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Design For Learning

See All Design For Learning Articles

Co-Leading Class with Students: Shared responsibility and understanding

By Lauren Angelone / February 27, 2024

Providing opportunities for students to lead and shape class, alongside an instructor, takes into account the unique cultures, needs, and experiences of each student. A co-leading model was used during a blended Instructional Technology course and findings revealed that this model was engaging and gave students an opportunity to share their own experience. Student reflections also indicated some challenges, such as group collaboration and technical issues. » [Full Article]
TYPE: DESIGN FOR LEARNING, HIGHER EDUCATION

Understanding Learning Experience Design (LXD): Three learning leader perspectives

By Les Howles / February 7, 2024

This article focuses on learning experience design (LXD) as an emergent concept and professional practice in need of greater clarity. At a 2023 national learning and development conference three prominent learning leaders were interviewed and asked to share their unique perspectives on LXD (Michael Allen, David Kelly, and Megan Torrance). Excerpts from these interviews are featured throughout the article. The author also provides background information on LXD, an analysis of perspectives, and a concluding synthesis on the current state of LXD where it is approached within the context of digital transformation as an emergent new form of learning design. » [Full Article]
TYPE: INTERVIEW, DESIGN FOR LEARNING

Eight Priorities for Instructional Videos in the Online Classroom

By Sarah Robertson, John Steele, Jean Mandernach / November 15, 2023

To enhance student engagement and learning in the online classroom, instructional videos need to be thoughtfully created, curated, and integrated. Key considerations include making the videos learner-centered and relevant, ensuring easy access, keeping video length short, focusing on clarity over perfection, providing alternative means of accessing the information, fostering student interaction, and personalizing videos to enhance the sense of class participation and connection. » [Full Article]
TYPE: OPINION, DESIGN FOR LEARNING, HIGHER EDUCATION

Subject Matter Expert (SME) Onboarding 101: Improving development efficiency and course quality through SME training

By Heather Leslie, Alejandra Lizardo / August 9, 2023

A common challenge for instructional designers and administrators of online programs is ensuring that projects are completed within the development timeframe and course content meets high standards for quality. This article describes a training course that was developed to meet those challenges. The course prepares subject matter experts (SMEs) to work with a design team made up of instructional designers and instructional technologists so that SMEs can plan their course content using a backward design framework. SMEs participate in a fully asynchronous online course with other SMEs where they can collaborate and brainstorm ideas. Having SMEs take an online course that resembles the online course they will later be designing allows them to gain insight from a learner perspective, which can help them design a learner-centered course. » [Full Article]
TYPE: DESIGN FOR LEARNING, HIGHER EDUCATION

Using Gamification to Overcome Anxiety and Encourage Play in the Graduate Classroom

By Lindsay Kistler Mattock / July 19, 2023

Gamification has been dismissed by some as a passing fad and buzzword in education; however, if approached as part of mindful course design, gamification can enhance student learning and engagement. This article introduces a gamified redesign of a technology-based graduate course using Yu-Kai Chou?s ?actionable gamification.? Chou?s Octalysis Framework defines eight-core drives that describe the psychological motivators found in common gaming mechanics. Adding elements of ?white hat gamification? to the course?which focused on building a sense of accomplishment, empowerment, and meaning making?created an environment that allowed students to overcome their anxieties related to technologies, build digital literacies, and overcome the fear of failure in the classroom. » [Full Article]
TYPE: DESIGN FOR LEARNING, HIGHER EDUCATION

One Interactive Approach to Gamify the Online Classroom: Digital badges

By Tom Dyer, Jacob Aroz, Jean Mandernach / June 13, 2023

Gamification, the application of game elements in non-game contexts, is being embraced in higher education, particularly in online classrooms, to foster engagement, participation, and satisfaction. As a quick and effective way to gamify, digital badges serve as virtual rewards for accomplishing specific tasks or goals, stimulating student motivation, promoting community, encouraging critical thinking, developing skills, and bolstering incremental learning, thus making learning tangible and shareable, and driving competition. » [Full Article]
TYPE: OPINION, DESIGN FOR LEARNING, HIGHER EDUCATION

Profound Learning Through Universal Design

By Carol Rogers-Shaw, Michael Kroth, Davin Carr-Chellman, Jinhee Choi / December 15, 2022

Profound Learning (PL) can result from online interactions that support practices for deep, lifelong learning. Distance educators can initiate, facilitate, and maintain PL by encouraging thoughtful rather than superficial learning using Universal Design for Learning (UDL). The inclusive nature of UDL provides multiple mechanisms to find that deeper meaning. In this article, concepts and practices drawn from Profound Learning Theory are integrated into UDL guidelines and connected to distance learning to support the development of deep, meaningful, and robust online learning. » [Full Article]
TYPE: DESIGN FOR LEARNING

Design Thinking and Thinking by Design

By Damien Michaud / October 25, 2022

This article provides a summary and review of "Make It Meaningful: Taking Learning Design from Instructional to Transformational" by Dr. Clark Quinn. The book consists of a section on principles and a section on practices for designing learning experiences that engage learners intellectually and emotionally. The book provides a primer and a playbook for educators to reflect upon and improve their personal practice. » [Full Article]
REVIEW: LITERATURE, TYPE: DESIGN FOR LEARNING

Down the rabbit hole: Revisiting etymology, epistemology, history and practice of instructional and learning design

By Begüm Saçak, Aras Bozkurt, Ellen Wagner / March 31, 2022

There is a multitude of terminologies in the field of learning and training to refer to how we design and approach learning experiences: two of them being instructional design and learning design. Online searches and forum discussions among practitioners and researchers reveal the confusion surrounding the use of these terms. Both terms have sometimes been used interchangeably, but the fact that there is more than one term implies that both terms might be used to encompass different aspects of the learning and training discipline. The term instructional design has been a commonly used term until recently, but now learning design made its way to the literature and to our practices. » [Full Article]
REVIEW: LITERATURE, TYPE: DESIGN FOR LEARNING

How Instructional Designers Work and Think in Online Higher Education

By Les Howles / October 27, 2021

This article summarizes the main themes and chapters for The Learner-Centered Instructional Designer (Stylus Publishing, 2021) and provides a critical evaluation and recommendations for prospective readers. The book consists of 19 short essay-like chapters where 20 experienced instructional designers cover a range of topics related to instructional design consulting in higher education. The various authors share practical strategies and best practices about working with instructors to create online courses. » [Full Article]
REVIEW: LITERATURE, TYPE: DESIGN FOR LEARNING

Designing for Social Connectivity (Not Everyone Likes Webcams)

By William P Lord / April 30, 2021

COVID-19 has forced vast numbers of educational institutions to shift their operations from being delivered face-to-face to being delivered online. As a result, academic institutions have had to scramble to find complex solutions that meet systems-wide online teaching and learning needs. The quality of interaction that occurs between the educator and the student is crucial to the success of delivering education via online technologies, and it is incumbent on the host institution to provide a usable, effective, and satisfying form of communication all participants may communicate with while maintaining a sense of social presence. It requires little effort to compile a list of potential benefits of using webcams in educational settings. » [Full Article]
TYPE: DESIGN FOR LEARNING, EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

The Burden of Alleviating the Burden During a Pandemic: Emotional literacy as a tool for online course design, adaptation, and evaluation

By Petra Robinson, Maja Stojanović / April 23, 2021

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most, if not all, courses were shifted to online learning formats. In this article, we share our experiences related to teaching and learning in a completely online, condensed (seven-week) graduate-level course during the fall 2020 semester. More specifically, we discuss the important role of emotional literacy as a mechanism for framing online course design, adaptation, and evaluation. We explore emotional literacy in terms of its necessity in teaching and learning in online contexts during a pandemic, beyond the scope of other obviously important non-traditional literacies, such as technological and informational literacies. » [Full Article]
TYPE: DESIGN FOR LEARNING, HIGHER EDUCATION

Strategies to Build Student-to-Student Rapport in Online Adult Learning Courses

By James Kennedy / February 24, 2021

Students in online classes may have difficulty or believe they cannot develop a rapport with fellow students. There is significant research that indicates that this rapport greatly increases the student?s success in a class. Students can easily build rapport in an in-person classroom and often the instructor is not involved. However, in the online classroom, the problem becomes how do students build this rapport when they only see each other in a virtual space in the classroom to help increase their learning and course success. » [Full Article]
TYPE: DESIGN FOR LEARNING, HIGHER EDUCATION, PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT