Designing education experiences beyond the curriculum
Today I realised that one of the things I like the most is to design education experiences. Education innovation is (or was for me) to integrate in the education practice the research results that some clever researchers have been playing with and measuring its impact for a long time, and they have evidences it really works. But today I changed my mind about that: you cannot come to a educator and say ‘Hey pal, you should use this or that artefact/methodology in your class. It will be the panacea’. That won’t likely work. But a much different approach is, given a education process (e.g., a course), look at the current status of the education experience and try to improve it somehow, by means of technology… or not. By means of methodology… or not. The goal is to improve the experience for the learner, the real “customer” in the educational landscape.
But many education designers do not see the design process in that way. They focus on the curriculum and forget about the rest. ‘Let’s include that trendy stuff in the curriculum.’ ‘Hey, should we look for an expert of that awesomic new technology.’ But the complete education experience is a whole. It’s a holistic thing. It includes many parts that should be mixed-and-matched in their just proportion. Actually, the curriculum matters less and less nowadays. The content is a commodity and we should focus on the rest of the components to make a difference. Is that methodology appropriate for this activity? What kind of activities should we implement? Collaborative or individual? And given our current resources (human, technical, methodological)? Is the pace of the activity OK? Anyone is getting bored?
The quality of the education should be measured in that terms. Nothing to do with standardised tests. Have the experience met the learners expectations? Did they enjoy it? Are they seeing the value of the experience for themselves? But don’t ask them directly, some could not be sincere… even without noticing about it! Just observe them. See what they do, what they say, what they build.
Back to the beginning, the real customer in a education experience is the learner. And we should focus on it. Designers have realised about this in other contexts, and appeal to the user centred design. They know who the boss is. Why educators generally don’t?
