Description of Program

The future of learning is online or on a screen or device. Learning and training organizations require managerial leadership that can devise and implement enterprise solutions. Learning executives, instructional architects, and designers occupy many roles within a company. They assess performance goals; develop learning objectives; design instructional materials; deliver curriculum in classrooms, online, and in blended environments; and use new and ever-evolving technologies to reduce costs. These are the people who are responsible for the ongoing training and development required to develop human talent and increase profitability.

La Salle’s M.S. in Instructional Technology Management (ITM) program combines theory, hands-on design experience, and management skills to provide learners with a theoretical and intellectual foundation of instructional design principles, methods, and techniques. ITM is focused on adult learning theories and methods in the context of the corporate, organizational and institutional training environment. This program provides opportunities to design, build, and implement multimedia and online projects for e-learning, mobile learning, blended, ubiquitous learning in corporate, government, or educational settings. It also equips the learner with the leadership skills necessary to provide the vision, strategies, and solutions needed to create and sustain a learning culture. The outcomes of this program are designed to support learning leaders in the context of a virtual global workforce.

Graduate education at La Salle emphasizes students’ ability to apply universals and specifics to actual situations, to distinguish relationships, to analyze critically, to rearrange component ideas into new wholes, and to make judgments based on external criteria. The M.S. in ITM is offered through the College of Professional and Continuing Studies because it is a field that attracts people of many backgrounds and experiences, as well as those who are looking to enter into a new field. The field of instructional technology supports La Salle’s mission that education should be useful and of service by placing individuals in positions in corporations where they will have the means to develop an educated, able, as well as productive national and international workforce.

The ITM program uses an online experiential learning model integrating technologies and replicating the types of learning that graduates of the program in their respective fields will use in the workplace. Learners will take courses incorporating the latest learning technologies. This approach strengthens teamwork, communication, and professional bonding. The entire curriculum “walks the walk” and uses the ADDIE model as a base for each course and evaluation.

La Salle’s ITM is unique and highly regarded internationally for its focus on the 21st century workplace learning and leadership, providing learners with access to state-of-the-art multimedia video and audio integration opportunities in the Communication Department’s production studios and media arts laboratories as well as offering expertise regarding management and leadership development. In addition, highly successful professionals experienced in working in multi-national corporations teach courses that provide learners with real insight into the field. 

The strength of the program is its emphasis on practical and authentic learning assessment and application, built on a strong foundation in which students learn by hands-on experience.