This Guide to the Learning Engineering Body of Knowledge (LEBOK) is based on an initial draft I started working on in November 2024. As lead editor of Learning Engineering Toolkit, member of the IEEE ICICLE Steering Committee, former chair of the ICICLE Competencies, Curriculum, and Credentials Special Interest Group (CCC SIG), and active participant in the learning engineering community, I recognized the need for more clarity over the broad scope of learning engineering as a process and practice. Meanwhile, the ICICLE CCC SIG continues its work to develop competency definitions within the domains of learning engineering. I envision this Guide can provide an overall organizing framework for further competency definitions developed by the CCC SIG and others.
The purpose of this Guide is to define key knowledge areas and topics within the process and practice of learning engineering to:
The inspiration for this Guide was the other professional domains such as software engineering and project management that have authoritative body of knowledge guides to help frame the scope and breadth of those professions. Learning engineering is a multidisciplinary practice and therefore this Guide recognizes and references other body-of-knowledge guides for more in-depth coverage of those professions.
The Software Engineering Body of Knowledge is rooted in work by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University. The SEI published its own technical report in 1999 titled "A Software Engineering Body of Knowledge Version 1.0" (CMU/SEI-99-TR-004). The SEI's work served as a foundational input for what eventually became the official SWEBOK. It was originally developed as a joint initiative between the IEEE Computer Society and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to achieve professional consensus on the core competencies of software engineering. The first official release, SWEBOK 2004, was later adopted as an ISO technical report (ISO/IEC TR 19759:2005). IEEE continued its stewardship after ACM withdrew from the project, releasing Version 3.0 in 2014 to expand the initial 10 Knowledge Areas (KAs) to 15. Most recently, the 2024 publication of Version 4.0 has modernized the guide further, integrating contemporary practices like Agile, DevOps, and Artificial Intelligence to ensure the body of knowledge remains relevant.
A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) for the project management profession is published by the Project Management Institute (PMI). Since its first official edition in 1996, the guide has evolved from a collection of generally recognized good practices into a comprehensive framework used by millions of practitioners worldwide. With the release of the Seventh Edition (2021) and the recent Eighth Edition (2025), the guide has shifted from a process-based approach toward a Principle-Based model. This modern version moves away from rigid "recipes" and instead focuses on 12 Principles of project management and 8 Performance Domains, emphasizing value delivery, adaptability, and the integration of Agile and Hybrid methodologies to suit the complexities of the modern digital landscape.
In addition to the human readable wiki and downloadable document, the contents of the wiki are retrievable as a machine-readable competency framework implementation in the IEEE Sharable Competency Definition (IEEE 1484.20.3) format. This may be used to link learning resources, learning event metadata, and digital credentials to the topics and subtopics in the framework.
This “beta” edition of the Guide is organized with 14 knowledge areas (KAs), each broken down into topics and subtopics. After Knowledge Area 1: Learning Engineering Basics, the KAs reflect the major themes from the IEEE definition of learning engineering, the chapters from Learning Engineering Toolkit, and other documents recognized by the community. We used generative AI trained on some of our own works for initial drafts of some topic lists and definitions to improve completeness of coverage and employee multiple iteratiins of editing, however, we now offer it to the community for futher iterative development.
– Jim Goodell, December 2025