In today’s rapidly evolving business environment, organisations know continuous learning and development are crucial for both individual growth and overall success. As a result, Learning and Development (L&D) functions are now essential for not only upskilling employees and enhancing performance, but also fostering a culture of learning.
The effectiveness of L&D programs lies not only in the content that they deliver but also in the design principles that underpin them. That leads us to the question: what makes good learning design? We spoke to four different industry experts to learn more:
Start with the learner
Claire Seldon, Industry Learning Learner Designer and Gamification Consultant, believes designers should start with the learner rather than the information they need. Think: who they are, what they need to learn and what environment they need to learn.
“How can I use every tool in my toolkit to design the best thing for them? Sometimes that can mean a pencil and a piece of paper, but other times it could be VR – both are equally valuable tools.”
“It doesn’t matter what you need to teach them – if you know who they are and how they can best learn, you can teach them anything,” Claire says.
It’s less about technology
Good learning design is about engagement, says Sebastian Krook, Senior Learning Designer at UTS.
“It can be with storytelling, creating a narrative that participants follow through and then discover that they’ve learned something at the end through conventional means,” he explains.
“Where appropriate, use fancy tools; they are not a requirement for effective learning design.”
A collaborative, community approach
Zerafina Zara, Industry Learning Experience Designer, Manager and Creative Technologist, often works with other learning designers whose varied backgrounds provide valuable project insights.
“I’m big on communities of practice… I’m fortunate now, and mainly through the course at UTS, that I have a great network of learning designers I can reach out to,” she says.
Good learning design is about solving a problem
There’s never just one suitable learning design, says Dr Keith Heggart, Course Director of the Graduate Certificate in Learning Design at UTS.
“Truly understanding the problem, spending time in that problem space, and ensuring you know what’s caused that problem and the possible avenues and the levers and mechanisms you can pull to resolve it is essential.”
Watch the full webinar: How learning design is changing the face of L&D:
