The Online Masters in Learning, Design, and Technology offers a flexible, engaged learning experience to help you launch or advance your instructional design career.
Join us today to design the higher education of the future.
The Learning, Design, and Technology Online Program offers you active learning engagement in the intersecting concepts of instructional and learning design, technology and innovation, and learning analytics.
- You work together with your peers in a flexible, rich, engaged environment that gives you a strong foundation in what it means to design future learning experiences.
- You are able to take courses in either a fully online or hybrid mode taught in a combination of synchronous and asynchronous interaction.
- You are able to complete the program either full-time or part-time. We include below a typical program of study for full-time students to get a better sense of the sequence of core courses and electives. If you choose to complete the program part-time, you are encouraged to complete the core requirements first before registering for electives. All students must complete the program within three years of initial enrollment.
Online Program Requirements
Core Courses (15 credit hours)
- Integrated Introduction to the Field
- Methods of Learning & Design
- Technology Innovation by Design
- Educational Research Methods & Learning Analytics
- University as a Design Problem
Electives (15 credit hours)
Capstone: ePortfolio (0 credit hours)
The Online Classroom Experience
We use the Canvas online learning platform to help instructors make online learning more interactive, authentic, and effective. We model good instructional design practices so that you are able to feel immersed in the Georgetown educational experience even at a distance. We also supplement many of our online courses with tools such as VoiceThread, Hypothes.is, Panopto, Mentimeter, WordPress, and Turnitin. These methods of deeper engagement provide a robust academic experience that enables global networking among students, faculty, and industry partners.
ePortfolio
The Learning, Design, and Technology ePortfolio is a curated and compiled showcase of your student work. This culminating ePortfolio is meant to give you the opportunity to demonstrate a meaningful representation of the specific professional, intellectual, or design expertise acquired in the process of earning their degree. You are required to submit your ePortfolio during your last semester in the program in order to graduate as part of a 0-credit Capstone.
Online Program Core Courses
As a student in the Online Master’s program, you will take five courses that form the program’s core. These courses offer you opportunities to explore multiple perspectives in relation to the program’s focuses – Learning and Instructional Design, Technology Innovation, Learning Analytics, and critical studies in Higher Education. The core courses will enable you to build a common knowledge and language to engage in discourse that challenges current perspectives in learning and design to drive the discipline forward.
LDES 5000: Integrated Introduction to the Field – Required in-person intensive in August on Georgetown’s main campus
You will begin the program by gathering at the Georgetown campus in Washington, D.C. and meeting your classmates and faculty in person for a 3.5 day intensive introduction course in mid- to late-August. The course will introduce you to graduate studies in the fields of Learning Design, Technology and Innovation, Learning Analytics, and critical studies in Higher Education. You will learn about the interconnectedness of critical concepts, gaining an understanding of how these fields intersect. You will build a strong knowledge-base and connections with your classmates and faculty that will facilitate your navigation of future learning challenges and solutions.
LDES 5001: Methods of Learning and Design
This survey course draws on multiple disciplines to consider what learning is and how it happens. What do we know from instructional design theory and models about how people learn? How do students process new information? What can you do to facilitate deep learning for students from varied backgrounds? Can there be universal design for learning? What is agility in learning and design methods? Learning key principles for how people learn and retain material will prepare you to design valuable learning experiences in higher education and beyond.
LDES 5002: Technology and Innovation by Design
In this course, you will explore the role of technology and innovation in higher education. Taking into account historical and current educational challenges in higher education, you’ll explore the ways that institutions of higher education and student populations have changed over time, impacting the ways we use technology in education today. In addition to creating dynamic definitions of a variety of concepts, we will explore the challenges, opportunities, and effects technology and innovation—as well as theories of disruption and integration—have had on higher education.
LDES 5003: University as a Design Problem
In this course, you will explore emerging approaches to innovation and transformation as they apply to institutions of higher education and the broader learning ecosystem. In doing so we will help you understand the nature of change in higher education by exploring its competing aims and missions, histories, multiple stakeholders, expanding publics, and diversifying marketplace. Collectively and critically, you will imagine alternative future(s) for higher education that respond to the imperatives for relevance, quality, and equity. Although the course will have some assigned readings and seminar discussions, much of the course will be co-created with students and carried out in a studio or workshop format.
LDES 5004: Educational Research Methods & Learning Analytics
In this course, you will begin to explore learning analytics concepts and acquire the foundations of a learning analytics toolkit, including basic statistics and principles of data analysis. You will investigate the relationship between learning, design, technology, and analytics through readings and discussions dealing with key topics related to positivist educational research design, educational data mining, and algorithmic literacy and ethical use of data. You will also reflect on the implications for pedagogy and for higher education administration in relation to some recent advances in the fields of big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. This course will challenge you to incorporate data-supported and evidence-based reasoning into our understanding of learning theories, learning design, and the relationship of a university to its students, faculty, and staff.
Typical Program of Study
All students in the program will take courses that are designed to build a strong foundation in the core concepts of the program while allowing for a full range of elective experiences. A typical full-time program of study looks as follows:
Fall I
- Integrated Introduction to the Field (one week in person), 3 credits
- Methods of Learning & Design, 3 credits
- Technology Innovation by Design, 3 credits
Spring I
- Educational Research Methods & Learning Analytics (3 credits)
- The University as a Design Problem (3 credits)
- Elective (3 credits)
Fall II
- Elective (3 credits)
- Elective (3 credits)
- Elective (3 credits)
Spring II
- Elective (3 credits)
- Capstone & portfolio writing
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