Advice and Tips from our LXD Team Members
We asked Agueda Mija Chavez, Senior Learning Experience Designer, to share advice and lessons she’s learned throughout her career.
About Me
As a young student in Lima, Peru (where I was born and raised) I was very interested in understanding the process of learning and why I struggled with some classes in school. I wanted to know the magic formula to learn easily and without frustration. Later in my life, after getting a BA in Educational Psychology and a MA in Digital Media Design for Learning, I realized that struggling is a fundamental part of the learning process and understood that how you experience and perceive that struggle makes a difference. I chose to become a Learning Experience Designer to create good struggles — learning experiences that are effective, but at the right level of difficulty.
Over the years, I’ve experimented with different frameworks to design and evaluate learning experiences, from Gagne to Human Centered Design. I’ve also worked in diverse contexts, like a rural middle school in the Andes, a top tier urban higher education institution in Lima, and a professional services firm in New York City. These experiences had very different challenges and outcomes, and through each experience I’ve learned quite a bit.
These are three of the most useful lessons I’ve learned:
Know yourself
We all know the importance of getting to know the learner — it’s a well known fact. Over the years, I’ve learned that to really empathize with others, I need to get to know myself and identify my own biases to know when I’m jumping to a conclusion or judging. Getting rid of biases is not possible, but knowing when you usually twist things to fit your point of view is very useful (and can be painful, but that is a topic for another blog post).
Focus on attainable goals
Creating learning goals and objectives is not an easy task, and there are a lot of things to consider — this is the first opportunity you have to create good struggles. Make sure you are using the information you gathered about the learner from interviews, surveys or existing data and challenge them without stretching them thin. One way to do this effectively is to consider Vygotsky’s ideas proposed in its Sociocultural Theory of Cognitive Development, such as the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and Scaffolding, alluding to the next step of learning that a person can reach, and the support that a facilitator can provide to a learner to guide them into that ZPD. Don’t expect learning to make big jumps as that will not lead to a good struggle. Instead, build upon previous knowledge and provide support one step at a time.
Articulate the experience clearly
The best learning experiences clearly articulate the learning goals, expectations, and outcomes. Creating a streamlined path to a particular goal helps you focus, and if you get lost in the content, it is easier to get back on track because you understand what you are supposed to do and where you are going. Once you have established learning goals and objectives, make them visible throughout the experience and keep the language consistent. Redundancy in the language used can aid memory and help learners consolidate knowledge.
Grow your network
Lastly, always look for new approaches and to grow your network of LXDs. Having a solid group of fellow designers that can provide feedback and challenge you can be a game changer. Personally, I’m very fortunate to be part of WGU Labs’ Learning Design Team. I get to learn from the team and they challenge me to see things differently and that is exactly what I need to keep improving.
In my experience, the key to our role is to iterate and listen to others. As learning experience designers we should always experiment, have fun and never stop learning. I invite you to have these topics top of mind in your next project, sometimes even a simple sticky note at eye level reminds me to focus on what is truly important in my process. Finally, I would love to hear what other lessons you can share with us!
About Labs
WGU Labs invents, builds, and enables innovative education products and offerings that multiply the effects of WGU’s mission to have a transformative impact on higher education: to expand access, improve quality, and optimize student outcomes. Click here to visit our webpage to learn more about our team, the projects we’re working on, and our expanding list of partners.
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