The Pitfalls of Designing Choice
Designing Choice for All Learners…and Getting it Right.
American architect and Mid Century Modern design icon Charles Eames famously defined the new era of design by saying, “Beyond the age of information is the age of choice.” As educational designers moving more deeply into learner-centered design and Universal Design for Learning, we must understand a few things designing choices for learners:
Why provide choice?
As we move into the Exponential Age, it will be less and less imperative for learners to be curricular experts and more and more critical for them to experts in their own learning. This approach to learner outcomes does not disregard curricular mastery. For instance, learners must still have a grasp on numeracy, mathematical operations, and problem solving using various mathematical methods; however, as learners are faced with new problems and opportunities to innovate, they also must be poised to go out and get new learning. Learners need to be able to find purpose, and to conjure up their own motivation for learning even when the easiest path eludes them. Learners must be able to draw on their own prior knowledge, to assess what they still need to know, and to be resourceful enough to chase down information and learning in a way that best suits their needs, task and environment. Lastly, learners need to be able to set goals that are challenging and meaningful, to monitor their own progress toward those goals, to call on strategies or parts of strategies that have worked for them in the past, and to develop new strategies when the work demands it.
How to provide choice.
As we move toward providing learners with choice, we must remember that leaner-centered experiences begin with a clear goal and a mindset that acknowledges that there are many paths to get to that goal — in how learners engage and find relevance in the goal, in how they get access to and comprehend the learning, and in how they express and communicate mastery of the learning goal. Structuring choice for learners also means understanding how learning will be managed. Educational designers can successfully structure choice for learners through the componenets of bounded autonomy and by coaching learners into making good choices for learning. In our article Designing for Choice and Autonomy, we detail these five components of bounded autonomy and the conditions necessary for learners to make good choices.
Plan proactively for barriers as you provide choice.
Educational designers frequently ask us, “What is the right number of choices to provide?” And we frequently hear, “I’ve tried to give my learners choice, and they just don’t make good choices.” While there are no magic formulas for providing the right choices, these are 6 common pitfalls we can all avoid:
- Providing too much choice.
The research around psychological safety and choice is both interesting and abundant. Each night I get on Netflix and surf for at least 20–30 minutes. Each night I watch reruns of The Office. No kidding. Almost every night. Why? There’s psychological safety in that choice for me. I know I like the characters and the writing, and I know I’ll always find it to be smart and funny. If you have run into this pitfall with providing learners choice, and if you’ve ever found yourself saying, “Oh my gosh. This kid always makes a poster,” then it’s time to ask why that learner makes that choice each time and coach him/her into a different choice by looking at autonomy (what the learner controls), values (what the learner likes and takes interest in), needs (what skills the learner really needs to master and develop…perhaps this task is a chance to do that), and parameters (how much time the learner has, tools available to the learner, etc.).
2. Excluding learner voice and feedback.
As we provide learners with choice, we must also incorporate their voices and feedback in our design. Let learners help you design choices in learning. For instance, in the planning phase of the learning experience, I can approach my learners for input: “I want to provide you with some choices in the resources we use next week when we are learning about the scientific method. I have a couple of resources I want to provide you, and here they are. I’d love for you to do a little research tonight and see if you can come back with some resources that look like they would be interesting and valuable to you.” In that same spirit of incorporating learner voice in the design, we must also seek feedback to continue improving our design. Again, this can be as simple as asking, “From the resources we used to learn about the scientific method, which ones did you find to be most effective and why? Which ones did you find to be most difficult and why? Are there any resources that you looked up on your own that we should include in the future?” (Click here for 10 practical ways to incorporate learner voice.)
3. Eliminating choice when things don’t go as planned.
When things don’t go as planned with learners and choices, sometimes our initial reaction is to pull the plug and go back to making all the choices. We must not fall victim to this. It goes against our desired outcomes! It moves learners away from being expert learners and into being expert students — those who simply comply, consume, and don’t think critically. Instead of eliminating choices when things don’t go as planned, see #2. Stop. Reflect. Get feedback. Go back and get feedback from learners about why some choices didn’t work. Ask yourself, “Did I coach learners into making good choices? Did I refresh them on the four conditions of how to make a good learning choice?”
4. Mistaking variety for choice.
As educational designers, we seem to know intuitively that we have to change things up in order to keep learners engaged. While a predictable structure to learning minimizes threats and distractions, doing the same thing with the same tools and resources day after day is a sure way to lose many learners, particularly when the tools and resources are not universally designed. When I was first introduced to Universal Design for Learning and Multiple Means of Representation, I looked at the examples and said to myself, “I’m already doing that. I already use audio, video, text, images, and graphics to communicate learning.” And I was. That was no lie. Some days we all listened to the audio book. Some days we watched a video. Some days we read aloud with graphic organizers. That’s not choice. That’s variety, and it’s teacher centered. In a learner-centered approach, I would have laid out all of those options and allowed learners to make choices for their learning with my coaching and guidance.
5. Not coaching learners into making good choices.
We aren’t born knowing how to make good choices. We have to learn it somewhere. If educators are always the ones making the choices, learners simply don’t get the opportunity to practice making choices which is absolutely necessary to their success and future-readiness. Our learning environments provide the very best opportunities for learners to practice making choices, to experience what a not-so-great choice feels like, and to be coached into making better choices for their learning. Our environments provide low-stakes places for learners to fail, get back up, and try again with a new choice. Post-secondary settings, new jobs, and innovative start-ups are entirely too high stakes for learners to be testing their abilities to make choices for the first time. By the time they get to these settings, they need to be expert learners (purposeful & motivated, knowledgeable & resourceful, strategic & goal-directed) so that they can find success as problem-solvers, critical thinkers, and innovators.
6. Neglecting accessibility in the choices provided.
When we design choices for learners, we must ensure that we are designing them for all learners. Mindy Johnson, accessibility expert and Director of Digital Communications & Outreach at CAST, tells us, “Providing only one choice that’s accessible is not providing choice. In fact, it suggests that we don’t value learners who require accessibility.” As educational designers, we must design for all learners. We must consider the full human experience in learning and design to the edges of learner variability. So how do we do that? Johnson suggests designing for accessibility with POUR. Learning materials and experiences must be Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust.
The National Center on Accessible Educational Materials (AEM) further defines these four qualities of accessible user experience:
Perceivable — make sure learners can see and hear your content
Operable — make sure learners can interact with your content with a variety of tools
Understandable — make sure learners can understand your content and enjoy a predictable experience
Robust — ensure your content works with current and future technologies.
Visit the AEM Center’s page on Designing for Accessibility with POUR for deeper learning and actionable steps in each of these for qualities of accessible user experience. Take advantage of their free self-paced course Making Everyday Curriculum Materials Accessible for All Learners.
Although most of us have probably already experienced some or all of these common pitfalls in providing learners with choice, being cognizant of these barriers as we design learning opportunities for all learners will improve our designs and open the door for expert learning. In addition to avoiding these pitfalls, choices must be relevant to the learners and meaningful to the learning goal. Choices must be designed universally through the components of bounded autonomy. And most importantly, all learners must be provided with ample accessible opportunities here and now to make choices for themselves and to be coached in making good choices for their learning.
