Elearning Titles and Responsibilities
Off-the-shelf tools enable people to create single or multi-page content out of the box. This bypasses many needs for technical staff to be present on your project. These do however come with their own sets of limitations. Often they may deploy to Adobe Flash, and if Mobile is on your roadmap this won't be an option. Sometimes they deploy to mobile only, but now your LMS doesn't know the difference between Desktop and Mobile ready materials. Tools like these should be audited to find out if they not only fulfill your academic requirements, but if they also give you a return on investment.
Another approach is to have Curriculum trainers or instructors write up what needs to be created, and then it falls on more of a data entry position to populate. It may even fall on to custom development which requires technical staff to perform user interface work and other logical or service based programming. You may even of completely offloaded all of this to an external vendor to perform the whole thing.
All this can get real frustrating as you're attempting to find or define your roll/coverage in all this. This is all observation/opinion since its come up a few times it needed to be aired out.
The quick answer is there is no real way to define any of these titles in a box. They often overlap several areas. Each company or group breaks this up differently. More than often this leads to some toes getting stepped on if it's not managed properly or isn't done under some level of leadership.
- Curriculum/Instruction
- Art/Graphic/3D
- Audio
- Video
- Authoring
- Performance / Analytics
- IT (Coder, UI, Services)
Some, all or even more of these combinations exist.
Instructional Designers can commonly have the capability of editing JavaScript, Flash and other technology, but this is normally not their main focus. They commonly have an advanced degree needed to instruct, and are capable of designing storyboards, and performing training. Its possible in cases where Editors get asked to directly perform data entry taking over some of the tasks of an Instructional Designer. This is often met with some level of friction. Its also possible data entry staff is brought in to perform the form based work filling or re-filling in all of the information.
Alternate titles: Learning Strategist or Specialist, Content Developer
MSOffice, Google Docs, and even more advanced approaches with Github and Markdown. These serve as the basis for data entry in 3rd Party tools, or hand-off to a vendor or internal development group.
Developers (or coders) commonly go by "Software Developer" and can also go by "Software Engineer". Its some combination of these words mashed together with "web" or "application" of sorts that implies they code all day long. This is often much harder to get coders to commonly break out of their text editor and start shooting video, editing graphics or writing curriculum. They commonly have a background in Computer Science, but can also enter into the field through other avenues. Front end or UI related jobs don't typically require the same scrutiny developers deal with in their day to day activities.
Implement binary search in a rotated array {5,6,7,8,1,2,3}
You could program for 20 years and never have a need to do this. These competence tests have nothing to do with styling CSS, changing some settings in JavaScript, typing markup in HTML or being aware of a billion different browser compatibility hacks. But, some can use this as a test to find out if you can handle this side of programming which would be more on the data side of things. There are a lot of mathematical aspects to programming that intensify as you get into 3D, animation or larger data projects. This also typically draws a heavy line between formally trained, and self taught developers. If you were to search the "top 10 algorithm interview questions", you'll quickly get exposed to other areas of programming commonly/possibly not exposed to you.
This doesn't mean you can't develop great apps or theme/style a website. You could also consider this somewhat like a musician. You don't need all the theory behind music to write a song. You don't even need to know what the notes are to carry a tune.
You could be building an Application, or deploying a web site. This defines the skill sets needed to advance the project forward. Information Technology typically requires some level of understanding about the standards, platform and other respected architectures needed for a successful deployment. This why now with the advent of a lot of mobile devices we have Android, iOS developers, as well as a layer of other developers using Adobe AIR, PhoneGap and other tools to deploy to Android and iOS thru other means.
Commonly this group has it pretty well defined. Though programmers can often feel they need to write CSS, or User Interface elements. This is typically unrealistic, unless the artist is programming-inclined. Typically, knowing if you need a JPG, PNG, SVG or some other format aids in the effort and possible re-work.
Also commonly have it pretty well defined. They either output vector, movies and other formats that get used in a range of media formats. Dotted line commonly to IT to make sure they are generating the correct assets to balance compatibility with all devices, browsers, etc.
There are commonly more dimensions to developing e-learning. This is why its often hard for an Instructional Designer looking for a more technically weighted position, vs. a programmer who responds to the technical aspect of the role. A programmer may find they are suddenly asked to storyboard, edit audio, and graphics. This may shock the programmer.
Even with the amount of overlap you may have on a team you can also have gaps that occur. Content Management Systems commonly attempt to manage assets and in some cases workflow. But when you have a diverse environment more often than not - everyone has to rise to the challenge.