I feel that my ideas for the Graduate Certificate in Learning Design are really beginning to be formed at quite a granular level. This makes sense as I am now in the process of developing the full subject descriptions for each of the eight subjects. I’m prioritising four to begin with as they will be the ones first launched as microcredentials, but I think the work that I do on these four will stand me in good stead as I go forward and I plan the other four. The fours that I am currently focussing on are Think, Design, Create and Predict.
I’ve already written a little bit about Think, Create and Predict. I thought it might be worthwhile unpacking my ideas about Design, too. One of the challenges for Design is that it needs to differentiate itself from Think, which I was quite concerned about, but now that I have started working on both of them, I think there is some considerable differences there. Think will be, for the most part, about learning and the differing theories of learning. The challenge here will be providing enough practical examples and activities to ensure that I meet the requirement that I have set for myself that the work will be practical, as much as it is theoretical.
Alternative, Design will be about models of learning and instructional design. I know there are some people who argue that there are specific differences between learning and instructional design, and most people suggest that these lines lie in the different conceptions of learning that inform the models applied (e.g. ID is mostly behavioural, LD is mostly social), but I think that division has narrowed or even disappeared entirely
The challenge, then, is determining which models are best for students to apply. I’m conscious that while schools might have embraced socio-cultural learning (at least in some aspects) many corporate training approaches are still quite behavioural or cognitivist, rather socio-cultural, even if the day to day training of the work is more social in origin.
Having said that, I think that the answer might be to encourage the students to recognise that there is likely to be a continuum through the differnent approaches to learning, and i should teach them about the features that make up different theories about instruction and how they might best deploy them in their particular context. For example, I might spend some time discussing where feedback’s importance has come from, or the value of learning objectives or something like that.
In this case, the models (i.e. Addie, SAM, UDL, UBL) are less important than the features of the different models and how they related to theories of instruction (rather than theories of learning).