Learning Design - Then and Now

For a fascinating look at the history of education, I highly recommend Tony Bates’ Teaching in the Digital Age. In his chapter on methods of teaching he looks at the history of learning spaces and how the industrial revolution led to a change in learning design to fit the social, economic and political context of the 19th century.

This included:

- the industrialization of society which provided ‘models’ for organizing both work and labour, such as factories and mass production;

- the movement of people from rural to urban occupations and communities, with increased density resulting in larger institutions;

- the move to mass education to meet the needs of industrial employers and an increasingly large and complex range of state-managed activities, such as government, health and education;

- voter enfranchisement and hence the need for a better-educated voting public;

over time, demand for more equality, resulting in universal access to education.

In a recent visit to the grad school, Charles Fadel, head of the Center for Curriculum Redesign, also stressed the fact that educational systems remain antiquated and unable to produce learners fully prepared for this ‘fourth industrial revolution’. In his view, US systems are still stuck in the early twentieth century. Bates asks us to consider how fit these spaces and methods are in this digital age. Many of the classical methods of teaching (lectures, seminars, tutorials) while still being effective in some learning contexts are proven to be ineffective at developing learner’s skills and knowledge. He highlights the importance of considering other approaches such as apprenticeships, experiential learning and connectivist methods.

Backward Design Model

Instructional designers focus on bringing online learning experiences to a large audience at scale. The design decisions are therefore higher stake. While classroom teachers have the capacity to ruin the learning for a relatively small group, MOOCs now provide inept designers with a chance to ruin a much larger audience. Current popular methodologies of instructional design, like ADDIE and backward design, emphasize deliberate planning to meet the learner's needs and, like the classroom methodologies we’ve discussed, can be adapted for different contexts.

ADDIE Design Model

The takeaway from this reading, and further exploration of instructional design approaches show that one size does not fit all. It takes an intentional teacher to make informed decisions, based on their knowledge of the learner and the context, to have a significant effect.

How People Learn Design Sprint

Our challenge: to build upon the current online environment of HPL to develop and maintain intrinsic motivation for students from start to finish. We want the learning experience to feel personally important and of value to them.

Kicking the tires with some HPL learners

This week we had the opportunity to get some user testing and feedback on our prototypes for the HPL course. From the feedback we were able to select one design to move ahead with:

A modification to the criteria for weekly reflections.

We plan to create multiple options for students to choose from for reflection depending on what the student finds personally valuable.

This might include:

- Creating media (e.g. video or audio or other artistic response)

- Checklist of key takeaways

- A written text or story which connects to the theory

- An imagined discussion between authors of the text

Some challenges we will need to design for:

- Too much noise from too many options

- Challenge of consistent assessment for TFs

- Word count felt for some like extrinsic motivation

- Sense of safe space for learners who don’t feel like posting anything personal