Adventures in Learning Design

Motivation is one of the most important learning design principles – but also one of the most difficult to design for. Lots of the things we need to learn aren't intrinsically motivating, especially if it's something just have to learn for work or for our studies. And extrinsic motivators, like rewards and punishments often don't work.

So, a key aim for Learning Designers is to maximise the intrinsic motivation in a learning experience. That means fostering self-direction and agency, providing positive feedback on performance, and encouraging perseverance when things get hard (and learning is hard!)

We share some examples of recent learning experience that we've gone through and which we found really motivating (music production, running and wellbeing) – and think about why that was, and what some of the Learning Design decisions were in the products that we used.

We discuss two theories of motivation:

• Self-determination theory (from researchers Richard Ryan and Edward Deci) suggests that there are three essential ingredients for motivation: autonomy, competence and relatedness. That means we need to feel in control of our learning, we need to feel like we're achieving and making progress, and we need to see how what we're learning is relevant to our lives and personal interests.
• The 'ideal future self theory', based on research by Zoltán Dörnyei tells us that if we can help learners to build a clear and tangible vision of who they want to become through learning, then we can develop motivation.

And finally, we talk about how we've put these theories into practice in some of our recent projects.

In this episode Tim and Laurie speak to fellow LearnJam co-founder, Nick Robinson. As well as his LearnJam work, Nick does a lot of executive coaching and training with a focus on innovation and creativity. We discuss whether people can be trained to be innovative and what an innovative organisation looks like.

In this episode we talk to Martin Bloomfield. Martin is a trainer at York Associates where he helps individuals develop skills to improve communication across cultures. He has visiting lecturer positions in colleges and Higher Education institutions across Europe and is the author of Dyslexia Bytes, which won a special commendation for equality, diversity and inclusion at the 2020 ELTon awards

In our fascinating conversation with Martin we find out that dyslexia is not what we thought it was. We learn that people with dyslexia can experience time in a different way and what that means for us as Learning Designers. Martin also explains how literacy can sometimes be a major impediment to learning, whether you experience dyslexia or not. If that wasn't enough, we discover that we actually have more than five senses.

LINKS

Martin Bloomfield on LinkedIn: https://tinyurl.com/y3dhzftp

Dyslexia Bytes:

http://www.dyslexiabytes.org/

YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/yyz3rl2g

Facebook: https://tinyurl.com/y6aqelml

Websites mentioned by Martin:

https://www.dyslexicadvantage.org/

https://www.madebydyslexia.org/

https://www.nessy.com/uk/

https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/

https://dyslexiaida.org/

In this episode we unpack the stages we go through in our Learning Design process, we confront our lack of building expertise, and Laurie coins the phrase "cathedral of learning".

Hosted by Laurie Harrison and Tim Gifford - cofounders of LearnJam, a digital learning agency and consultancy.

In this episode, we chat to LearnJam's Learning Designer, Katy Asbury. Katy tells us the story of a particularly horrendous hike that she did in New Zealand and how, subsequently, she was able to reframe that from a really negative experience to one of the absolute highlights of her year. She shares her thinking and reading around what positive framing might mean for Learning Design.

LINKS

Check out Katy's blogpost The power of positive framing in learning design

In this short shoutout Laurie and Tim invite you to get in touch with questions or observations about your own Learning Design practice.

Maybe you currently don't identify as a Learning Designer but have a unique perspective that you'd like to share.

Maybe you'd even like to join us on an upcoming episode to share your take on all things Learning Design.

We'd love to hear from you. Get in touch with us at [email protected]

In this episode, we talk about design thinking; what it is, how it works, and how we use it in our own projects, including how we applied it to develop a prototype of a chatbot that the world wasn't ready for. We also talk about how Tim had to go back to school to learn empathy and how mirrors can solve the problem of slow elevators.

LINKS

Laurie refers to a LearnJam blogpost on how to understand your learners more deeply

Tim refers to this article on Harvard Business Review by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg.

You can download a copy of our Powerful Questions here.

In this episode we talk about our three research-based Learning Design principles, Laurie shares a recent confrontation with an enraged optometrist around a less than optimal digital learning experience, and we uncover a couple of areas in which we realise we could have done better.

In this episode, we talk about how you need to tell your clients they're wrong sometimes, and we somehow managed to compare a Learning Designer to a film director.

Hosted by Laurie Harrison and Tim Gifford - cofounders of LearnJam, a digital learning agency and consultancy.

In this episode, we talk about the futility of asking people what they want, and we somehow managed to clumsily compare Learning Design to both music and medicine.

Hosted by Laurie Harrison and Tim Gifford - cofounders of LearnJam, a digital learning agency and consultancy.