Knowledge Area 10: Learning Engineering Operations & Project Management

Learning engineering involves complex projects that require careful planning, resource allocation, and management of both technical and human resources.

This knowledge area covers operational considerations in learning engineering. It highlights key differences between learning engineering and traditional instructional design processes, covering topics such as project planning, scaling of learning solutions, budgeting, timelines, and multidisciplinary team engagement throughout the project lifecycle. Effective operations and project management ensure that learning engineering projects are delivered efficiently, achieve desired learning outcomes, and are adaptable to changes and feedback throughout the process.

¶ Subsections:

From the Learning Engineering Toolkit

The Learning Engineering Toolkit does not present operations and project management as a stand-alone PMBOK-style discipline. Instead, it frames the work through two lenses: teaming and implementation. Its starting premise is that this kind of work depends on a team, because it is highly unusual for any one person to hold every capability required to take on learning engineering challenges, which span engineering processes, learning sciences, software engineering, data science, instructional design, artificial intelligence, pedagogy, user experience design, and product testing [LET-10]. Project management is itself named as one of the domains that typically contribute to a learning engineering team, alongside assessment and evaluation, data science, instructional design, learning environment engineering, learning sciences, software engineering, and subject-matter expertise [LET-10].

Because different challenges and phases demand different mixes of talent, the Toolkit recommends treating team formation (or re-formation) as a step between each phase of the learning engineering process, noting that the implementation phase requires a different team composition than the creation phase [LET-10]. Larger efforts that design complex platforms or solutions may call for a project manager to coordinate among the various specialists and set the overall direction of the work [LET-10]. Teams themselves develop over time, moving through Tuckman's forming, storming, norming, and performing stages, with leadership becoming more shared as the team matures [LET-10].

Operationally, the Toolkit treats implementation as a distinct phase in which a finished solution is released into real-world settings with their own environmental contexts [LET-16]. Its implementation checklist organizes the operational work into domains including policies and strategy, budget, material resources, leadership and organizational capacity, team, technology, operationalization, instrumentation, investigation during implementation, ethics, and scale-up and sustainability [LET-16]. Crucially, the book stresses that how well any learning engineering solution performs hinges on the people and the organization where it is put into use, underscoring why operations in learning engineering are as much about teams and ongoing support as about plans and budgets [LET-16].

Sources from the Learning Engineering Toolkit

[LET-10]Dina Kurzweil & Erin S. Barry (2023). Chapter 10: Tools for Teaming. In Jim Goodell & Janet Kolodner, Learning Engineering Toolkit (pp. 255–267). Routledge / Taylor & Francis. doi:10.4324/9781003276579
[LET-16]Jodi Lis, Jessie Chuang & Jordan Richard Schoenherr (2023). Chapter 16: Implementation Tools. In Jim Goodell & Janet Kolodner, Learning Engineering Toolkit (pp. 347–359). Routledge / Taylor & Francis. doi:10.4324/9781003276579

Knowledge Area 10: Learning Engineering Operations & Project Management

¶ Subsections:

From the Learning Engineering Toolkit

Sources from the Learning Engineering Toolkit

Further Reading

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