Are new strategies needed for learning design services to have real impact?
Learning design in UK higher education has been on an interesting journey in recent years. It’s grown in popularity as a term, an activity, and as a moniker for roles that support learning & teaching activity.
The term, along with the role type associated with it; namely a learning designer, is one of the newer titles on the list of learning & teaching support roles in UK higher education. It is more contemporary than titles such as education developer, academic developer and learning technologist, arguably possessing greater cachet as a result.
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Learning Design for an age where old norms are fading away
“AI will revolutionise [insert sector here]” encapsulates the kind of rhetoric we've been hearing for a while. I'm not disputing AI's significant impact on higher education for a second. However, amidst the AI maelstrom, it's very easy to overlook other factors influencing higher education change.
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How do universities achieve learning design maturity?
The last few years have seen a growth in the number of learning design roles being created within universities and greater interest in learning design across higher education as a whole.
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What’s behind the growth and interest in learning design?
One of the most notable developments in higher education (HE) in recent years is both the growth of interest in the practice of learning design, and the creation of more learning design roles.
But why is it that learning design is being talked about much more and why do universities feel that they need more people to engage in this work?
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Data and learning: Does more = better?
Over 15 years ago the British mathematician Clive Humby declared that “Data is the new oil”, and there is now no doubt that data is a major commodity. It is mined and gathered through the numerous interactions between humans and digital technologies throughout the course of our daily lives.
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5 tips for programme-level learning design
When people talk and share about learning design, the focus tends to be on course or module level design. In the context of a university degree this would be one component of a much bigger experience of teaching and study.
Now obviously programme design shares some similarities with module or course design but it diverges in significant ways too. Programme design involves the blueprinting of a much more significant experience that involves or impacts upon more people.
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Is there a skills gap in learning design?
For many years universities have been aspiring to change the teaching and study experience. Before the pandemic, lots of university strategies expressed a desire to better incorporate digital technology and make changes to assessment and teaching methods - to name just a few.
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5 tips for approaching video in online learning
Video has always had a very strong association with online learning, so much so that for some people (either consciously or subconsciously) the very definition of online learning is learning from video.
This is a particularly one-dimensional view of a much richer form of teaching and study, but I think you’d struggle to find an online course or programme that doesn't have any video.
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Are Learner Personas a useful design tool?
When people talk notionally about great learning experiences, the term student-centred is often in there somewhere. What student-centred actually means though depends on who you’re speaking to.
For some it’s related to the level of freedom students are given, for others it might be that you’ve attempted to put yourself into the shoes of students. Either way it’s one of the most fashionable terms in the lexicon of learning and teaching.
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Learning designers: New fad or new future?
In one sense designing learning experiences isn’t anything new, it’s what teachers and educators have been doing for years, it’s what instructional designers have been doing for years. But one of the pandemic-driven changes has been the opening up of learning designer roles in universities and a range of different education and training providers.
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Balancing digital and analogue technologies in learning design
Do you remember any of your school reports and what your teachers said about you? I was recently reminded of mine by a family member, who told me that the quality of my handwriting was something that was flagged a lot (and it’s still pretty bad!).
This vividly brought to mind how things have changed, and how clear, easy to decipher handwriting as a relatively dominant means of communication then, seems much less important now.
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Rethinking the role of time in learning design
The famous quaker William Penn once said when talking about time “Time is what we want most, but what, alas! we use worst” and whether it’s through procrastination or a wandering mind it’s a sentiment that’s easy to identify with.
Individually we might reflect on our use of time and adopt strategies that seek to allay the frittering away of this most precious commodity.
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