Design at different scales

One of the challenges of learning design is the need to design at different scales. Learning Design within a larger program of study requires a greater understanding of the whole, not just the individual activity or sequence of learning.

The common levels of scale we deal with as learning designers are:

Just like zooming into Google Maps, you start off with a rough map that only includes key features, the main roads and destination. This is perfect to gauge direction, routes and distance - but you’re unlikely to navigate your actual journey at this view, but it is the best setup to plan. Once you chosen your route you can start your journey. The first part is from home - you already know the roads and directions, so you don’t need to zoom in too much, maybe just enough to define the main roads you travel on. But at some point you get to unfamiliar territory and now is when you need to get into the details. Now you need the fidelity of the street level — details like street names, landmarks and signposts start to matter.

Each of these different levels of scale require a different view and approach to design. For a program we are looking across multiple courses and the large set of graduate outcomes in relation to the learning, skills and accreditation.

A course is just a part of that larger program and so it needs to have both the visibility of its relationship with the program but also the students journey of study – what have they learnt so far? what will they need to know next?

When we break course up into its duration - often weeks or modules - then we can map out a more nuanced set of parameters. We need to see when assessments will be due, what topics are taught before and after, what skills need to be embedded before the they are assessed, when will students practice and get an opportunity for feedback.

Lessons provide us with a way of thinking about the questions students need to be able to answer, or will need to know how to answer in order to progress throughout the course and complete their assessments. They provide the scaffold for what the students will do throughout the course.

Activities relate to the individual types of learning we want students to experience and based on the best ways for them to learn. These often have shared attributes and we from that commonality we can create patterns and common ways to express the different activities and learning types students will undertake.

As you work through the development of a course you will find yourself switching between these different scales, and like zooming in and out of a Google Map it can disorientating. You'll also find it's impossible to design an activity when at the program scale – being at the right scale, using the right tools and coming to terms with scale is a huge challenge for a learning designer.

One of the ways we can reduce that challenge is by looking at how we approach the course itself and the tools we use.