Instructional Design is dead — long live Learning Experience Design!
If you’re still referring to eLearning as computer-based training (CBT), using ADDIE to design your ‘click-next spam fest’, or think gamification simply means adding mini-games to your content — you’re in for a shock:
eLearning has grown up and learning experience design is burning down the house that instructional design built.
This post explores how we’ve re-branded instructional design as learning experience design (LX) at Croomo. If you’d like an introduction to our team structures and the thinking we’ve applied, be sure to check out this post first to see where LX fits into the big picture.
I’ll admit that Croomo is by no means the first to identify this shift in learning design trends, but we have put our own special spin on the role that we believe is industry leading. For an awesome summary of the issues and trends emerging in eLearning, I highly recommend this article.
Instructional design is a one-way medium
One of my biggest gripes with the term ‘instructional’ is that it harks back to an era where a stern teacher would stand in front of a blackboard and bark out Latin pronouns while the class parroted them back.
Learning is a conversation between a subject-matter expert and the learner. The golden days of ADDIE are a metaphor for instructional design because most of the effort would go into analysing, designing, and developing content before it’s evaluated by learners. Unfortunately, by this stage, budgets are exhausted and learners often get stuck with the content regardless of their feedback.
Never forget: learners aren’t peasants in Marie Antoinette’s France. Let them eat eLearning cake? I think not.
LX forces us out of the ivory tower and into the trenches
Something that initially drew me to instructional design was the decades of research and theory that underpinned it. Fast forward to today, and I delight in openly challenging most of what I’ve learnt because it’s so out of touch with my learners and experience of what people crave from modern learning.
The ivory tower only creates a barrier between designers and their users. We’re not academics, we exist to solve real problems.
The most valuable insights for any type of experience design (whether it’s learning or otherwise) comes directly from users themselves — they’re out there getting their proverbial hands dirty every day. The least you can do is bunker down and listen to their needs, helping you design something that addresses their core needs.
Learning experience design emphasises experience
We live in exciting times — what with the virtual reality goggles and the smartphones et al — but that doesn’t mean we make learning that’s whiz-bang just for the sake of it.
Gone are the days where eLearning consisted of converting a slideshow into an interactive, click-next spam fest. Don’t get me wrong, the age of augmented and virtual reality is very much upon us, but if the use-case isn’t there, we don’t force it.
Learning experience designers don’t just default to eLearning modules.
Learning experience designers have an extensive bag of tricks, but we’re always searching for the most pragmatic solution to a learner’s problems.
Learning experience designers are masters of the T-pose
We’ve made a big deal of attracting talent at Croomo with overlapping skill sets. This means that we can all wear a number of hats if we need to.
Most importantly, we take the teachings of other disciplines into account when we design.
I’m happy conversing with UX, interactive, and graphic designers — I’m also skilled enough in their respective disciplines to lend a hand where possible during crunch time. I understand the ramifications of scope-creep on developers. I know how to manage stakeholders, facilitate action-mapping workshops with SMEs, and present cases for ROI to the C-suite.
We understand the power of learning
Learning Experience Design represents the next evolution in digital learning. We have the ability to change not only the way people work but the way an entire organisation works. We are the new rogues in business; hear us roar.
Want to learn move about the exciting field of LX? Why not attend the inaugural LX Conference? It’s an online event with a roster of leading thinkers in this space.
