The process of learning

As a foundational aspect of learning design, it's important to consider learning itself. The goal for learning design is learning itself, so it's vital that we understand our goal in order to complete the tasks intended to achieve it.

So what is learning and how does it happen?

Defining learning

It might come across as odd, but learning is not something that is easy to understand or define. Wikipedia's crowdsourced definition is:

Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviours, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences – Wikipedia

With such a broad meaning you can see that it is not "the process of education", thats just what many of us do in our lives that enables learning to occur. It is not through the act of teaching, investigating or researching – those are merely some of the actions that enable learning to occur.

How we learn and what we learn is a subjective, personal and sometimes spiritual event. What happens within our own brains is intangible, ephemeral and immeasurable – we can't just peek inside our brains. Learning is a function of our brain – but within this mysterious black box that we are yet to understand, we know that it is unique in and of itself. To that end, learning is something that is perceivable only by its consequence and affect. We can measure it through testing and demonstrating knowledge, skills, application and process – but it is measurement by proxy, not of the learning itself.

So how do we understand learning then? Well as humans we tend to create theories – ideas and models as ways of describing what we can observe as happening. Each of these theories and models provides a snapshot of how we learn - but they rarely provide a full view of it. It's therefore important to consider multiple theories and models of learning to be correct and useful. Our goal therefore is to spot which ones work or apply within the specific area we wish to design. It's like taking a picture from different angles and locations in order to map it out as a whole.

Theories of Learning

Take a few moments to explore this helpful timeline of educational psychology. It explores the key milestones and the progression over time of different ideas as to how we learn. Timeline

Useful Models

There are obviously a multitude of concepts and approaches to think about learning, however some provide a number of key ideas that are useful and applicable in the pursuit of designing for learning.

1. Schema Theory Builds on the concept of connections and networks within the brain. As we take in new information we attach it and link it to existing pieces of information and knowledge. This is useful to know in order to understand the construction of a course and how introducing new information requires you to establish a connection in order for it to become part of the learners schema or map.
2. Cognitive Load Relates to the idea of memory being a finite resource. This means we cannot simply 'download' information into our brain wholesale, it has to be processed and this takes time, effort and energy. Our brains only have limited amount of space to do this work, and once the space is full it doesn't matter how hard you try new information has no way of coming in.
3. Constructivism Is a way of thinking of learning as something that needs to be built and assembled. This in turn introduces the need for learning to be thought of as something that is constructed by the individual and therefore requiring scaffolding and reinforcement to make it stable and solid.
4. Multimedia Principles  The principle of multimedia elaborate on our ability to be multi-sensory learners. With todays technology the idea of multimedia often just extends to the way that our brain connects our visual and aural sensors and as well as different types of information, like pictorial and textual, information. This introduces the concept of dual encoding and how providing information in different formats or senses can engage the brain to reinforce that information or process it differently. It also applies the idea of chunking and breaking large amounts of information into smaller pieces in a variety of different techniques in order to avoid exceeding the learners cognitive load.
5. Constructive Alignment This concept looks at ensuring that the different aspects of learning all align to the intended goals and outcomes. From a course perspective this is the process to ensure that assessments, content, and activities all align to goals and provide purpose for the learner to succeed.