Understanding Learning Design Patterns
What on Middle Earth does the Lord of the Rings have to do with learning design?
“Home is behind, the world ahead, and there are many paths to tread, through shadows to the edge of night, until the stars are all alight.” (J.R.R. Tolkien)
When Frodo set off to Rivendell, he probably thought it was just going to be a really long walk. Little did he know what Tolkien had in store for him.
If you are not sure what this refers to, you have three choices:
- Read the nearly half a million words of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy
- Binge watch the 9 hours and 17 minutes of Peter Jackson’s screen adaption
- Watch ‘Lord of the Rings in 23 Minutes ‘
Your choice!
Each of the sub-plots in this epic adventure are essential to its outcome. Frodo begins the adventure as a relatively naïve and inexperienced individual. But, by the end of the story, there wasn’t enough room for him in the whole of Middle Earth.
Aristotle has generally been credited for the quote, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”. While he didn’t say it quite as succinctly as that, it was the vibe that he intended. Indeed, Frodo’s story is the sum of many parts, and it would not be possible to have achieved what he did without those multiple sub-plots.
“Maybe the paths that you each shall tread are already laid before your feet, though you do not see them.’’ (Lady Galadriel)
Where is this going? Transpose the adventures of Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring to the design of your course. Where there were clear objectives for Frodo and the gang, your course design will start with clear learning objectives. Where do you want your learners to end up? How do you want them to change as a result of the course you are designing for them? The success of your course will be down to the sum of its parts.
“The burned hand teaches best. After that, advice about fire goes to the heart” (Gandalf)
Tolkien didn’t simply push Frodo out of his comfortable home in Hobbiton without a plan for him. Frodo’s adventure was carefully mapped out well before he received the seemingly insignificant ring from his kind and rather eccentric Uncle Bilbo. When you’re planning your course, you will undoubtedly have a plan, a map, a design, for the learner journey. This journey will consist of a sequence of learning activities that guide the learner to successfully achieving the course objectives.
Let’s take a side step here. You can imagine this next part could be attributed to the very wise Gandalf!
The Science of Learning Design
Any learning design must take into consideration, Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains. Bloom developed these (Bloom 1956) to encourage higher forms of thinking in learning.
Imagine if Frodo’s quest was simply a stroll through Middle Earth, so that he could toss an insignificant piece of jewellery into a fire. Sure, he might have some interesting memories, but would he really learn anything? Bloom and his team wanted learners to go beyond simply remembering facts. Their goal was to challenge learners to create knowledge, to analyse and evaluate concepts and processes. Now that’s an epic adventure. But, like Tolkien, Bloom wanted even more than that for his learner. He went on to identify three domains of educational activities or learning. These are Cognitive, Affective and Psychomotor.
The cognitive domain is associated with the development of intellectual skills and is likely to be the domain that you are most familiar with. Bloom’s original taxonomy was revised by Lorin Anderson (Anderson et al 2001) and other cognitive psychologists in the 1990’s and the new structure is described in the image below (Fig 1).
The lowest level of the pyramid is associated with the acquisition of knowledge. This is about recalling, listing and repeating information. A little like Sam Gamgee describing the Mines of Moria as “quite dark”! The cognitive complexity grows at every level, with the higher order thinking skills found in the upper levels allowing the learner to construct a structure from diverse elements, put all the parts together (there’s that reference to Aristotle again) and evaluate concepts.
While we often think of learning as being an intellectual or mental process, there’s more to it than that. The affective domain includes feelings, emotions and attitudes. This domain addresses how your learner deals with things emotionally and like the cognitive domain, is divided into a number of categories. These are outlined in the following diagram (Fig 2).
The third domain, the psychomotor domain, includes physical movement, use of motor skills and coordination. These skills can be measured in terms of precision, speed and execution of procedures. These are the manual tasks, such as Frodo, Sam and Gollum climbing into Mordor, or perhaps Frodo learning to wield his sword ‘sting’ as he faces the evil Shelob. Take a look at the five major categories of the psychomotor domain in the diagram below (Fig 3).
“One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all. and in the darkness bind them.” (J.R.R. Tolkien)
A well-designed learning experience will be constructed so that the learner can benefit from the inclusion of all three of the psych domains described here. This level of diversity in learning tasks help creates a balanced learning experience that meets a number of learning styles and learning modalities. As these domains are combined, the results are three further psych domains, Conative, Sensational and Instrumental (Fig 4).
The conative domain is a combination of affective and cognitive and relates to learning experiences that include impulse and volition, executive function and actually doing. When we intentionally do something, we commit to and invest energy in the process of reaching a goal. The sensational domain is a combination of affective and psychomotor domains and relates to feelings experienced by the learner through stimulus and feelings associated with connection to the learning environment. Finally, the instrumental domain is the result of a combination of the psychomotor and cognitive domains. This deals with mechanical barriers and affordances to cognition and understanding.
These six psych domains help to build the various sub-plots that you will weave into your learning design, and that the learner will experience on their own epic learning journey. Which brings us to the next part of the story. Learning Design Patterns.
Learning Design Patterns
“I seem to see ahead, in a kind of way. I know we are going to take a very long road, into darkness; but I know I can’t turn back.” (Frodo Baggins)
Design patterns are typical solutions to common problems in learning design. They are the basis of the activities that your learner will navigate along their path. How does Gandalf gain access to the Mines of Moria? What does Sam Gamgee do to help Frodo to the Fire of Doom? Each pattern is like a blueprint that you can customise to solve a particular learning design problem. How will you develop an online learning community at the outset of your course? How will you encourage learners to co-construct knowledge, or reflect on their learning experience?
What if you had access to a comprehensive library of learning design patterns that helped you to create learning that embraced the different psych domains? These could be used as is or customised from their original form to suit the specific activity you want to develop. Stay tuned!
So how do you develop and share learning design patterns? When developing a learning design pattern, it is important to address the purpose (what are you trying to solve?), pattern (what is your approach or structure of the activity?) and praxis (how is it put into practice). What was Tolkien trying to achieve by stimulating the Ents to destroy Saruman’s war machine? Why did Boromir turn against Frodo? These are significant events that altered the course of the whole adventure. Similarly, a carefully used learning design pattern, that exists to take the learner to a new level of knowledge or skill, will influence their learning, and lead them towards the desired outcome of your course.
Within an organisation, there needs to be consistency in the way learning design patterns are presented and shared among the team. The following provides a suggested approach to structuring the communication of learning design patterns.
- Learning Design Pattern Name
- A statement of the common problem that the pattern will solve
- A brief overview of the pattern
- Instructions on how to use the pattern
- Guidelines or principles of the patterns
- Correct and incorrect implementation
- Theory and/or research behind the design.
The use of patterns provides your learning design with a level of consistency both within and across courses. Therefore, less time needs to be spent introducing a new activity when learners are already familiar with the design pattern. This provides an opportunity to reduce cost of developing a learning experience, if a tried and tested learning design pattern is used. It also helps to adhere to design standards.
“Lembas bread, one bite is enough to fill the stomach of a grown man.” (Legolas)
Unlike poor Sam and Frodo existing on a diet of the Elven lembas bread for their entire journey, the menu offering of learning design patterns is much closer to a feast fit for Bilbo’s birthday party! Classified into several distinct categories, you have the opportunity to search for exactly the type of learning activity you need. You’ll also discover that any single learning design pattern is likely to sit within more than one learning experience category and can therefore offer a genuinely deeper learning experience.
The menu offering for learning design patterns is grouped into the following categories:
- Scaffolding
- Interactions
- Activities
- Motivation
- Media Use
“I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things…” (Frodo Baggins)
End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. (Gandalf)
Not every course you design will be as epic as The Lord of the Rings. That’s ok, but you can bet all of the hoarded treasures of Smaug (considered to be the last “great” dragon to exist in Middle-earth and appearing in ‘The Hobbit’, Smaug had a fair pile of treasure) that your learner will appreciate your use of carefully crafted learning design patterns in the courses you produce.
“May your (learning design) be laid under an enchantment of surpassing excellence for seven years!” (Gandalf)
References
Bloom, B.S. (1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook: The Cognitive Domain. David McKay, New York.
Anderson, L. W. and Krathwohl, D. R., et al (Eds..) (2001) A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing: A Revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Allyn & Bacon. Boston, MA (Pearson Education Group)
