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Learning Experience Design in Action

8 October 2010 by Clark 4 Comments

I was working with one of my clients/partners on an opportunity to develop classroom learning on a tablet.   The first push is to get something to show teachers and trial in a classroom.   It’s not yet going to be socially enabled, nor particularly mobile, nor yet augmented with resources; the point now is to demonstrate capability to develop compelling interactives (pretty much regardless of whether it’s a tablet or not).

As context, they’d sent me some storyboards that I’d responded to with some comments.     They actually started from a good point, but there were nuances that needed to be teased out.   Their questions   led me to think through some principles that underpinned my recommendations.   In the course of their questions, I talked about these perspectives:

Start with visceral experience: I want to ground the learning in their world.   I want to start with phenomena that they understand, and have them do a little free exploration followed by some focused tasks, but at a qualitative, experiential level. Drill down from the bigger picture in the world, to intermediate issues, to why this in particular is important, and have them actively explore the relationships.

Connect conceptual to formal: after the learner has an experiential basis, then link it to formal representations.   Help the learners connect their actions to the tools used to structure our understanding.   At the end of the day, at least in this domain, we want them to be able to use the formal representations to solve problems that their capabilities can’t solve with their bodies (e.g. applying forces in microjoules or gigajoules).   As a guide, the point is not to teach science, say, but instead to teach them to be scientists, using tools to solve problems.   Finally, they should be taking measurements, transforming to manipulable representations, transforming the representations to a solution, and then applying that back to the world.

Focus on action, not content: rather than require learners to view this video or that document, make them available.   Ideally, the only required elements would be the series of activities, and the information resources surround the activities as options.   The challenge of the activities, and quality of the content, would ideally drive the learner to the resources, but there might be required quick overviews that point to deeper resources, and individuals who struggle might be pointed to the content.

Launch with a meaningful context: I suggested an overall task that would ultimately need to be performed, using a recognized problem as the motivation for learning this content, though there are other ways.   However, you do want to harness learners hearts as well as their brains in the endeavor.   In this case it was about saving people’s lives that motivated going through the course to be prepared to come back and provide the knowledge of what force to apply, in what direction.

And in one I didn’t convey, but is implicit in the learning situation but could and should be implicit in the development of the learning experience:

Scaffold the learning process: don’t assume that the learner is equipped for learning this way, provide support. Pedagogical support can be through an agent, and there has to be feedback involved both addressing the content and the process.   If only requiring the activities, the evaluation, inadequate performance might trigger a requirement to view content, for example.   A pedagogical avatar could be useful.

All of this is based upon a research base in learning theory, even the emotional side.   There could be more involved, as I had ides for options in being social, and actually being mobile, which are currently beyond the scope of their engagement, but the point is to start with a visceral and active base upon which to drive motivation for content, formalisms, and ultimate mastery.

Comments

  1. David Glow says

    11 October 2010 at 10:04 AM

    Another great set of design insights- esp. given that one would expect the nexus of this per tool used to start with social and/or mobile, but this demonstrates how to find the true issues to drive value vs judging on the surface.

    And- “focus on action, not content”- AMEN! I am presenting on this topic in 2 days to show how content/knowledge-focused assessment is failing the organization and how to drive to (business-) action driven assessments. The data returned to the organization is highly valued (even if the story about employee capability is not flattering to either the employees or the training group at initial review).

  2. Virginia Yonkers says

    15 October 2010 at 6:52 AM

    I wrote a blog post looking at the mirror image of this post: how instructors should be communicating with their ITS people. Of course, in this case, you are the “translator” between instructors/trainers and the ITS department. However, I found by starting with a problem or a situation that teachers wanted to address or do better in the classroom, helped them to get out of choosing a technology and then trying to fit it into their teaching, this allowed them to adapt their teaching and technology. I like the framework you used; as I mentioned, it seems to mirror my post (or add a deeper dimension).

  3. Clark says

    18 October 2010 at 10:57 AM

    David, hope your presentation went well! Fingers crossed.

    Virginia, I like your approach: ask them how to accomplish what you need (describe functionality, not tool).

    Thanks for the contributions!

Trackbacks

  1. 8 Resources Exploring Learning Experience Design (LX Design) — Emerging Education Technologies says:
    17 January 2017 at 4:34 AM

    […] blog post, “Learning Experience Design in Action“, by Clark Quinn provides a nice set of principles and […]

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