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Category: Design

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What is it?

A learning approach that focuses on individual learners and their needs, abilities, and interests, with the objective of accelerating their learning.

Why is it important?

Navigating today’s volatile, uncertain, ambiguous, and complex world requires everyone to be a life-long learner. In this context, coupled with an increasing emphasis on people’s ability to learn, personalized learning prioritizes the individual learner. It differs from traditional approaches that primarily focused on a system’s efficiency rather than its effectiveness. Personalized learning should align with the organization’s strategic goals and the needs of the individual.

Why does a business professional need to know this?

While the term has been around for decades, in today’s digital age personalized learning has become a much-hyped buzzword. It is hotly debated amongst learning specialists for the oxymoronic impression the words personal and learning create in direct contrast to the social nature of learning.

However, it is not all hype. Talent development technology increasingly has the potential to deliver targeted, just-in-time learning experiences. This is a game-changer for the success of an organization when learning goals are aligned with the strategic priorities of the business. Moving away from a one-size-fits-all approach to learning allows each person to more quickly acquire the precise skills and knowledge needed to do their job well.

This approach is delivered through custom sequences of learning opportunities packaged via media and designed based on factors such as role, geography, current proficiency, or learners’ interests. These media assets are then situated within a virtual learning environment, such as a learning management system or a next-generation learning platform, complementing in-person training.

References

About Ragini Lall

Photo of Ragini Lall

As a learning designer, Ragini Lall combines tools from design thinking, experience design, and curricular design to develop innovative learning solutions. She also worked as an online learning fellow supporting Harvard faculty in transitioning residential courses to online learning during the pandemic. She has earned her EdM in technology, innovation, and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Term: Personalized Learning

Email: ragini@thestudentact.com

Website: thestudentact.com

Twitter: @raginilall

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ragini-lall-the-student-act-2202b825/

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What is it?

The study and science of the development of learning.

Why is it important?

Pedagogy is used to describe the practices, mindsets, and processes related to learning, such as critical pedagogy and open pedagogy.

Pedagogy is sometimes used to describe how children learn in school. More broadly, it is used to describe prescribed learning content that is closely guided, as opposed to self-directed (andragogy) or self-defined (heutagogy).

When considering learning as a practice, pedagogy focuses on the ways in which people learn, focusing on the formative, or developing, practices of how people first learn how to learn.

Why does a business professional need to know this?

A business professional should have at least a basic understanding of what pedagogy is because it affects the learning strategy employed in their organization.

Pedagogy shows us how to help learners meet educational goals by using what we know about how people learn. By focusing on our audience first, we take a pedagogical approach that aligns the learner’s needs to the content and spaces we design for learning.

Traditionally, pedagogy, or pedagogical approaches, referred to teaching methods selected and applied to learning content. But pedagogy has evolved and expanded to use the results of research on how learners learn to develop training that presents learning content more effectively. Pedagogy has also expanded beyond its focus on K-12 school students to encompass learners of any age.

Other relevant terms that apply to the art and science of learning and learning content design, are andragogy (instructors determine and guide decisions as to what content is to be learned and learners shape how they will learn the material) and heutagogy (learners determine what and how they will learn with support from an instructor).

References

About Angela Gunder

Photo of Angela Gunder

Angela Gunder, PhD, is the Chief Academic Officer for the Online Learning Consortium, where she is responsible for advancing the thought leadership of the OLC. She is an online instructor for The University of Arizona School of Information, teaching courses on instructional design, digital media, web design, and gameful learning. Her research focuses on open remix practices, open culture, digital literacies, narrative digital learning practices, and emerging technology for language acquisition.

Term: Pedagogy

Email: angela.gunder@gmail.com

Website: angelagunder.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/angelagunder/

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What is it?

A snippet of training content that can stand alone, microlearning is streamlined to have a very tight focus on a single, bite-sized concept.

Why is it important?

Learners are busy and their minds are overtaxed. Microlearning can ease their path by offering content in small bursts that are more likely to resonate and stick.

Why does a business professional need to know this?

Highly concentrated training in the form of microlearning helps decrease a learner’s cognitive load and increases the opportunity for learning transfer. While technically not defined by length, microlearning is typically accomplished in five minutes or less and focuses on one terminal learning objective or task. Think of a typical training session as a meal and microlearning as a tasty morsel.

References

About Karin Rex

Photo of Karin Rex

As a learning experience architect, Karin Rex saves adult learners from the mind-numbing effects of boring training by hand-crafting rich, engaging learning experiences. Since 1989, Karin has owned Geeky Girl, LLC, where she devotes her time to writing, course development (microlearning, eLearning, instructor-led, blended), and teaching. Karin especially loves facilitating in, and designing for, the virtual classroom because it allows her to connect with a global audience without having to pack a suitcase!

Term: Microlearning

Email: rex@karinrex.com

Website: karinrex.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/karinrex/

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What is it?

The process of incorporating student-centered design approaches, including human-centered, service design, and user-experience design methods, to design and develop shared learning experiences for students and instructors.

Why is it important?

Whether learning materials are online, face-to-face, or a blend, considering the learners’ experience in relation to the goals and outcomes is key to developing successful learning paths. For business professionals, Learning Experience (LX) design is important because it frequently translates to customer success, which leads to higher sales and better customer stories(Hoke, 2011).

Why does a business professional need to know this?

Learning is experienced in different ways by different people, with different goals and learning needs.

User-experience design is defined as the systematic study of goals, needs, and capabilities of users to specify design, construction, or improvement of tools to benefit how users work and live(Schumacher, 2010, p. 6).

Learning experience design (LX) uses similar methods to design the experiences by which learners work and learn. Learning experience design is the process of creating learning experiences that enable the learner to achieve the desired learning outcome in a human-centered and goal-oriented way(What is Learning Experience Design, n.d.).

LX design methods offer a means for instructors, trainers, instructional designers, curriculum developers, and others to identify learning paths that maximize usability, accessibility, and wayfinding abilities for their students. Personas, journey maps, prototypes, and applied user and usability research provide a framework for identifying learner needs. They also provide high-impact opportunities for refinement of course design, based on learner needs.

As eLearning becomes an increasingly important strategy, businesses benefit from identifying customers as learners with an eye toward teaching them how best to use products and services.

Academically, LX design provides a means to identify learner needs and design experiences that foster deep learning.

By understanding learners as users, as well as content consumers, you can make design decisions that reduce the cognitive load of learners navigating course content.

References

About Jessica Knott

Photo of Jessica Knott

Jessica Knott, PhD, has been a UX/LX leader for over a decade, spanning the public and private sectors. Her UX work has been featured in education, non-profit, government, and athletics industries.

Term: Learning Experience Design

Email: jlknott@gmail.com

Website: jessknott.com

Twitter: @JLKnott

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jessknott/

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What is it?

A visual and collaborative process for designing the spaces and places where people learn.

Why is it important?

Effective communication and collaboration during learning design projects often mean the difference between success and failure. When groups design learning experiences together, ideas and decisions often are invisible and lack a common design system.

Learning Environment Modeling (LEM) equips educators and learning experience designers with a visual system for creating, collaborating, and communicating. This helps save time, clarify ideas, and engage people around a shared vision for the learning experience.

Why does a business professional need to know this?

The learning functions of organizations can sometimes seem like an expense that lacks a connection to business results. Learning environment modeling connects the learning and business functions of organizations by aligning investments in learning environments to results and evidence.

At the core of learning environment modeling is a common design language(Dodd 2015) and a set of standards that allow people from diverse backgrounds and experiences to communicate clearly, effectively, and consistently when planning and designing learning experiences.

The learning environment modeling system comprises visual canvas tools to organize ideas and visual building blocks that visualize the structure and flow of learning experiences. The system can be used in both analog and digital formats and provides a common format for decision making and strategic thinking. The system is most effectively used during collaborative planning and design projects by a skilled and experienced facilitator.

Learning environment modeling gives educators and learning experience designers an effective tool to visualize, communicate, and collaborate on projects and initiatives. This can help you save time, reduce risks, and engage diverse stakeholders in meaningful, efficient, and effective ways.

References

About Bucky Dodd

Photo of Bucky Dodd

Bucky Dodd, PhD, is the Chief Executive Officer and Principal Consultant at ClearKinetic, a boutique consultancy specializing in creating one-of-a-kind education and training solutions.

Term: Learning Environment Modeling

Email: BuckyDodd@ClearKinetic.com

Website: clearkinetic.com

Twitter: @buckydodd

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/buckydodd

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What is it?

Every learner has preferred ways to learn; preference meaning liking one alternative over another for how knowledge or skills are acquired.

Why is it important?

Every learner brings with them their own interests, needs, and experiences, which influence their preferences for how to learn. By acknowledging and addressing learner preferences you can offer more equitable access to knowledge and skills, which helps remove barriers to learning, increase learner enthusiasm, and make it more likely that learners will successfully complete a course.

Why does a business professional need to know this?

When learning is designed to reduce barriers and address preferences, all learners can participate in inclusive, equitable, and meaningful learning. What will motivate and engage one learner may de-motivate and disengage another. Taking the time to understand your learner’s preferences can make a tremendous difference to that person’s success.

Learner preference is distinct from learning style. That is, while there is evidence that learners’ preferences have an impact on how open students are to learning, there is little evidence that a particular style of learning is more effective, regardless of preferences(Miller 2021)(Pashler 2009).

Here are some examples of learner, or learning, preferences:

  • Visual (spatial)
  • Aural (auditory)
  • Verbal (linguistic)
  • Physical (kinesthetic)
  • Logical (mathematical)
  • Social (interpersonal)
  • Solitary (intrapersonal)

As a business professional, understanding learner preferences enables you to provide learners with the flexibility to use their preferred learning styles to acquire the knowledge and skills they need to drive your organization’s performance and strategy.

Valuing learner preferences as a company and leveraging them to encourage employees to proactively increase their knowledge, skills, and performance can contribute to a high-impact learning culture.

Embracing a variety of methods, materials, and assessments to identify and address learner preferences can give your company a competitive edge and keep your employees’ expertise up to date in their field today and in fields that are yet to be discovered.

References

About Cindy Plunkett

Photo of Cindy Plunkett

Cindy Plunkett is a seasoned expert in learning and development with more than 20 years experience in instructional design, development, and project management. She is the Canadian eLearning Conference executive director, part-time professor at Ontario Tech University, and co-creator of the Educational Technology for Health Practitioner Education curriculum at the University of Toronto. Cindy has a masters in educational technologies from the University of British Columbia and a PhD in education from Northcentral University. Cindy has experience speaking and facilitating nationally and internationally.

Term: Learner Preference

Email: sensei.cindy.plunkett@gmail.com

Twitter: @DrSenseiCindy

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cindyplunkett/

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What is it?

The crafting of learning content that responds to the needs of the business and creates learning experiences that make it possible for learners to acquire the new knowledge and skills they need to be effective in their work.

Why is it important?

Too much learning content is created by simply throwing together a handout or slide deck. Instructional design applies educational knowledge and expertise to bring the most effective content to learners. Good instructional design helps you discern what learners need to know and how to create content that meets those needs.

Why does a business professional need to know this?

Instructional design provides a structure for creating learning content that helps you avoid creating content that wastes valuable resources and is possibly doomed to fail.

One useful model for instructional design is ADDIE: Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate. This model can help you align your training program with your business needs and strategy(Hodell 2015). Here are the steps in the ADDIE model:

Analyze: Uncover needs, including business needs stated by leaders, concerns from subject matter experts, and other staff needs. This should include a review of relevant business performance data and metrics.

Design: Craft a strategy and specifications, including:

  • How learners will interact with the content
  • What the learner experience will be
  • How to structure quizzes and assessments
  • How performance support will be provided
  • How to evaluate whether the strategy worked

Develop: The point at which planning and strategy come to life, and the training deliverables are created.

Implement: Learners begin experiencing the content and you can begin collecting data for evaluation and updates.

Evaluate: As the learning content is completed, so is the evaluation plan. Evaluation focuses on the course, not the learners, and includes:

  • What gets evaluated
  • What is the timeframe for evaluation
  • How does learner progress compare to business expectations

This is just a brief glimpse into instructional design. Hopefully, it provides context, helps you hire instructional design professionals, and helps you work with professionals to create effective learning content.

References

About Dawn Mahoney

Photo of Dawn Mahoney

Dawn J. Mahoney CPTD (Certified Professional in Talent Development) is passionate about developing better learning content, better learning strategy, and better dialog—all of it to help facilitate people’s success. She loves to see the moment when the learning dawns on her learners and they begin to get it. In 2015, Dawn founded Learning In the White Space, which is a boutique consultancy devoted to all of the above. What might you need help with? Contact her today!

Term: Instructional Design

Email: dawnjmahoney@gmail.com

Website: dawnjmahoney.com

Twitter: @DawnJMahoney

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dawnjmahoney/

Facebook: facebook.com/LearningInTheWhiteSpaceLLC

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What is it?

An approach that prepares students for life-long learning by developing autonomous, self-directed learning skills. Learners take an active role in deciding what to learn and how to learn.

Why is it important?

Designing effective learning environments for adults requires an understanding that adults learn differently than children. Heutagogical learning environments take advantage of these differences to give adult students the skills they need to teach themselves.

Why does a business professional need to know this?

Heutagogy is also referred to as self-determined learning and seeks for learners to develop a sense of autonomy over their own learning.

Think of learners as consumers of knowledge. Heutagogy empowers learners to consume knowledge on their own terms. Learners decide what to learn, when to learn, how fast, how much, with whom, and from whom.

Heutagogy encompasses and extends prior adult-focused learning strategies, such as learner-centered learning, andragogy, and others. A similar philosophy is expressed in the term autodidactic learner which implies a preference for learning without external incentives.

Traditional educational practices such as drills, lectures, and memorization weaken our propensity to learn. In the worst case, the love of learning can be extinguished. A business professional needs to recognize that the audience for a course or other training has probably experienced a lifetime of traditional education and may have lost interest in learning. A heutagogical learning environment that empowers learners can help rekindle curiosity and a love of learning, leading to more effective learning.

References

  • (Eberly 2013) Heutagogy: It Isn't Your Mother's Pedagogy Any More: Eberly, Jane, and Marcus Childress. National Social Science Journal 28 no. 1 (2007):28–32. While many educators refer to all teaching as pedagogy, this is a term that limits the scope of what teaching can and should be.

About Bill Pelz

Photo of Bill Pelz

Bill Pelz is professor of psychology and instructional designer for online learning at Herkimer College / SUNY. As the lead faculty trainer for the SUNY Learning Network from 1999 until 2010, Bill has facilitated the development of over 2500 online college courses. Awards include the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Sloan Consortium Award for Excellence in Online Teaching, and the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.

Term: Heutagogy

Email: pelzwe@herkimer.edu

Website: herkimer.edu/learn/online-learning/

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/bill-pelz-5642a147/

Facebook: facebook.com/bill.pelz

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What is it?

The use of game-based mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics, and game thinking to engage people, motivate action, promote learning, and solve problems. Gamification applies gaming principles to more traditional learning methods, in contrast with game-based learning, which presents learning content in a game format.

Why is it important?

Gamification is a powerful technique for motivating individuals to engage in a variety of activities, including learning. Popular apps, such as Duolingo (duolingo.com), have successfully applied the techniques of gamification to keep people motivated and learning.

Why does a business professional need to know this?

Employee and customer engagement is a huge challenge for many organizations. In a distraction-filled economy, it’s hard to both attract and maintain attention. Gamification techniques and the process of thinking like a game designer can be helpful in a variety of business contexts, from designing products to educating employees to maintaining customer loyalty.

Correctly applying game elements can improve employee engagement. You can start with a specific objective in mind, such as reducing quality-control errors or increasing sales, then apply game elements, such as creating meaningful stories, creating points, providing badges, creating a leaderboard, and fostering collaboration.

One of the big myths about gamification is that it’s about playing games. It is not. It’s about using elements from games but not creating an entire game. One of the best ways to sell gamification is to talk about the high level of engagement that gamification encourages. If you can sell that basic idea, you can then run a pilot study to determine the impact of using gamification within your organization.

Don’t go all in on gamification until you understand how your corporate culture will react to gamified approaches. No two corporate cultures are the same, so a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work. Gamification needs to be carefully planned and executed to be successful.

References

About Karl Kapp

Photo of Karl Kapp

Karl Kapp, EdD, is a professor of Instructional Technology at Commonwealth University in Bloomsburg, PA. He is recognized worldwide as a pioneer in the gamification of learning and is an award-winning international keynote speaker, consultant, and gamification entrepreneur. He is author of over a dozen books including The Gamification of Learning and Instruction and a dozen LinkedIn Learning Courses. Karl is founder of The Wisdom Learning Group and consults internationally with Fortune 500 companies, governments, and not-for-profits.

Term: Gamification

Email: karlkapp@gmail.com

Website: karlkapp.com

Twitter: @kkapp

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/karlkapp/

Facebook: facebook.com/gamificationLI/

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What is it?

Any form of learning through electronic media, such as the internet, web apps, or other means. The most effective eLearning is almost always highly interactive, challenging, and engaging.

Why is it important?

Too often, eLearning content is thrown together without much thought as to how effective it might be for the learners. It is no longer enough to place a PowerPoint deck with narration online and then quiz learners. Instead, effective eLearning uses an individualized approach that challenges learners to solve real work-related problems. It also presents a consistent message to all learners. And when done well, it is both economical and an effective use of resources.

Why does a business professional need to know this?

Every successful business strives for constant improvement and growth. Training is an important part of achieving those goals. eLearning, while important, is not a panacea for every training need. At times it makes more sense to hold training in a meeting room. At other times it may be better to watch a training video.

What does eLearning provide? When it is done well, eLearning delivers an individualized experience to each learner, one that molds itself automatically to each learner’s needs. Someone who is already proficient in the content need not be bored; those who are new to the content need not be overwhelmed. Learners should be challenged at an appropriate level so they can solve real-life problems that they encounter in the workplace.

Well-designed eLearning starts learners out with the same set of challenges, using case scenarios and similar approaches. And it aims to bring all learners to the same level of proficiency. However, it allows more experienced learners to progress quickly, and for those who struggle, it gives extra time and levels to ensure a complete grasp of the material.

This process does not require a lot of money to create, but it does require expertise in creating eLearning. Just as you wouldn’t hire someone who has never popped the hood of a car to fix an engine problem, you want to make sure that eLearning expertise is brought to bear to ensure money and time are not wasted and that the learning is effective.

References

About Joe Ganci

Photo of Joe Ganci

Joe Ganci leads eLearningJoe, LLC, a custom learning company. He has been involved in every aspect of multimedia and learning development. Joe holds a computer science degree, and he writes books, research papers, and articles about eLearning. He is an award-winning eLearning guru, and he consults with clients and delivers keynotes and classes worldwide. His mission is to increase employee productivity with engaging eLearning experiences that really work.

Term: eLearning

Email: joe@elearningjoe.com

Website: elearningjoe.com

Twitter: @elearningjoe

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/elearningjoellc/