‘The End of Learning Design?’: A critical perspective on the cost/benefit of leadership, transformation, and crisis in higher education

Abstract

This study explores the existential challenges of identity, institutional value, professional status and career progression that have shaped learning design and designers in higher education through sequences of recurring crisis. Drawing on the data from a sequence of co-generative dialogues, it analyses reflections, outputs and iterations on a series of provocative, challenging workshops ran in Europe and Australia in 2023. Each workshop used a fictional university as a catalyst with participants engaging with hyperreal scenarios to examine the future of learning design amid crises. The study concludes that while learning designers demonstrate resilience and adaptability in crisis situations, they also face conflicting and unevenly experienced challenges of marginalisation, job insecurity, and potential obsolescence, both institutionally and personally held. We argue that the sustainability of learning design depends on designers' ability to integrate their roles holistically within universities rather than becoming siloed in technology or support functions. We highlight the need for learning designers to frame their capabilities as opportunities during crises, rather than merely as threat mitigation tools.