The Learning Design Toolkit by Akseli Huhtanen
Meet Akseli Huhtanen, a learning activist and learning designer at FITech Network University in Helsinki, Finland. He is the creator of The Learning Design Toolkit — which is currently available in English and Swedish.
What’s your toolbox all about? Why does it exist? What problems is it aiming to help solve?
The Learning Design Toolkit was created to pave the way for designing learning experiences. It is a set of worksheets and checklists that help to create teachable experiences, especially in an online context. It was published along with open access Design Book for Online Learning. There are a ton of perspectives to take into account while designing, especially online learning activities, ranging from the psychology of learning to technological accessibility. A framework was needed to help make sure a design really enables learning, by putting the learner and their actions at the centre, while clarifying the designer’s process.
Who developed it? What was the team that you put together?
I was the main author of the toolkit, and I took in comments and suggestions from many faculty members and other specialists across FITech Network University. The toolbox draws on the science of learning, general university pedagogical guidelines, and design thinking. In 2019, we had to quickly adapt hundreds of courses from on-site to online and open them up to a new professional audience, so a scalable tool for incremental development was needed, instead of going through each design one by one. This approach proved valuable when the pandemic hit a year later.
How do you use the toolbox practically in your work? And how do others use it?
The Toolkit functions as a resource for individual teachers’ development work, or as a toolset for co-creative workshops. At FITech, we usually carried out two desktop research steps first (intended outcomes and target group analysis), and then had two workshops (storyboarding and ideating activities). In many cases, this was too heavy, and we simply just sketched the overall storyboard. From what I have heard, people have used individual worksheets or checklists as quality assurance tools, or have adapted the whole toolkit to their own needs. I think this is what every self-respecting craftsperson should do — adapt the tool of choice to their own workflow!
What do you think is next for the toolbox? Do you have plans to update or change it?
I have received feedback from users in multiple countries that the toolkit is a bit heavy for many situations. Yes, you can choose what tools to use, but it’s hard to pick before you have given them a try. So, I am working to simplify the toolkit and maybe squeeze it into 1–2 worksheets plus some checklists. This is also user-centric development as the experience has been a bit clumsy in the current version. In the process, I also look forward to making the Design Book for Online Learning more accessible, beyond its current pdf format.
What’s your opinion on the idea of toolboxes in general? At this point everyone seems to have their own! When are they useful and when not?
Toolkits are useful when you are inspired by them. But if you rely on the toolkit and stick to your worksheet too rigidly, it stops you from developing and being creative. You can’t hide behind your tools in co-creative pursuits. I feel like toolkits clarify ways of working, but alone they can’t fix anyone’s process. Maybe we will soon reach a saturation point with toolkits?
Thanks to Akseli Huhtanen for the interview. You can connect with him on LinkedIn. Check out ToolboxToolbox.com for more where this came from 🛠
