In 2024 when I think of my own personal definition of learning design I have to go back to 1996 when I learned about the 7 Laws of the Learner by Dr Bruce Wilkson in my undergraduate class Philosophy and Foundations of Education. The 1st law says “Teachers are responsible for causing students to learn” (Wilkinson, B. (1992) this had a huge impact on how I teach teenagers or adults. So when planning, creating, and organizing materials I have to start with the tasks that the key stakeholders and decision makers who requested this training and what they require the colleague to learn and skills they must leave with in order to facilitate the role they are doing within the organization. Then I take a step back and think about my audience and ask myself what is their “why” for being part of this training class and how do I make sure they are successful.My Learning Design is about taking both of these groups and crafting a training experience that thinks about the colleagues background and experiences along with the training objectives and leverage appropriate instructional methods and technologies.
When I think of how technology has changed the overall approach to learning it has allowed the Teacher/Instructure to provide additional training vehicles that didn't even really exist 10-20yrs ago. When I think of E-learning or Online Classes this has allowed access to an education/training experience that otherwise would have not been possible without additional cost or hardship. A challenge to online learning is “ensuring equal access among learners” (Gronseth, S. L., Michela, E., & Ugwu, L. O. (2021) as if you are training on a tool that requires a lot of bandwidth that the training experience might go slower than if you were in office. Another challenge with so much technology is matching up the right experience with the learner and does this method provide the learner the best possible chance of learning the information being shared. In the article Designing for Diverse Learners the idea of empathy when designing and delivering training requires you to put the needs of learners above your need with your preferred style and method to make sure that what you are teaching is going to connect with the learner. As stated in the article “First, designers can directly observe learners, both within the target learning context and in related places beyond. By watching how learners interact with environments, tools, and problems, designers can see barriers and points of confusion, as well as learner-initiated workarounds and strategies. Another technique is for designers to directly interact with sample target learner” (Gronseth, S. L., Michela, E., & Ugwu, L. O. (2021).
So when Crafting(Being Creative) a training I need to think about the overall Experience (Does it bring value to them) of the Colleague that will allow them to meet the Training objective (Organizational Goals) by using the relevant Technology (Does the training allow every colleague to learn)
I think my love and passion for making sure the learning experience is amazing. As to also be balanced with the fact that as stated by Wagner “Many of my sponsoring stakeholders, that is, the people with the power to buy instructional design services wouldn’t have known a learning solution if it bit them on the toe. Frankly, they really didn’t care about learning.” All they really care about is that we need our people to be trained and be able to use these skills as soon as possible for the benefit of the organization.
Wilkinson, B. (1992). The 7 laws of the learner. Multnomah Press, Questar Publishers ; [Atlanta, Ga.
Gronseth, S. L., Michela, E., & Ugwu, L. O. (2021). Designing for Diverse Learners. In edtechbooks.org. EdTech Books. https://edtechbooks.org/id/designing_for_diverse_learners
Wagner, E. (2011). The Journal of Applied Instructional Design, 1(1), 33–37
Word Cloud Graphic https://educationaltechnology.net/definitions-instructional-design/
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