Designing Learning without Learners: A Vicious Circle
Although “learner experience” as a concept has appeared to some degree in research and publication, it has generally been used to broadly represent learning from a student perspective or as a surrogate for other concepts, such as prior knowledge.
My use of the concept “learner experience” defines a learner-centered approach to the research, design, development, and delivery of instruction in formal education and training as well as more informal and social modes of learning.
Although my emphasis in promoting this practice is with the adult learner whose needs can be readily and reliably articulated from a personal and professional perspective, I believe that this learner-centered engagement in instructional design decisions can extend (with scaffolding) to younger learner populations.
This perspective on learning and learners is meant to be closely aligned with the concepts and practices of User Experience (UX) for software users and Customer Experience (CX) for customers, and accordingly, it deserves its own acronym, LX.
The reason I invoke it is because of my belief that the learner has not received the same attention in the design and delivery of instruction that software users and customers receive through the application of their respective UX and CX disciplines by researchers and practitioners.
Although it has been a hallmark of my professional services at Program House, most of my prospective clients are not initially aware of how I provide it beyond what is described on my Web site.
When I begin to describe and practice learner experience research and design, it is usually understood in terms of user experience and/or customer experience. I find that acceptable to a point, but would like to argue for the use of learner experience (LX) in a manner that has some overlapping function with UX and CX, but also attends to the unique experience of learning and instruction that someone experiences.
In that context, I am interested in how a person’s capabilities, abilities, needs, expectations, and preferences are addressed in the specific role of a learner in the design, development, and delivery of formal instruction and more generalized learning support.
Like UX and CX, the practice of LX as a discipline should consist of learner needs data collection that captures these characteristics of the target learner population on an individual basis, data analysis from which aggregate representations can be made, learner requirements that are balanced with learning provider requirements, and a conceptual design framework that leads to prototyping and acceptance testing prior to development of instructional materials.
Although this parallels the practice of instructional design, what can make learner experience distinct as a practice is the focus and inclusion of the learner as an active participant throughout every stage of design and development.
In many formal educational and training settings, learners are rarely active participants and decision-makers in instructional and curriculum innovations. Instead of striking a balance between a top-down (organizational) and bottom-up (learners, students, etc.) approach, the instructional drivers are typically restricted to administrative and teacher/trainer decisions.
Whereas UX and CX are generally understood and adopted in organizational practice to some degree, the equivalent approach to LX is a non-starter in all but the most progressive and innovative educational settings.
And that’s my proposal here, that Learner Experience (LX) as a concept and practice is elevated to the equivalent place of importance in education and training as its UX and CX counterparts are in their respective domains of practice.
I don’t expect this to be a fast track to adoption because it faces the same resistance that UX and CX have experienced – largely due to its disruptive nature to how learning providers traditionally handle curriculum and instruction.
I am hopeful though, that LX will come to be understood and practiced as a discipline by those professionals who already value UX and CX and are in the position to address certain instructional innovations with learners and their experience as the impetus and driver at the earliest stages and throughout the process of design and development.
Thankfully, that is the case in many situations, such as teachers and trainers whose action research and instructional innovations are centered in their learners’ experience and expectations as articulated by their learners. My greater hope is that this approach is adopted at and above the curriculum level of educational planned change.
I believe that the Learner Experience (LX) approach can help solve many of the intractable problems that have limited educational reform by transforming the traditional top-down approach from a vicious circle where learning is designed without learners involved into a virtuous circle of fruitful dialog between learners and those that support them.
I welcome your comments in reply,
Doc
Doc,
I’m pleased that you juxtapose the concepts of LX, CX, and UX. The “experience” of end users–whether in the context of a product, a process or learning–pays dividends in the development process and the mid- to long-term success of any initiative. The parallels are not subtle. Regarding the learning process, I agree that the student perspective is too often overlooked–or even disregarded–by the “experts” who design and deliver instruction.
Whether the learner is struggling with a topic or has mastered it, his or her perspective can offer a wealth of insights for the instructional designer and the facilitator, alike. In the learning process, students are not the “customer,” they are integral partners charged with evaluating learning effectiveness from a unique perspective. Their feedback and experiences inform our design efforts. Assessment is incomplete and one-sided if it neglects their take on course VOI from inception to delivery to (ongoing) refinement.
Thanks Dave, for your insightful comment on the need to approach instructional design in ways that make learners active stakeholders. You are right to state that learners are more than customers, but even if we considered them more seriously as customers, who by virtue of ready availability to information and alternative services, could go elsewhere, we might pay better attention to their needs. I also want more than that as a learner and as a teacher, but we need to find ways in the organizational settings in which we work to enable learners in this way. Perhaps the phrase, “think global, act local” applies to us as teachers and trainers to use whatever autonomy we can muster to rethink and remake our learning support with learners as the focus of change and make every effort to influence others with this best practice.
Doc, Am I understanding your proposal of learner experience (LX) as not inclusive to IT type instruction, but to all subjects in education? I think your proposal is very valid.
With current trends of catering to the customer, it should follow that a learner is treated as a customer. After all, is it not correct to say that an instructor provides a service to a learner? I can also understand the new label of LX being needed in order for the concept to catch up with customer experience. There are many instructors that practice this approach to education, but unfortunately, there are also many who do not. Is it correct to say that at least part of your proposal would hold instructors liable for methods of instruction that learners understand the best?
Hi Jim, Great analysis and questions – all of which I agree in their implications. Although teachers and trainers often have a certain latitude in the design of instruction (at least in its delivery), they don’t always or usually have a say in the design of curriculum. If they did have more autonomy, there might (should) be more inclusion of learners as stakeholders in the design of the course content, assessment, and other curriculum components.
I think it is fair to assume that teachers/trainers and learners should share accountability for learning outcomes that would accompany this latitude as active stakeholders in the design of learning support. As it stands now, learners and the people with whom they directly interact have little or no say in the design of curriculum at the course level and higher.
And yes, you are right, I am advocating for much more learner (and teacher/trainer) involvement in the instructional design at these higher levels of learning – in academia and in the corporate domains. These kinds of changes are disruptive to the status quo and take time and effort to become accepted. Consider how the design of software has slowly evolved towards more user-centered design, but is still evolving in that direction.
Thanks for sharing your questions and perspective on this user design issue in the realm of learning,
Doc
Even in the IT field we consider learners as clients. Meaning they deserve the utmost respect. I like the LX because it defines a unique type of client, the learners. To often the learner is left out of the equation and ends of being lost in the cracks, because the respect they deserved was not afforded to them. Every learner, within the LX is very unique and understanding them and how they learn can open a myriad of opportunity for them, because took the time to understand and care.
Thanks Peter, for sharing the IT and business perspective on learners as clients and how that justifies a disciplinary focus on the nature of the learner experience. An emphasis on outcomes for learners and accountability for achieving positive learning outcomes is increasingly the focus of business training, but those goals will remain remote unless and until we can achieve the objective you have aptly stated in the last sentence of your comment. It’s a tough target, but the aim is right.
Doc,
Your comparisons of UX, CX, and LX sets a clear understanding of how we should view the learners experience and include their perspectives. I believe it very crucial in instructional design to gain knowledge and feedback from those that have experienced it to gain a better understand of what is needed to improved the quality and clarity of, in this case, the educational experience. Too often the learner is overlooked and not taken into consideration when designs are implemented and therefore, do not achieve the greatest success. It is good to see an educator taking the stance and identifying what can make an instructional design better.
Thanks Rick for confirming the problem state that is the justification for a concentrated focus on the learner as a key decision-maker in the educational process – at least in terms of including their input into the design of educational media, courses, or in some rare cases, curriculum. Unfortunately, in many situations in academia and in the corporate realm, this is still uncharted or unwanted territory, so anyone who not only advocates, but also acts on this imperative does so with some degree of risk. Hopefully, an LX discipline that is professionally recognized might create the strength in numbers that is needed to get organizational buy-in to this process.
Hi Doc, I appreciate your focus on the learner as an end user with not just the technology as a consideration, but the effectiveness and learning needs of the student in mind. I wanted to share with you how important this is from an end user perspective. My neighbor was homeschooling her son in upper elementary and junior high. For 5th and 6th grade, he used K-12 online curriculum, even though we don’t have charter schools in Montana (which means they paid full tuition rates). They loved it. When he moved to the junior high level, the program shifted to a different provider area, with different technology, teacher interaction, student group interaction, and feedback system. They were NOT pleased from with much of any of the new format from a learner experience perspective. They withdrew and found another online venue through a dual-enrollment format through a university. As virtual schools move ever lower in the grade levels, ensuring that learning is actually taking place is vital since the younger the learner, the less capable they are in providing articulate feedback. Young learners have an emotional response to learning prior to (or in some cases, in place of) expectations in words.
Hello Doc,
The blog does a great job detailing the three separate experiences with regards to learner, user and customer. This is a great proposal that should be put into action soon if it is not already going as all three of the experiences should be equivalent. I feel this could be accomplished by ensuring that there is a more inclusive approach with regards to creating curriculum. This approach could include students, researchers and instructors more in this process. It could almost serve as the opposite of top-down approach but more of a bottom-up approach. I would agree that it would probably be most efficient to be implemented at a curriculum level. I like the idea of the learner experience! Thanks Doc!
Thanks Sue, for sharing this case, contrasting home-schooling and online learning of your neighbor’s child. It illustrates how technology as used in online learning is not an end-all (or one size fits all), but simply a platform for communication. When the learner is at the center of this communication, there is productive interaction and learning, but when it does not place the learner at the center, it fails.
Thanks John, for sharing your thoughts on the value of synergy when we consider learners, users, and customers as convergent contexts to which we should direct our corresponding attention in the creation and delivery of products and services.
Your blog on the Learner Experience (LX) was eye-opening. I can honestly say that this facet of curriculum development was not one that I had consciously considered. How odd that I would overlook what seems like such a given! Without considering how the learner will interact with the material, all of the curricula becomes useless. How will this make the learner feel? What do I want the learner to experience through the lesson? We think of the user-experience and the customer experience, and these are given focus-groups and surveys, but I certainly agree that the necessary forethought into the LX is sorely lacking. Perhaps as the ubiquity of social media continues to proliferate, we will see more efficient channels of communicating precisely how individual learners think and feel about their learning experiences. Why separate the feedback of the learner from the content by waiting to collect it after the course is almost complete? Capturing exactly how a learner is processing the content as it happens would seem to be much more efficient.
Thanks Eric, for highlighting the importance of understanding the learner’s experience, not only after the learning experience, but during it, and how we can and should leverage technology to collect, analyze, and respond to the learner’s experience as it is happening.
Doc, a very interesting post and perspective. Conceptually, it is both logical and sound. I can see, however, the biases against it. Given the variation in learning styles, motivation, potential generational/cultural differences, etc., it would be easy for administrators or ID’ers to avoid LX considerations out of fear for drawing out the development timeline or consuming resources, as much as ignorance of exactly how they could go about incorporating LX considerations into the development process. I think a good place to start would be a combination of the Felder and Soloman ILS tool and/or a survey of the learner population on motivation, design considerations, desired reinforcements, etc. These would be low-cost, low-effort and reusable, and would at least be a start in incorporating the learner perspective.
Thanks Casey for your valued thoughts on the efficacy of LX, perceived constraints, and your proposed approach of using a learning style and/or motivation evaluation of learners as the basis for instructional design and/or adaptive teaching practice.