I think most people reading this have some idea of the role of instructional planning in learning. Perhaps you paused at the title and thought: that is exactly what I have wanted to know. Perhaps you have heard of learning design but still wondered what the point really was. I will try to explain through personal experience, because it did not come easily to me either — but once I found it, it all makes sense!
Learning design is a user-centered approach to planning learning in different environments. It aligns what we know about learning needs and goals with what we know about how people learn. Learning design creates a learning process that helps learners learn best. The approach can be applied, for example, to planning and delivering education, staff skills development, and digital learning.
Learning design draws on a combination of related disciplines, including education, psychology, and design thinking. Later, I will delve a little deeper into its theoretical foundations and explore how we at Kuulas have articulated this theory in our own planning and design principles. In this article, I will try to keep the focus more general: what learning design is and what we design when we design learning.
Planning or design?
At the University of Helsinki's Faculty of Educational Sciences, where I studied, we were always taught that all learning planning starts with knowing the learner and their needs. Educational sciences offer a highly applied, multidisciplinary approach to learning and growth, including didactics — the study of teaching — and the psychology of learning. Educational sciences therefore examine learning environments, learning mechanisms, factors that support learning, and the identification and consideration of factors that inhibit it. It was easy to think that learning design might simply be a new term for what we already do.
For a few years, I developed my relationship with learning design. I read everything available on the subject in Finnish and made considerable headway through English-language literature too. I tested learning design elements in different contexts, assessing how learner understanding was used and how the setting and content were aligned on that basis, and through what actions. But only after reading HAUS's Enabling Everyone to Learn: Designing and Delivering Digital Learning* did I understand the most essential added value of learning design. This became the basis for our own articulation of its benefits and uses. The book describes learning design as a new approach to the learning process born of the digital age, allowing broader use of information and tools to respond to user needs. Learning design has been used especially in digital learning environments and content, but it is equally suited to supporting the design of all teaching and learning environments.
"THE TERM LEARNING DESIGN IS A CHILD OF THE DIGITAL AGE AND IT DE
SCRIBES THE ACTIVITY OF DESIGNING UNITS FOR LEARNING, INCLUDING A LEARNING ENVIRONMENT AND LEARNING ACTIVITIES. ”
Lars-Goran Bostrom, Learning Design in practice for everybody(2017)
Only then did I understand that however thoroughly we had learned this learner-centered approach in our original educational institution or organization, we had not had access to:
a.) the same tools for supporting learning planning and ensuring learning, or
b.) the same user understanding (learner understanding), or ways of gathering and using it.
We had therefore not been able to access everything that new tools and methods now allow us to understand about learners' needs and how to meet them when building learning opportunities and approaches. As we move from learner-centeredness to learner-driven design, new methods and tools become available for gathering and building understanding and using it to develop learning processes, teaching, and learning environments. This is what the learning design approach is about: using design to add a few crucial elements to traditional planning for application in the process.
Could learning design help complex learning processes transfer into different contexts in ways that create positive learning experiences? I believe everyone working with learning can significantly enrich their approach by learning the design principles characteristic of learning design and using design methods to integrate them into the frameworks guiding their work.
Learning design
The digital age has brought more opportunities to improve the entire learning process, from providing content and designing and delivering study materials to measuring learning. Not just from the content provider's perspective, but especially from the user's — the learner's: How do adults learn and want to learn? What underlies meaningful learning experiences for them? And how can we refine our practices in terms of learning processes and environments to meet those needs, while strengthening learners' own agency, motivation, and application of what they learn?
Just under a year ago, I attended workplace communication training where groups created a film's plot structure and everything associated with it, from plot descriptions to flyers and video pitches. My group chose a Hannibal Lecter-style film. In my feedback, I suggested to the lecturer that assignments could offer a little more flexibility and alternatives, allowing everyone to choose a topic that would advance learning in something personally meaningful or move another related matter forward at the same time. The lecturer replied that, from time to time, people from working life join these courses with such wishes, but that those kinds of training courses come at a very different price.
Does customization really always have to cost extra, or could it be the starting point for all planning?
Service design always starts with the customer's needs. Service design is a development approach based on design thinking, applying tools suited to the design process to develop services or products by understanding users' real wishes and needs. Learning design adapts this approach to place learners at the center and co-create tailored learning solutions that respond directly to their needs, making learning meaningful and effective. This enables us to design meaningful learning experiences.
In learning design, a solution is developed step by step around identified learner-driven needs. Its approach and development methods provide a sound pedagogical foundation for user-driven development of learning, learning processes, and teaching. As the design process progresses, this step-by-step approach grounded in pedagogy offers a whole range of additional tools for developing learning processes and ensuring that selected priorities remain present throughout.
Learning design brings us closer to impactful learning, starting from user understanding and always being built to serve users, their learning goals, and their preferences. Skillful learning design links these individual goals to the organization's broader learning and skills goals and the opportunities for learning provided by the work environment.
Learning desig
In conclusion
The continuous learning reform responds to the lifelong need to develop and renew skills. In one stroke, it placed most of the responsibility for figuring out workplace learning in our constantly changing work environments on workplaces themselves. The reform is based on the idea that, in a rapidly changing world, people constantly need updated knowledge and new skills to succeed at work.
The importance of high-quality pedagogy in this work cannot be emphasized enough. Learning is ultimately a highly complex whole, and it is important to understand the different factors in the process when adapting it to needs arising in different environments. Learning design offers an excellent way to ensure positive learning experiences and create the conditions for continuous skills development.
Kuulas& Co Oy. At Kuulas, we help clarify how to use learning design both in organizational work environments and in educational planning. Contact us to discuss it further. Our services include training in learning design and workplace pedagogy, as well as designing learning design foundations and suitable tools, with training to support their adoption.
The author, Elina Pihlantie, views the world and the formation of experiences through a pedagogical and social-psychological mindset combined with design thinking. Elina has spent nearly 20 years working in education and employment services across the private and municipal sectors, foundations, and associations. Her passion is bringing people together to work and learn around meaningful issues. Above all, Elina says she has learned that the best things are imagined and created together!
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* Referenced in the text: HAUS Kehittämiskeskus: Enabling Everyone to Learn: Designing and Delivering Digital Learning (2018, Kallio, Saarinen, Marjanen, Kurkipää, Siira)