In the previous blog, I gave an overview of this instructional design degree program and why I'm taking it. Though this class, "Learning Experience Design Foundations I," was not the first class in the curriculum, it makes sense to share insights and a summary from a foundational class first before writing about more specialized courses.
As a competency-based program, these are the competencies students need to demonstrate to pass this class:
Learning Experience Design (LxD) combines best practices from the fields of instructional design and user experience design, with the goal of creating human-centered, goal-oriented learning experiences.
This course explored the first few steps in the Design Thinking process: Empathize and Define. The Foundations II class covers the remaining steps of the process: Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
When I read about design thinking, I always think of Lorena Morales, who chatted with me about her design thinking degree when I interviewed her for my RevOps book, and who reviewed the design thinking process in her RevOpsAF conference presentation in 2024.
This course discussed instructional design models, such as:
The course covered frameworks such as:
This course explained educational theories such as:
This course also taught the process for conducting a learner analysis, needs analysis, and defining the instructional problem and goals, which were all activities I conducted in the two written assessments and the multiple-choice test.
Course topics:1. Explaining How to Incorporate Design Thinking (click to scroll down to this section)
2. Examining Various Approaches to Learning (click to scroll down to this section)
4. How to Conduct a Needs Analysis (click to scroll down to this section)
|
Adopting an empathetic approach to problem-solving and design is a key aspect of achieving the mindset of a human-centered designer.
Some of the differences between traditional instructional design and learning experience design are in the ways designers think about learning, which include:
Lesson 2: Instructional Design Process Models
Each model offers the designer different benefits.
Lesson 3: The Design Thinking Process
Design thinking is a highly iterative process that involves five stages:
These stages are not sequential, though the process begins with empathizing; each stage following that is iterative.
Designers seek and use feedback from the audience at each stage, making modifications to the problem definition, ideas, and prototypes.
The people who will use the solutions and their needs (the learners) remain at the center of the design process, and learners are involved in the development process of the solution.
The course discussed four educational theories that explain how people acquire knowledge and skills:
Each theory assumes a different manner of learning and recommends different practices that can inform the design of a learning solution. There is no single theoretical approach that is best for all learners or approaches to learning.
The difference between cognitivist and behaviorist learning theory is that the cognitivist approach focuses on mental processing rather than on reinforcement of desired visible/physical behaviors
Learners are deeply involved in the learning process rather than recipients of and responders to new information, which makes them better equipped to guide and adapt their learning to new contexts.
Designers guide metacognition, "thinking about thinking," to help improve learning outcomes.
It states that learning happens when information is stored in memory in an organized, meaningful way, so designers can help learners by organizing new information to make accurate mental connections, resulting in new knowledge.
Chunking information into smaller, manageable units for better processing and retention.
Summarizing to reinforce understanding and memory.
The learner has much more control over the learning experience in the constructivist view.
The newest of these four learning theories
Like constructivism, it focuses on the learner as the active builder of knowledge, but in connectivism, the learner does not construct knowledge; they make, recognize, and mentally construct connections to networks of knowledge and information sources from a wide variety of sources, and technology often plays a role
There are many different names and forms of mastery learning, such as competency-based education (CBE), proficiency-based learning, and performance-based learning.
They focus on students' mastery of a defined set of knowledge or skills, and involve learning experiences that end when learners can demonstrate or prove their competence and understanding of the stated learning objectives.
Mastery approaches often allow learners to proceed at their own pace. (The WGU programs described here are mastery or competency-based.) Once learners demonstrate mastery of one concept, they can move on to the next concept, which allows for more self-directed learning.
The most effective mastery approaches typically involve frequent formative assessment (testing or assignment to assess skill level throughout a course or training) that has immediate and instructive feedback.
A common example of mastery learning is how many people learn to play a musical instrument: demonstrating proficiency in a particular skill before moving on to a more challenging skill.
Most public schools, higher education, and workforce development programs do not use this approach, and instead focus on giving all learners the same amount of time and resources to study a skill, then assess/test on it, then move on to the next concept, even if some learners have not mastered the previous skill.
Competency-based education (CBE) is sometimes called proficiency-based learning or performance-based learning, with self-directed pacing and timely and differentiated support.
Pedagogy is the methods and practices of teaching children.
Andragogy is the method and practice of teaching adults.
The learning needs of children are very different from the needs of adult learners, and not just because of age:
Each framework was developed to help learning designers create learning experiences that will achieve certain outcomes, but each has a somewhat different focus. Multiple frameworks can be used together if needed.
Understanding the actions associated with each level guides choices in what the learner will be tasked to do to achieve the defined learning outcomes.
At this point in the course, there was a proctored (watched) multiple-choice test on the previous concepts.
Empathizing is needed to better understand learners. Empathy is the ability to recognize, understand, and share the thoughts and feelings of others. It involves experiencing another person’s point of view, rather than just your own point of view. You should have a deep understanding of the problems and realities of the people you are designing for in truly human-centered learning experiences.
For example, selecting specific categories of students, such as those who DO use an app (or other type of format) as well as those who DO NOT.
The most common method of interacting with the target audience for the purpose of empathizing is to conduct interviews for learner analysis, to dig beyond the surface and get to know who the learners are, what their experiences are, what their attitudes are, what their preferences are, and what helps them learn best. There are three types of interviews you can conduct with target audience members: structured, semi-structured, and unstructured.
You first need to identify the learners to observe, interview, or shadow.
You also need to be aware of how bias can affect the design of a learning experience. Bias is the result of your brain organizing people into groups based on stereotypes, which can lead to empathizing with the wrong thing. Designers should try to understand who learners are, not what they are.
Every learner is a unique individual with different needs and prior experiences that can influence how they engage in a learning experience.
It is important to understand a learner's social and emotional needs, various identities, cultural assets, exceptionalities, neurodiversities, and prior experiences to determine learner types.
Social and emotional learning (SEL) focuses on helping learners develop and apply skills to manage emotions, achieve goals, maintain positive and supportive relationships, and make good decisions.
It is critical for a designer to understand the social-emotional needs of their target audience so that content and learning activities can be designed to support those needs; otherwise, the learner may disengage or perform poorly. Social-emotional learning is also important for a learning experience to be meaningful and impactful. All these psychological factors affect a student’s motivation or ability to engage in the manner the instructor intends.
The CASEL 5 are five core competencies associated with SEL:
Learner identity is the perception a person has of themself as a learner. Many factors influence learners' identities, including their culture, experiences, preferences, habits, and attitudes, which all affect their interpretation of new knowledge and experiences.
Learners' differences and abilities have different effects on the way they engage with learning experiences, but remember that all learners can learn. Challenge your assumptions or biases about learners with diverse learning needs, such as those previously called learning disabilities, so you can design in an equitable and inclusive way. Develop empathy for the learners whose learning experience is different, due to physical disability, cognitive or emotional disability, or neurodiversity.
Designers should incorporate what has been learned about the target learners’ prior knowledge and social contexts into the design of activities in the learning experience.
In order to tap into the social nature of learners, designers can incorporate social learning experiences into their designs, which consider the learner as the center of their learning environment and create necessary social interactions to create knowledge through self-directed learning.
Recommendations include:
Social learning theories include Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (ZPD), which refers to the difference between what a learner can do without help and what they can achieve with guidance and encouragement from a skilled partner (such as a learning designer or facilitator).
The designer must be aware of the existing state of development/knowledge of the learners to use this theory to allow the learner to direct their own learning.
Creating empathy maps and personas will guide the development of a learning experience to understand the needs, preferences, and challenges of real target learners.
An empathy map characterizes target learner types and their perspectives and drives a designer to consider target learners’ past experiences, as well as the way they think, feel, and learn. A learner type is a description that encompasses multiple learners based on the way they learn.
The five-step process for empathy mapping:
Designing learning experiences that address the needs and learner characteristics of the personas is an effective means of empathizing with the target learners.
Because personas play such an important role in designing learning experiences, instructional designers should take great care to ensure that biases do not make their way into personas.
The first hands-on task was conducting a learner analysis by reviewing two case studies and choosing two learner groups, determining learner types, and creating empathy maps and personas for each.
This task helps the student work through the first stages of the Design Thinking process to help fill a gap in knowledge and skills by which would result in creating an e-learning solution for target learners (in a future task).
After the Empathize stage of the Design Thinking process, you'll move on to the Define stage.
In the Define phase of Design Thinking, you conduct a needs analysis to define the core problem and to determine how instruction or training can solve that problem.
You determine which skills people need to learn, their current skill level, and then the skill gap.
Then you develop a problem statement and a goal statement to define the problem.
Only after defining can you begin to think about how to close that gap by creating e-learning or other instruction.
You will develop clear and measurable learning objectives that can inform the design of instruction.
The learner analysis (Empathize phase of Design Thinking) and needs analysis (Define phase of Design Thinking) are both components of the “analysis” phase of ADDIE.
A needs analysis includes a determination of the target audience's prior knowledge, skills, abilities, and performance gaps, often by using existing data such as test scores or observations that show what the learners already know and the areas in which they struggle. Having this information validates the need for instruction and allows the designer to understand where prior knowledge stops and where the instruction can begin.
A needs analysis also includes a determination that the need is an instructional problem that can be solved through instructional training or education. The organization may face additional problems in processes or communication, which may be less likely to be solved through instruction or training. Learning design focuses on the lack of knowledge or skills in a specific content area or skill set, not issues such as a lack of motivation.
A designer must determine learner needs before planning the content of the learning experience because, in order to create a solution, you must first identify the correct problem. This is similar to identifying the root cause of problems and not only identifying the symptoms of the problem.
It is also important to identify the desired state of knowledge, the level of knowledge the learners should attain by the end of the instruction, so you know when your instruction module or training is complete. This can be thought of as "what done looks like."
The knowledge gap between the current state of students' knowledge and the desired state of knowledge becomes the scope that the new instruction will target.
The designer will design the instruction to close the gap, ensuring learners achieve the desired state of knowledge.
You use this gap to create a problem statement, which is used as a guidepost in the next phase of Design Thinking, Ideate, as well as use it to create actionable learning goals and objectives.
Goals are typically broad in scope and describe the intent of the course/instruction or explain what is desired to be accomplished.
Objectives are much more specific and narrowly define measurable and specific pieces of knowledge or components of a skill.
Bloom's taxonomy is also a useful tool in the development of specific, measurable learning objectives. It can be used to guide the language of the learning objectives and the activities and assessments that are designed to support them, to scaffold into the learning goal.
Scaffolding means that by achieving each learning objective, the learners should be able to achieve the learning goal. The learning objectives scaffold the learners to the learning goal.
Learning objectives are the framework for the activities and assessments in a learning experience. Every activity and assessment item should be designed to move the learner toward a specific learning objective.
One quality measurement of a learning experience is the alignment of the goals, objectives, approach, learning activities, and assessments.
The Quality Matters design rubric explains the importance of alignment among the following factors:
For this second hands-on task in the course, I conducted a needs analysis which consisted of the following steps:
Thanks for reading this overview of Learning Experience Design Foundations I! The next blog will be about the Learning Experience Design Foundations II course.