The importance of Learning Design

For a long time, 80% of my role at the University of London was that of a learning technologist. My official title at the institution was not that, but this was how I thought of myself and how I presented myself to others. But I never felt truly comfortable about it. The title ‘learning technologist’ inevitably resulted in colleagues focusing on the technology part, more than the learning part. I have often heard colleagues complaining about how they are more often used as IT helpers, rather than skilled educational practitioners. Indeed, I was more often asked how to use an application or reset a password, than asked how a learning activity might be designed to provide better outcomes for learners.

I didn’t mind that. I generally work on the principle of being helpful, no matter what the official job role is meant to be. I still hold to that principle. I am generally good with digital tools, so others looked to me for help. However, whenever possible that help would come with a caveat of trying to suggest ways to use the tools to best effect. That was not about the technical ‘how-to’ aspect, but the pedagogical use that the tool was going to be used for. 

When I left Higher Education to work freelance, I considered how I wished to present myself. “Learning Technologist” didn’t suit what I really did. An educational developer might be a better fit, perhaps, but I chose learning designer, as I wished to emphasize ‘design’ rather than ‘development’ or ‘technology’ and ‘learning’ seemed more active tense than ‘education’, which I felt was important. Since then, I have completed a Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC). This has brought something new to my thinking, which was not offered in the Higher Education sector: the simple importance of design thinking.

Permaculture focuses on using design methodologies to replace extensive labour needs or high energy-use to live a more ecologically in-tune lifestyle. Much of it is about garden or agricultural design, but there is far more to it than that. 

I bring up the PDC here, because it made me realise that design is crucial, but not design, for designs sake. Design must be carefully balanced with flexibility and empowerment. I need to explain that further. Recently, I’ve been studying the ADDIE framework for learning design for a piece of research. ADDIE essentially breaks down the design process into five stages:

• Analysis

• Design

• Development

• Implementation

• Evaluation

There is a lot to like in this framework, especially the idea that by designing courses and learning activities before the course runs, it results in time-savings later, and theoretically enhances learning. It does this by encouraging a design that better aligns the activities with the learners (known through the analysis stage) and the assessment. John Biggs called this constructive alignment in the 1990s. ADDIE can, however, become rigid. By creating most of the learning activities up-front it can lead to a sense of disempowerment for the tutors, especially where the design conflicts with the seeming needs of the learners (and perhaps the tutor as well). Thus, ADDIE can lead to rigidity and disempowerment, especially as so much work was put into the design up-front. It is hard to jettison or alter something that has taken so long to create in the first place.

That doesn’t need to be the case though. I still believe that ADDIE is a useful framework as it emphasises careful analysis of the learners and the institutional context, as well as asking the tutors to be more intentional about what they teach, and how they teach. In theory, ADDIE can aid tutors to become more student-focused, and to consider the learners beyond their own role of teaching/facilitating and grading assignments. 

There is, after all, an instinct for the tutor to focus on their role. They are there to teach students about a subject and to grade them against a standard. This is their role. They are the experts. Now, much work has been done in recent decades to move away from this attitude. Tutors are increasingly seeing themselves more as facilitators for student learning, than the fountain of knowledge. This is a good thing. Nonetheless, there remains a tendency to fall back into old patterns and there remains a challenge in knowing how to best facilitate learning and again, how to cede some of that control. Such approaches are baked into the structure of Higher Education.

There is an instinct also for learning technologists, educational developers (and others with similar roles and titles) to lean into the technological aspects of their role. This, too, is baked into the structure of Higher Education. Most educational roles are specifically there to emphasise the use of digital tools. Pedagogical considerations are therefore shoehorned into a technology-first approach.

Where ADDIE or a similar framework is used to guide the designing, there is, therefore, a tendency to focus on what the tools provide over what the learner really needs to learn. Indeed, as David Baume argued (see my previous essay on Learning technology or educational development):   

I’m not entirely sure I fully agree with this sentence. There are times when this is true; the technology can become the overriding focus, and educators can feel pressured to use the tool, and often to use it badly or only in obvious ways, neither of which focuses on the learners learning. In such cases, there is certainly the danger of the tool becoming the master, being used just because it is expected that it is used (PowerPoint anyone?). But is this the real concern?

I’m going to fall back to something that co-founder of Permaculture, David Holmgren wrote in his 2002 book Permaculture: Principles & Pathways Beyond Sustainability. Holmgren argued that Permaculture’s focus on design was intended to overcome the old need for extensive labour and the current need for high-energy usage. By designing in alignment with nature, it was possible to reduce both labour and energy needs and still reach the same desired outcome.

I’m taken by Holmgren’s idea in many ways and in many aspects of my life, but here, it reminds me of what David Baume is talking about (just to note, I’ll transfer to last names here, as now I’m writing about the thoughts of two different Davids’ – it’ll get confusing!).

There is a duology in play between two extremes: first, Baume raised the spectre that we have been too focused on teaching, and not enough on learning. Second, he argued that the move towards learning being controlled by the technology is undermining what it is we are trying to achieve in the first place: learners who not only learn what is expected of them but are inspired and able to excel. What we have here is an issue of extensive teaching and a high-technology focus. The solution that Baume suggested is that we stop teaching, and instead focus more on learning itself. The solution that Holmgren puts forwards is similar: labour and energy are the two extremes – design is the middle ground, which will help us to move forwards more efficiently and more intentionally.

Is design also the solution to extensive teaching and a high-technology focus? I believe it can be, but it must be done carefully, and with the intention to seek out that balance. Creating a garden using Permaculture principles must use labour and energy. It’s impossible for that not to be the case. However, both inputs are reduced if the design is done right. The same is true of education. Teaching is necessary. Technology (even if it’s just a chair to sit on or a pen to write with) is also necessary. However, both can be used more effectively if the learning is designed carefully. To succeed, that learning design needs to not just be for learners, but by learners.

I would love to hear what you think about these thoughts. Feel free to leave a comment and continue this discussion!

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