Principles of Design

While we go about the task of learning design there are a number of Principles that are important to note.

Teacher Presence & the Guiding Voice

The presence of a passionate, knowledgeable and skilled teacher within a course improves student confidence and supports independent learning and socialisation. One of the key differences between a course and a textbook is the teacher. The textbook is often written as a neutral and dispassionate text, it is the teacher that brings the subject matter to life and engages the students in the practices and skills required by the profession. They provide the context that helps students structure new information and build their knowledge.

One of the key roles then of the learning designer is attempting to capture the teaching and the teacher. Through the course content we create we should be focussing on the aspects of teaching – the guidance, explanations and curation or resources and ideas that a great teacher brings to the course. One of the approaches to doing this is to get the course author used to writing in their own voice - writing how they would say things, and writing what they would actually say - leaving out things that are covered by the textbook.

This guiding voice becomes a presence within the course that students can relate to and is something they actually want and need from an online course because they lack that sensory connection you get from a face-to-face class. Akyol, Garrison, & Ozden (2011) suggest that online students often need more teacher guidance than on campus students to ensure knowledge and skill development, effective communication and overall course satisfaction. The courses we develop must embody the teacher and have them play the role of the guide as much of what the students do in an online course is self-directed. Every activity and point of engagement is a choice for an online student, so we must ensure that the teacher is there and able to explain the purpose and articulate clearly not just the What, but the Why and the How.

Inclusive Design & Accessibility

The principles of inclusivity and access should inform many of the decisions in the course design and development process. Inclusive design is about utilising the full range of human diversity, with respect to ability, language, culture, gender, age, and other forms of human difference, to inform the kinds of experiences we seek to create in our courses. This principle asks of us to consider the kinds of voices, resources, examples and perspectives that we wish to include in our course.

When it comes to academia there tends to be an over representation of white and male perspectives, or generalisations that draw on western perspectives. Or just too many Daves. Being inclusive asks us to question what is often considered the 'norms' within our culture, to look beyond the typical and encourages us to seek out difference and variety. If a hypothetical example is being used of a CEO and their company - this is an opportunity to look beyond the stereotypes of not just gender or age but the kind of company it is too. Incorporating these kinds of changes and elevating different perspectives provides valuable learning opportunities for students as well.

Accessibility goes hand-in-hand with inclusiveness. Not only do we want representation of diversity, but more often than not we need to consider how the information and learning experience will translate to students with different abilities. We may well be aware of accessibility in terms of certain types of disability, but quite often accessibility relates to more than just a subset of physical conditions. There is also an array of neurodivergent conditions that also can and would make use of accessible options if they are available. In this sense accessibility is less about specific, and often hidden, features but about providing different options to students on ways to access information. Having information only appear inside of an interactive, a video or an image is one consideration – not just to those with a sight or movement issue, but for those who are colour blind and just short of time and are trying to search for information in the course. Accessibility not just about WCAG and compliance objectives, but actionable steps that improve not only the access students have but the opportunities to learn. Repetition of information and explanations of graphics shouldn't just sit off to the side for those with a screen reader, but are opportunities to use good learning design and dual encode and reinforce information.

User Experience - UX vs LX

The emergent discipline of User Experience (UX) design has a lot of similarities to good practices in Learning Design. While learning design tends to have a body of academic research behind it and a vocabulary that draws specifically from the education discipline, the practices and methods often run in parallel and serve many of the same goals.

The approach of UX is a step beyond the normal constraints of a singular design practice - it is actually a more holistic approach to design that covers and includes:

Just from that list it is quite easy to extrapolate that holistic way of thinking and how it applies to learning design. It's also led to some suggesting a move away from the term learning design to Learning Experience (LX) design.

Using User Experience as a principle allows us to adopt some simple strategies that we can directly use as we design a learning experience: