone with a title of “Learning Engineer.” In different jobs I have held, I have worked with teams of people with that very title. Wherever the contents of the article came from I was happy to see a few things:
If we’re all lifting the field of education to take advantage of what we can learn to improve student learning, then we’re all rowing the same way and that’s great. I was only a bit disappointed to see a reaction to the article from a prominent individual such as this:
If you use the word "learning engineer" in a serious, rather than sarcastic, way, Satan purees a puppy. https://t.co/FVZvq3WDXP
— George Siemens (@gsiemens) September 27, 2018
I respect Dr. Siemens very much, and I’ve even been on a panel with him. I’m not sure where this take comes from exactly, but I cannot describe the statement as collaborative or advancing of ideas.
I hope going forward, we can all be more constructive than that, and work together to apply what research tells us about student learning, as a team. Debate is helpful. It makes us think hard about what we’re trying to achieve. Learning Engineering is coming to the spotlight.