If you are looking to start a career in educational technology, the specific roles and job titles can seem nebulous. The field is also very broad, and technology is changing at a rapid pace. All these factors can make figure out where in the field you would be the best fit for you and your skills.

That said, it is never to early to learn about the various roles that you may want to apply for. And if you are not a coder, fear not — while edtech teams may have highly technical roles like web developer or software engineer, you definitely do not have to be a coder to land a job in the field of educational technology.

Below are some roles some of the roles on the various edtech teams I have been on that have been vital to a team’s success. Notice that only small fraction of them involve coding.

This is not an exhaustive list by any stretch. Keep in mind that I am focusing primarily on teams geared towards the building of products I have worked on, such as websites, apps, animated videos, app-website systems, and online courses — there are of course other types of media out there, the creative endeavors for which would involve additional roles. And as technology evolves, new roles emerge.

Here we go:

Management

  • project manager
  • technical lead

Online Course Development

  • online course developer
  • online course facilitator
  • instructional designer
  • learning management system (LMS) specialist

Design and Planning

  • visual designer
  • user experience designer
  • learning experience designer

Building site or course elements

  • animator
  • graphic artist
  • web interactive developer
  • videographer
  • illustrator

Technical roles

  • web developer
  • app developer
  • database administrator
  • content management system (CMS) specialist

Testing & Data Gathering

  • quality assurance specialist
  • monitoring and evaluation specialist

There are many cases where someone would play more than one role. Below are a few examples.

  • an app developer may also work on an online content management system that an app communicates with.
  • a project manager may also be a technical lead.
  • a front-end web developer may also create some animated elements.
  • a web interactive developer may do some of his/her own quality assurance.

When considering what roles you would be the ideal fit for, do some research on what skills a given role requires and try to connect with people who have these roles in their career. Arrange for a brief informational interview to get a sense of what skills to build for each role, and what “a day in the of” looks like. After learning about a given role, give some thought as to which roles involve skills that are a logical extension of your talents, and how you might set up a formal or informal learning path for yourself that would prepare you for this role.

In upcoming posts, I will spotlight some of these roles and discuss the types skills that a given role (or group of roles) require, and the types of tools that are useful to have for it.