Design

 

What do teachers do?

One of my pet peeves are people who say that no one needs teachers because everything can be learned through self-study. This mistaken belief has a narrow view of teaching as delivering content. Teachers to much more than delivering learning:

  • Curate: teachers choose what content and learning activities to include in a learning experience.
  • Sequence: teachers decide what order to present content and activities to maximize learning.
  • Prompt performance: teachers provide assignments and tasks that prompt learners to apply what they have learned.
  • Feedback: teachers provide feedback on learner performance.
  • Scaffolding: teachers provide supports to help learners learn a new topic.
  • Motivation: teachers are often cheerleaders pushing learners to keep trying.
  • Evaluate: teachers provide grades and evaluations on the quality of learner performance.
  • Answer questions: teachers answer learner questions.
  • Ask questions: teachers ask learners questions.
  • Explain: teachers provide explanations about content.
  • Highlight: teachers can identify the essential elements in a lesson.
  • Storytelling: teachers provide stories and examples.

An indie teacher will use most if not all of these in the design of learning experiences.

Why do teachers need to be experts?

Con man Frank Abagnale Jr. successfully posed as many professionals including an airline pilot, a medical doctor, a lawyer, and a professor. For the latter role, he said he just had to stay ahead of the students by one chapter in the textbook. This story leads some to think that anyone can teach anything just by knowing more than the learner. This is a dangerous idea.

Experts have two advantages over novices:

First, experts know what is important and requires attention. There is a story of an expensive piece of equipment that had broken down. No one could figure out how to fix it, so an expert was called in. The expert took a few minutes to examine the machine and replaced one bolt. Her bill for this work was $10,001. The $1 was for the bolt. The $10,000 was for knowing what part needed to be replaced. In developing learning products, a key aspect of the design is the curation of what topics need to be included and what can be left out.

Second, experts have a better map of the knowledge space and how different pieces relate to each other. Typically, there are ideas that are prerequisites to other ideas. If you do not understand addition, it will be hard to understand multiplication.

Part of this process involves sorting out what theory needs to be understood and what practices. If you are teaching someone to program a computer, they do not need to understand the theory of electricity, nor do they need to know how to build computer chips. At the same time, some understanding of how circuits on computer chips works helps understand the logic of how computers work. The idea that a chip has many circuits that are either open or closed is the foundation for binary logic and how information is encoded digitally.

Learning design requires application of expertise in designing the learning. Only an expert knows what to include, what to leave out, and how to provide context.

We live in an era of information overload. Teachers place an important role in helping learners focus their attention on what is key. Teachers provide a structure for what is essential in the learning process.

Traditionally education has employed a “just in case” model of inclusivity. Content was included just in case it ever came up in the future. Teachers can create a great deal of value by helping students identify what is most important to know and how to find the answers when those “just in case” situations arise.

How do I research my topic?

If you are an expert on a topic, you might already have enough internal knowledge to map the domain without doing any research. What is already in your head is the result of accumulated experience and study that you have developed over the years. If you are not yet an expert or if you want to validate what you already know, research both through reviewing the work of others and reflecting on your own experience can be useful.

Research includes review of both secondary sources and original (primary) research.

For example, secondary research about how to market products online can involve reading books, articles, watching videos, and reviewing what others have published about marketing.

Primary (original) research can be gained by practicing marketing. By using different approaches to marketing and measuring results, new insights can be developed and documented. The lessons learned from your application will create learning that is unique to you.

How do I take notes from my research?

There are several ways to capture what is in your head in notes that you can use in the design of your learning offering. I suggest using either note cards or stickie-notes if you like paper or PowerPoint or other presentation software if you want to go digital. In either paper or digital contexts, you want to capture one idea on each card/note.

As you read, you can make notes from what you read. If you are brainstorming alone or with others, you can likewise capture your ideas. During the capture stage, don’t worry about structure and organization. The key is to get the ideas.

If you read on a Kindle, you can highlight and make notes. Later you can copy and paste these into PowerPoint. Just remember to indicate what is a quote and what is the source of the material. This helps with citations later and helps you if you forget where it came from and want to re-read the page where it came from.

Once you have a collection of notes, you can begin to organize them into categories and themes. Digitally, PowerPoint makes it easy to move slides around and add slides for topic category and subcategories or additional ideas. Stickie notes can be posted to a wall and moved around as you review your notes.

You can always go back and make more notes and re-arrange your notes. This is an iterative process.

Depending on your personality, you may find it easier to start with big concepts and work your way down into details. Other people may prefer to start with the details and examples and work their way to the big concepts. Personally, I find myself switching back and forth as I work on a topic.

How can I outline my topic?

Ultimately, you want to use your notes to create an outline. You can do this in a traditional outline using a word processor or you can use a graphical approach such as a knowledge map. Traditional outlining is linear, but a knowledge map allows you to explore your topic in a non-linear fashion.

Outlining can be deductive (top-down) where you start with big concepts and work your way into the details, or it can be inductive where you start with the details and sort these into categories. Affinity mapping is an example of the inductive approach. Usually it will be a hybrid with some of both. Depending on how you have structured your notes, you may already have a structure in place.

In a top-down approach, you begin with the main topic and identify the main subtopics. For each subtopic, you then identify the sub-subtopic. You repeat this process as much as needed to provide documentation of the solution. One way to accomplish this purpose is an outline like we all learned in elementary school for writing a paper.

Another approach is to use mind maps. In a mind map, you begin with the main topic as the middle node in a diagram. Then you identify each subtopic as a subdomain node linked to the main topic. Like in the outline, you repeat this process at greater levels of detail. The difference in these two approaches is that an outline is a list of topics in a linear structure where a mind map is a graphical depiction.

In a bottom-up approach, you start with the details. You capture specific concepts as words, phrases, short passages of text, or even images and pictures. Once you have accumulated these items, you can organize them into categories. The categories can be grouped into larger categories. The relationship between categories can be captured as well. Affinity mapping is one approach that follows this bottom-up approach. At the end of the process, you have something that looks like a mind map (or an outline) but built from the details into higher level concepts rather than the other way.

In practice, you will probably do some of both. You will start top down and as you work focus on some details that lead to categories that you missed initially. You might stop in a bottom-up approach and discover categories that require adding detail and subtopics too.

You can brainstorm ideas and capture them in an outline or a knowledge map directly, or you can use note cards or PowerPoint slides to capture notes and then sort them into an outline.

There is no singular right way to do this…you find the process that works for you.

If you use a word processor like Microsoft Word, you can use the styles to help organize your outline using your notes. Create a title or description for each note and make that a Heading 2. Group related notes together under a Heading 1 headline. This document uses questions for each of the Heading 2 sections. Most of the Heading 1 titles are questions as well. In some cases, I even have subsections which are Heading 3 styles. The power of this approach is when you turn on the Navigation Pane on the View menu. Not only does this give you an outline view of your headings in the Navigation pane, but you can easily move sections in the document by moving a heading in the Navigation pane to a new location. The associated text moves with it. (Later when adding a Table of Contents, Word will also use the Heading Styles to generate an automatic table of contents.)

What is a knowledge map?

A knowledge map (or mind map) is a graphical outline of a topic. You start with the core idea in the center of the map and create secondary nodes off the main topic to capture the next level of ideas. Each secondary node will likely have additional sub nodes and so on.

The knowledge map provides you with an overview of your topic. It will help you identify what your audience already knows, what they don’t know, and what they need to know. What they need to know defines the purpose of your offering.

What software can I use for creating a knowledge map?

There are several options for software to create knowledge maps. Some need to be downloaded while others can be used directly online.

FreeMind http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

MindDomo https://www.mindomo.com/?join=sqVPAx

iMindq https://www.imindq.com

Mindmup https://www.mindmup.com/

This is not a complete list, but these are all applications I have used. For people who are visual thinkers, a knowledge map of your topic will help you see your topic better than a traditional outline.

How do I use a knowledge map for my Minimum Viable Solution and Backlog?

The purpose of your outline or knowledge map is to create an overview of your topic. This overview serves multiple purposes, and the first use of the knowledge map is to identify a minimum viable solution (MVS).

The MVS is the smallest solution that you can offer that still creates value. The concept comes from agile software development and contrasts with old models of software development that would take years only to fail to achieve their original objectives. The philosophy of agile is to create a solution in a series of stages where each stage provides value for the user. This allows adjustments to be made based on feedback during the project rather than waiting until the end. In learning solution design, the question is what are the smallest number of topics that you can include in a course or book that would create value for your audience?

For most teachers, this can be a difficult choice, akin to asking me which of my ten children should go into the lifeboat first. The key is that everything that is not included in the MVS goes onto the backlog. This is another agile concept. We create a list of functions (or in our case, content) that we will address in future releases. In time, everyone gets a seat in the lifeboat.

The MVS allows you to design, build, and publish your content with the minimum investment of time. This way if the content fails to develop traction, you have minimized your time investment. If it does get traction, then you can build more content as a sequel. This also significantly shortens the time to get something in front of your audience. The sooner you get something out there, the sooner you have feedback on what works and doesn’t work.

What are the components of a learning experience?

A common misconception in education is that content is learning. The lecture method of instruction persists because of this idea even though we all know through experience that it does not work, and what learning does occur is usually short lived.

For true learning, we need to go beyond content to include additional components of the learning experience.

Learning content is typically very passive for the learner. The teacher pushes out content. This can occur through a lecture or presentation or through readings.

To make learning more effective, we add active elements. These can include interactive exercises, objective assessments, or performance-based learning. Interactive exercises are simple assignments where students demonstrate recall of the learning. Matching words and definitions would be an interactive exercise. Objective assessments include quizzes, tests, and exams but also problem sets and any work a student does that has an objective (right or wrong) answer. Performance-based learning uses problems, scenarios, projects, or other assignments where the student uses the learning to demonstrate application of the learning, typically in a real-world or simulated context.

Finally, we add interactions between the teacher and the learner. Discussion provides the most common interactive element in a classroom. In the face-to-face environment, discussion is almost always synchronous where teacher and learners ask questions and respond at the same time. Online, synchronous discussion can use tools like chat, conference calls or videos. Typically, this is many-to-many communication where the teacher and all learners can interact. Lecture, in contrast, is one-to-many with the teacher communicating with all learners in one direction. Online learning also enables asynchronous communication where discussions are not at the same time. Email and discussion boards allow the conversation to be extended overtime. In addition, interactivity can be one-to-one where the teacher and learner communicate privately whether in person, email, chat, by phone, or by video conference.

Feedback provides an additional form of interactivity. We often think of the teacher providing feedback to the student, but we can also use peer feedback. Some tasks also have experiential feedback. If I am teaching archery, the learner has immediate feedback on whether she hit the target. Feedback is critical for helping a learner know whether she is achieving the goal of the learning (hitting the target) and how to improve performance.

How do I align my concepts with the elements of a learning experience?

Learning includes ten elements in three categories of passive, active, and interactive:

  • Passive
    • Content – lecture/presentation (video, audio) recorded or live
    • Content – reading
    • Announcements one to many
  • Active
    • Interactive exercise
    • Objective Assessment
    • Performance-based learning
  • Interactive
    • Discussion one to one email, chat, conference
    • Discussion asynchronous (email, discussion board) many to many
    • Discussion synchronous (chat, conference call/video) many to many
    • Feedback (peer, instructor, experiential)

For each of the major topics identified to be included in the MVP, ask yourself how this topic will be represented through each element.

Passive

Content – lecture/presentation (video, audio) recorded or liveContent – readingAnnouncements one to many
Topic 1
Topic 2
Topic 3

Active

Interactive exerciseObjective AssessmentPerformance-based Learning
Topic 1
Topic 2
Topic 3

Interactive

Discussion one-on-oneAsynchronous DiscussionSynchronous DiscussionFeedback
Topic 1
Topic 2
Topic 3

It is not required that each cell be filled. Depending on the format of the learning experience, some calls may not make sense. The purpose is to help you as a learning designer think about the learning content and objectives and how they will be reflected in the learning experience.

What types of learning resources can I offer my audience?

You have many options for what type of learning experiences to offer:

  • Writing: Blogs, Books, and Articles

  • Live Events: Speaking, Workshops, Conferences, and Bootcamps

  • Virtual Events: Courses, Webinars, Videos, and Podcasts

  • Groups: Membership sites and Mastermind Groups

  • Consulting and Coaching

  • Services: Writing/Editing, Research, Professional Services, and Grants

Writing can be long form (book) or shorter (blog or article). Books are usually offered as a paid product, and books can be as short as 20,000 words. The key is the value created for the learner not the length of the book. Blogs and articles are usually given away or integrated into another type of learning experience like a course.

Live events include public speaking, workshops, conferences, bootcamps, and any other type of in-person event. These are usually a paid product. Because live events require the teacher and learners to be together in time and space, they are the most challenging experience to schedule and deliver.

Virtual events are learning experiences offered online rather than face-to-face. These can include online courses that are typically asynchronous. Webinars are usually synchronous and last for 1-2 hours. Videos simulate the traditional classroom lecture, but best practice is to keep these in 5-7-minute chunks and never longer than 10 minutes. Podcasts are audio lectures or interviews. In practice these are longer than videos, but they work best in 5-7-minute chunks. The human attention span is not well-suited for long-form presentations, especially in the virtual setting. Online courses are usually a paid product and sometimes webinars are as well. Videos and podcasts are often integrated into a course or given away.

Groups bring learners together in an experience that spans a course. A group can be informal and online in a social media site or it can be a formal membership organization where the teacher is actively providing new learning experiences on an ongoing basis in exchange for a membership fee. Mastermind groups are a fancy term for a group of peers that regularly discuss a common interest and set of goals.

Coaching and consulting are both paid services where the teacher works with an individual (coaching) or an organization (consulting) to solve a problem. Group coaching is coaching done with a group of individuals.

Services include a range of activities that a teacher can perform on the behalf of another person or organization. This can include writing and editing, research, grant works including grant writing, or other professional services. These are always paid services. This has the least to do with learning of any of the categories, since someone is hiring you so that they don’t need to learn how to do something. I include it because it is a way that teachers can make money.

Designing a learning experience includes deciding what services to include in your service. For example, you might decide that a book is the right way to share your knowledge, or you might create an online course. The current version for indie teaching is to offer a book, courses, and coaching. Maybe later I will add professional services for marketing for indie teachers. These can be integrated, so that a course includes a book and coaching all for one fee.

There are no single right answers. As a creator, you can decide what medium works for you, the learning, and your learners. You can try something and see what works. You can offer different configurations of services for different parts of your audience.

Sometimes courses and books are not intended to make money. Instead the goal is to make an income from public speaking or consulting or professional services.

Another step in the process is to determine what to charge for and what to give away. This is part of the publishing process, but it is important to consider in the design because it will influence what forms to use.

For example, many courses and other resources exist that talk about how to make a living blogging. This is a misnomer. Few bloggers make any money from blogging. Blogging is a tool for generating interest in what they do that makes money. Bloggers are also course developers and book authors. If you think that you will be able to write a blog and make money, you will be frustrated. As part of the design, you need to think about how you will make money unless your goal is just a hobby.

What is a framework to structure the learning experience?

Independent of the medium for delivering learning, this simple framework provides a structure for organizing the sequence of learning:

  • First explain the why you need to learn what I am going to teach

  • Second explain what you need to learn and about what I am going to teach

  • Third present what you need to learn

  • Fourth give you the action steps on how to use this learning

  • Fifth provide an activity or way I can test and demonstrate what I have learned

  • Sixth provide feedback and coaching while the learner practices

How do I make decisions during design?

Each stage of the design sprint contains within it a decision-making cycle: Observe, Model, Decide, and Act (OMDA).

  • Observe: Research during the design stage provides content for the observe step of decision-making.
  • Model: The creation of an outline or knowledge map provides the foundation of the orientation step in the design process. In this process, we are connecting the results of the research to form a model of the information that our audience needs.
  • Decide: The decision around the minimum viable product is part of the decision process. This requires making decisions about what to include and what to leave out of the first iteration of the product. Framing the concepts with the elements of the learning experience is another critical decision.
  • Act: Action is the process of building out the design into our product.