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Reading the article from Martin Oliver (2002), something captured my attention and really shocked me because I did not have an idea that the practices of the learning technologist are little understood and of course the most shocking is that even their own community do not understand them.  I definitely had the wrong impression on this matter.  However, I believe that the profession of the learning technologist is emerging and in the future it will grow even more and more since people involved in this field will be able to recognise the great importance of their contribution in the teaching, academic world and generally in the technological purpose that they are contributing in as experts.  According to Oliver (2002), learning technologists are centring on a collaborative curriculum development, usually initiated by an academic and focused on a particular piece of technology. This is rather a very good approach for collaboration in the development of the curriculum involving the main professions of the academic and the learning technologist focusing on a certain piece of technology.  Of course, in addition to the academic, other administrative, technical, research and management functions are needed and some other characteristics should be adopted from the learning technologist like being educative through discussion, case studies and using reflection when there are problems within the context of collaborations and also seeking to transfer the academic from certain themes of implementation to more general educational themes.  Furthermore, the needs to learn is equally important to the need of teach during their collaboration and thus they have to target on communities of practice.  Every learning technologist should rely on his own goodwill and without authority to be responsible, expertise in his field and rhetoric in order for him to be able to create opportunities either practical or educational and influence policy too.

(302 words)

Reference:

Oliver, M. (2002) ‘What do learning technologists do?’ (online),Innovations in Education and Teaching International, vol. 39, no. 4, pp. 245–52. Available from: http://libezproxy.open.ac.uk/login?url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13558000210161089(accessed 13 November 2009).