So I'm going to propose some roles as I understand them, in the hopes that some day hiring managers will be able to articulate better what they want/need in terms of talent for their training departments or projects. Note that one person can hold multiple roles . These are ROLES not PEOPLE . Job descriptions in ID (or, ISD) these days are all over the map, with very little consistency. It doesn't help that few HR and Recruiters have any knowledge of, or experience with, the field.

In my role as blogmeister for LCB I've done a lot of reading in the communities of practice literature to gain a better understanding of how online communities work. What causes high quality interaction or community disfunction and collapse. One model I've developed is around the roles and interactions members of a community have as participants in that community. Further influence came from the work What can be done to enhance the community? I thought I'd share my model with the LCB community for feedback and discussion.

ASTD ’s Learning Circuits Blog has a monthly ‘Big Question.” 8221; This month it’s: I’m interested in [the field of] eLearning. What should I do first? I’m responding to this question from the perspective

To prepare for the inevitable, there will be the necessary change requirement to update roles in the organization. (combined Through past experience, and future leaning, here is my take on the future roles, their skill and description: Role I believe the traditional corporate university , or that of the old-fashioned Learning & Development Team, will morph itself into becoming a ‘Collaboration and Learning’ office of some sort in the not so distant future. That is, the way in which an organization operates in terms of formal, informal and social

You can, however, change their roles. In their forthcoming book, Digital Habitats: Stewarding Technology for Communities , Etienne Wenger, Nancy White, and John Smith describe the role of the community technology steward. What other roles are required when you shift from instructor-led training to networked learning? Get Out of the Training Business , my last column for Chief Learning Officer, called for the abolition of  corporate training departments. Help me write the next installment.

Suw Charman-Anderson is the catalyst behind Ada Lovelace Day , “an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology.” Suw described Lovelace as someone who understood that computers could do a lot more than crunch numbers. I

Mark Sylvester hosted a web conference today  on the role of an online community manager. CM is not a 9-5 job – uses twitter a lot, comments on blogs, uses back-channels for private communications the role changes as the needs of the community change There is also an internal role in explaining the role and activities in online communities to the organization, to answer, “what do you do all day other than play on Twitter?”. Here are some highlights from my notes: The session used tweetchat.com for the text chat, but this medium was very slow.

To what extent is your team organized around common job roles and functions? (Retail Retail or early childhood education would be 90% or more – identical job roles in multiple physical locations.  What percentage of the problems faced by your team members are likely faced by other team members in identical job roles? _______ I’m presenting a new deck tomorrow at a pretty big company.  I’m not sure that I can name them so I’m going to err on the side of caution. 

One of my professors brought to my attention a research article in AECT about theory utilization specifically, theories “functioning as conceptual tools.” 8221; The qualitative study (informed by hermeneutic, phenomenological and ethnographic approaches) explores “views and actual uses of theory in context.” 8221; The research question examines “the nature of instructional designers’ practical

What blanket term describes your role? For a class assignment, I wrote a one-page summary on the topic of the effectiveness of blogging as a professional development tool for critical thinking. Something like that. I