There are organizations that focus on training, educational research, performance design, etc.. Is there anyone in particular that you reference when thinking of learning design research and practice?
I'm working in nursing education field. In Europe there an association called FINE with the aim to design and study learning strategies and every linked activities (but in nursing education only!). http://www.fine-europe.eu
These two french-speaking organizations lead interesting study :
The french association ARDéCO (Association pour la recherche et le développement des compétences / Association for research and improvement of competences)
The quebecian CRRE (Consortium de Régional de Recherche en Education : http://edupsy.uqac.ca/crre/?page_id=2)
The Design Research Society has a SIG (Special Interest Group) on Design Pedagogy that work closely with Cumulus and DesignEd (US) on conferences and research specifically on design education.
Design thinking are essential for all teachers and researcher. As I am a teacher work proactive for betterment what ever I do as a professional as design thinker do. Efficiency and credibility is other side. So higher education institution can work as the professional designer of his her respective area of teaching and disciplines.
The European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI) is internationally oriented and contains several special interest groups, like Instructional design, Qualitative and quantititive approches to learning and isntruction,
I Know that LTCS (Learning Technologies and Collaborative System is a center off UNED. This group paid attention to educational tecnologies and collaborative system, focused on recovery and organization of educational contens from structured and unstructured sources usign semantic and information retrieval techniques.