People-Centred Learning & Development
Put people at the heart of organisational growth by exploring how learning, motivation, well-being and performance drive individual and organisational success.
MSc in Strategic Learning and Development
DC534 | Online Programmes
DURATION 2 Years (delivered primarily online, complemented by 2–3 in-person days per semester)
EU FEES €7,900 per annum
NON EU FEES €14,900 per annum
START DATE September 2026
APPLICATION Accepting Applications
Note: When starting your application here please select programme code DC534
Our MSc in Strategic Learning and Development is the only graduate programme of its kind in Ireland, an innovative partnership between DCU and the Learning & Development Institute, the professional body representing Learning & Development Professionals in Ireland.
The development of this new programme is supported by L&D Skillnet and funding is available for eligible candidates looking to upskill. Together this partnership has created this exciting new programme, informed and shaped by the needs of the L&D community of tomorrow.
The programme is designed for graduates to combine study for a NVQ Level 9 Masters award while gaining business knowledge and skills. This accredited programme is specifically customised and designed to map against industry needs to develop the current and future L&D leaders in Ireland.
This two year part-time Masters programme encourages critical thinking, teamwork and communication, analytical and managerial competence, and develops a diverse range of professional attributes which equip graduates to excel and to adopt L&D leadership positions in their professional lives.
Teaching is delivered primarily online, complemented by 2–3 in-person days per semester, enabling students based across the UK and EU to engage fully while travelling to campus only for key face-to-face sessions.
This programme is perfect for you if you are a strategic thinker with strong problem-solving abilities. This programme is very much about people: how we interact, learn and develop in the workplace.
Designed in conjunction with both leading industry and academic experts, subject matter incorporates both professional and applied L&D business material as well as an analytics component. Lectures are delivered by experienced experts from academia, industry and practice, facilitating graduates with the most up-to-date theory and practice.
Students on the programme are all eligible for Learning & Development Institute membership as part of the fees for the two-year duration of the programme.
All queries relating to Skillnet funding for this programme should be directed to eimear.south@landdi.ie
Book time with Eimear South: DCU Level 9 Masters in Strategic L&D
Strategic Evidence & Analytics Insight
Use data and research to lead with confidence, applying analytics and evidence to strategic decision-making across learning, performance and people practices.
Leadership & Organisational Change
Develop leadership capability and explore change models that enable you to guide organisations through transformation and continuous improvement.
Applied Learning Design & Practice
Turn theory into impact by designing, evaluating and implementing effective learning and development solutions aligned with organisational goals.
Digital & Contemporary L&D Tools
Build expertise in modern learning technologies and digital tools that support agile, engaging and effective learning environments.
Coaching, Mentoring & Professional Growth
Develop coaching and mentoring approaches that foster trust, ethical practice and sustained professional growth for individuals and teams.
Strategic Consultancy & Research Skills
Gain research design capability and tackle complex organisational challenges through applied projects, including a strategic consultancy assignment.
Career Impact & Leadership Opportunities
Prepare for senior roles in learning, talent, organisational transformation and leadership development across diverse sectors globally.
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Career Prospects
Are you passionate about learning in the workplace? Do you see the benefits of personal development for both individuals and businesses? And would you like to know more about how knowledge creation can keep companies competitive?
The MSc in Strategic Learning and Development might be the perfect programme for you. It combines elements from L&D Design and Strategy to Organisational Transformation, Leadership and Change, Digital Learning Tools, the Future of L&D and Data Analytics.
This programme is an excellent way to accelerate your career. Upon graduation, you will have the analytical and practical skills you’ll need to develop and implement strategies. You will also be positioned to contribute to decision-making and policy discussions at a senior level. This programme will prepare you for a role in L&D departments of large or multinational organisations.
Being one of a very few people in the market with this unique qualification will position you very strongly and open up a range of exciting career opportunities. Not only will you have the support of DCU and the Learning & Development Institute with building your knowledge and expertise, as well as keeping ahead of the latest L&D trends with global research and whitepapers, you will build a strong professional network of like-minded learning and development professionals which will endure long after you have graduated from the programme.
Graduates of the MSc in Strategic Learning and Development will progress their careers in Strategic Learning & Development, Leadership, Talent & HR, Organisation Change & Transformation, People and Culture. They will be attractive to L&D Departments with a strategic emphasis towards skills development, both indigenous and multinational organisations seeking to recruit graduates who can make significant contributions to discussions and decisions at boardroom level.
Graduates will be highly sought after for a variety of positions, including:
- Change and Development Manager
- Head of Leadership Development
- Talent Business Partner
- Senior Talent Management Specialist
- Head of Organisational Learning
- Transformative Leadership Specialist
- Learning & HR Technology Business Partner
- People Development Manager
- Skills Development Leader
- L&D Director
- Head/Director of Talent Management
- Organisational Transformation Manager/Director
- People & Culture Partner/Director
Why Do This Course?
DCU Business School is a triple accredited, internationally focused business school, whose globally ranked Master’s Degrees offer clear routes to career progression in a wide range of business areas. Our internationally respected academic faculty have thought leadership, industry experience and deep, active, research expertise that ensures our courses stay at the cutting edge. Our classroom environment allows a rich exchange of real world business experience and problem solving that is equally valuable.
We match the ambition and career goals of our postgraduate students with an exceptional specialist business education that allows them to progress confidently to the next stages of their careers.
Learning & Development Institute leads the learning and development profession in Ireland by inspiring excellence in practice to develop individuals and organisations to reach their full potential. The Learning & Development Institute strives to provide professional education in Training and Development along with a rich range of services, supports, events and resources; to provide a basis for member certification, enhance professional development and thus employment opportunities.
Who is this programme for?
The programme is aimed at those working across the full breadth of the people development arena: professionals who are working with their organisations, or with clients, to support the advancement of organisational performance through people. It’s for people in learning and development roles, those working on the agenda of organisational change and transformation, people committed to ensuring the talent pipeline is strong to support the organisation’s achievement of its ambitions for the future, and those who have a commitment to their own personal development and to maintaining their own high professional standards and to leading by example on the importance of having a strong theoretical basis to inform their professional practice.
Structure & Delivery:
This MSc in Strategic Learning and Development is designed in conjunction with both leading industry and academic experts.
Changes in technology, work practices and business models have created a demand for continuous learning and development, which requires Learning & Development professionals to examine more contemporary ways in which to improve their practice. Subject matter incorporates both professional and applied business material as well as an analytics component.
This programme has been designed with the very practical and logistical expectations of our learners in mind. Lectures are delivered by experienced experts from academia, industry and practice, facilitating graduates with the most up-to-date theory and practice. The flexible delivery model is designed to suit people’s working lives and to enable them to take learnings from the course and apply them directly to their work.
On this programme, students will participate in an interactive, supportive, and multicultural learning environment designed to prepare them for successful careers in Learning and Development. Teaching is delivered primarily online, complemented by 2–3 in-person days per semester, enabling students based across the UK and EU to engage fully while travelling to campus only for key face-to-face sessions.
Students will also complete a Strategic Consultancy Capstone Project, a group-based consultancy assignment that provides the opportunity to apply theory to real-world organisational challenges by working with a live client.
After you’ve completed the programme, graduates will be able to:
– Display an understanding of the role of an L&D Director/Manager
– Demonstrate an identifiable set of key L&D Leader Competencies
– Display high autonomy and demonstrate expertise in you L&D Role
– Understand how L&D programmes translate into learning impact outcomes for your organisation
– Build engagement strategies with internal and external stakeholders
– Develop strategies for leading L&D developments effectively through organisational change
– Develop creative solutions to exploit the opportunities and surmount challenges facing L&D teams
– Motivate and empower colleagues and external stakeholders to stimulate L&D activity and innovation to achieve organisational goals
– Participate in discussions on a managerial level
Core Modules
Strategic Consultancy Project
The Strategic Consultancy Project requires students to work with a client company as a consulting team to overcome highly complex, fragmented, and ambiguous organizational challenges.
This module will require consulting teams to diagnose and analyse a specific organisational challenge. Students will be required to engage with the client in field research, analyse data, propose interventions for planned change, and make recommendations to senior management for strategic action.
Strategy, Organisation and Innovation
This module aims to give students a thorough grounding in the tools and techniques of business strategy, the broad approaches to strategy-making, and an appreciation of strategy in the context of the digital age and emerging markets.
This module will also cover an introduction to strategic innovation and the organizational aspects of strategy implementation. The module is delivered as a series of mini-lectures together with exercises, readings, case studies and class discussion.
Personal Leadership and Management Skills
The Personal Leadership and Management Skills module runs over the full two years of the programme and will equip students with insights into their personal management and leadership skills as well as covering the skills required to work effectively in teams.
The module will provide students with opportunities to identify key areas for personal development and support their efforts to achieve this change.
Learning and Development: Design to Evaluation
This module reviews the history and development of organisational training and development. It takes participants through the assessment of training needs, the matching of trainees and training programme, the variety of programme types, programme design skills and programme evaluation.
It highlights the importance of thoroughly assessing learner needs before any training design is engaged upon. Ethical issues associated with trainee assessment and development are central to this module. Participants are encouraged to be adaptive and creative when designing training interventions to facilitate the range of learner needs, styles, motivations and individual differences.
Leadership and Change
To lead is to change. The purpose of this module is to explore the multi-layered, multi-faceted concept of leadership in a manner that exposes the crucial role of a leader in bringing about change. This module will examine some of the vast literature that underpins leadership theory, giving special attention to how each theoretical approach could be applied in real-world organisations.
It will:
- explore the impact of modern business environments and the nature of organisations on the leadership function
- examine the core tasks of leaders in initiating, implementing and anchoring change
- consider the impact of a leader on sustaining a change-ready organisation
In essence, the module is designed to explore how leadership theory can inform and direct the way leadership is practised.
Digital Learning Design and Tools
This module will provide detailed knowledge and understanding of current and emerging approaches to learning design for digital, online and blended learning environments and how to apply these in a learning and development context. The module will engage in debates on different design approaches, theories and technologies to develop knowledge around the whys and hows of creating learning experiences for learning and development contexts.
It will evaluate, drawing on scientific research evidence and practice, the opportunities, benefits and limitations of leveraging pedagogy, digital technologies, and techniques for learning and development delivery. Case studies from research and practice of innovative digital learning design exemplars will be used to provide a basis for critical examination of the current trends and future directions of educational technologies.
Programme Structure:
This programme will take place online on one evening each week from 4pm-7.30pm (day to be confirmed).
There are three on-campus days each semester on Week 1, Week 6 and Week 12 from 9am-5pm (the exact day to be confirmed).
| Signature DCU Leadership Modules | Applied L&D Skills | Capstone |
| • Leadership & Change (10 credits)
• Personal & Career Development (5 credits) • Strategy, Organisation & Innovation (10 credits) |
• Digital Learning Design & Tools (5 credits)
• Learning & Development: Design to Evaluation (5 credits) • HR Data Analytics & Storytelling (5 credits) • Strategic Learning & Development, Organisational Development & Transformation (10 credits) • Contemporary Issues & The Future of Learning and Development (5 credits) |
• Research Methods (5 credits)
• Strategic L&D Consulting Project (25 credits) |
| Year 1 | Semester 1
Sept – December Semester 2 January – May |
Induction Block: 1 day
Semester 1 – 3 days Semester 2 – 3 days |
Online Classes: 3-4 hours per week on one evening per week |
| Year 2 | Semester 1
Sept – December Semester 2 January – May |
Semester 1 – 3 days
Semester 2 – 3 days |
Online Classes: 3-4 hours per week on one evening per week |
INSIGHTS
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Read MoreFees & Requirements
Entry Requirements
General Entry Requirements
For admission to the MSc in Strategic Learning and Development you must hold either:
-
A 2:1 Honours degree in a Business discipline and at least 3 years’ relevant L&D work experience
or
- A 2:1 Honours degree in a non-Business discipline and at least 5 years’ relevant L&D work experience within the industry. Applicants who have achieved a 2.2 Honours degree may still obtain a place. This will depend on availability of places and on obtaining high grades in relevant modules on their undergraduate programme.
or
- Alternatively, candidates with relevant Professional qualifications and at least 3 years’ relevant work experience in the domain of training, learning and development may be considered for entry subject to interview.
If an applicant does not hold a primary degree, but has sufficient and relevant working experience (more than 5 years in the domain of training, learning and development) a case for acceptance using the following avenue.
Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) applicants are required to submit a cover letter along with their application under the Transcripts section of the portal, affirming their intent to apply for RPL. For more information on RPL see here.
How to Apply
Make an Application
To apply for this programme:
All applicants should apply here. Here’s a quick step by step guide if you need help with your application.
Applicants will be required to provide:
- Provide Academic Transcripts for each and every year of study with English translation, if applicable.
- Details of relevant work experience in the application questionnaire
- A valid passport
- If applicable, provide evidence of competence in the English language as per DCU entry requirements. Please see link http://www.dcu.ie/registry/english.shtml
Application Deadlines
Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until the programme is full or until:
- Closing date for EU applicants is 31st August 2026
- Closing date for Non-EU applicants is 1st July 2026
Note applicants who require a study visa for the purposes of studying at DCU, are advised to apply as early as possible.
If you are a non EU student and require a study visa, you are not eligible to apply for part-time programmes as study visas are only granted for full-time programmes.
Queries
Queries from EU applicants should be directed to postgraduateadmissions@dcu.ie
Queries from non EU applicants should be directed to internationaladmissions@dcu.ie
Commencement of Programme
The programme commences in September 2026
Fees & Charges
Fees Description
All programme fees are per annum and subject to an annual increase.
EU Status Fee Part Time
€7,900
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