I'm about to become unpopular (and I adore Fred and we usually agree on stuff), but we do need to contend with what constitutes professional practitioners and experts.

First, what I said was that a degree is the best indicator, not the only indicator, https://twitter.com/FredWBaker/status/1280604764284358657

especially in the absence of an evidence-grounded widely-accepted certification. What concerns me is that the exceptions to the rule become the rule, and soon the professional body of knowledge along with standards and competencies are sidelined for popular views and opinions.

I have accidental designers in my classes all the time. I love them. I WAS one. But they don't come with a body of knowledge. They come with skills and talents that get confused for instructional design, but they don't yet have methodologies, theoretical foundations,

or learning sciences underpinning their work. Anything that works is indeed accidental - that's not the definition of professional practice.

Professional practice is having a body of knowledge - methods, theories, and related evidence - that informs your practice,

that turns the accidental into the intentioned. (And design is not the practice of tripping into a solution - it is all about intent.)

In the space of learning, that's a sacred charge as well - when it comes to ensuring that people actually learn from what we design,

we have a professional obligation to leverage the best we have to offer in service of that (and to continually improve the body of knowledge, methodologies, etc. that we have to offer).

A portfolio is an assessment method, but how does one assess a portfolio? You like some pieces? There are some clever solutions (or you infer there are but maybe they're accidental)? This person did something once or twice or three times?

You have to stop at some point and ask ... what are you looking for in that portfolio? We used to have students here complete a portfolio as a graduation requirement, and now it's baked into a class. For that portfolio, they have to organize it based on competencies and standards

- competencies and standards that are *grounded in a body of knowledge.* We also have students include a Design Brief where they explicitly tell us what they applied where, what decisions they made, etc., because the product alone is not enough.

Again, sometimes we do accidentally design something effective. I want to know that they did it on purpose - a professional (emergent, established, or otherwise) will leverage that body of knowledge intentionally.

Is a degree or certificate the only way to develop that body of knowledge? No, but I contend they're the most likely to be grounded in sound methods and research. There is a lot of hooey and snake oil for sale in our field, so I feel really comfortable about that contention.

Where else is one going to get that professional body of knowledge? On the job? Even in special circumstances where that happens, it happens BECAUSE someone there has a degree in the field to lead that sort of internal development or mentor that individual.

We can't conflate doing with expertise. Right now, there are a lot of people who suddenly taught online for the first time and now think they're experts. Or maybe someone has taught online for a long time in their discipline. Is that person an expert in online learning?

One might think I'm picking a fight here, but I'm genuinely concerned about the slow degradation of the professionalism of our field. A job aid (checklist, whatever) may be helpful in practice or may be speedy but is not a substitute for professional judgment

- informed analysis of needs, learners, affordances, contextual variables; ability to devise solutions and implement effective strategies, not just use a tool you heard about; ability to distinguish between what works in what situations but not others (and more).

Experience is absolutely critical, but it's not everything either. We do our field - and most educational fields - a real disservice by treating it like it's something anyone can do and just happen into and has a natural knack for. It deprofessionalizes a field.

Yes it's complicated and there are different flavors or varieties, but that's more an argument for why the shared body of knowledge is all the more important, not less.

And we do need to develop a performance-based certification on top of acquiring the body of knowledge. (I would argue for certification, not licensure, but I suspect Fred and I otherwise agree on this front that we need something that helps bridge BOK and practice).