Principles of learnering experience design

At TheLearning LAB, we believe that a learning experience should be designed in such a way that it has one clear goal in mind.

Whether you are designing a face-to-face course or an online course, there are fundamental concepts that apply to all types of learning experiences. 

Engagement, Not Entertainment

The most important goal of any learning experience is to get people to engage.

The most engaging experiences are ones that enable students to practice a skill in the real world. When it comes to engagement, it’s not all about entertainment!

There should be no time limits, and you shouldn’t have artificially high failure rates if students don’t know exactly what they need to do. People who are focused on doing something relevant are naturally drawn into their work.

Drive Comprehension Through Guided Practice

When it comes to experience design, one of the most important principles is that elearning is more effective when it’s interactive.

This can mean working through simulations or giving elearners a chance to apply what they’ve learned in context.

However, whatever you do, avoid simply telling learners about the topic without letting them practice their new skills.

Practicing an action will help elearners make the connection between what they know (theory) and what they can do (application).

Ideally, you’ll set up a guided practice where your elearner works through a task (like in an actual scenario) with step-by-step instructions from an expert trainer on how to complete each part of the exercise correctly.

Offer Tools for Affirmation and Self-Assessment

It is important for learners to be able to self-assess and track their progress towards mastery. This affirms what they know, and what they still need to learn, and helps them feel a sense of accomplishment for completing lessons. 

As learners progress through an online course, it’s good practice to offer tools that enable them to look back at their own performance on previous tasks.

These tools can include pre-and post-assessments, evaluations, or quizzes, in addition to a running record of all assessments taken.

Incorporate Realistic Simulations Into Lectures

Realistic simulations are a vital part of many learning experiences, but they’re often overlooked when it comes to lectures.

There’s no better way to reinforce a principle or concept than by showing an example that mirrors what eLearning students will experience in their actual jobs. 

Support the Learner by Providing a Menu of Options

Learners are smart. They can often figure out what they need without being explicitly told, so you should give them a broad menu of options that they can choose from to support their needs. 

The number of choices a learner has is up to you—for example, if there are many ways to complete a given task in your course, try offering more than one so learners have a greater degree of choice in how they perform that task.

 And don’t forget about social or collaborative elearning situations where learners may be working together on projects or sharing resources.

Offer them multiple ways to accomplish tasks so they can work with their peers as well as to adapt their learning strategies depending on their own comfort level and preferences.

Base Material on Real-World Applications That Students Can Connect To

Keep in mind that you’re designing a learning experience, not a content dump. Your goal is to help learners grow as people and build skills that will serve them well after they graduate or complete training. 

In other words, you need to start with real-world scenarios, not abstract principles. So while it might seem like you’re saving time by reusing slides from previous elearning courses, don’t do it if those slides don’t fit your target audience’s needs or relate to their current challenges.

 Instead, always base your course material on real-world applications that students can connect to. If a scenario does not apply directly to your audience or its challenges, scrap it.

Include Discussions Within the Course, But Do So in Moderation

While discussion is a powerful tool for creating a collaborative learning environment, it’s easy to go overboard with discussions.

And when you do, you run into problems. First, students can get lost in discussions and lose track of time.

Second, students who don’t participate in discussions may feel alienated or left out. Third, if there are no clear instructions on how to participate in a discussion, students may take part without actually contributing anything substantive to elearning.

Learners experience design vs instructional design: 3 key differences

This post highlights 5 key differences between learner experience design and instructional design with tips on how you can start delivering more effective courses today. 

Course length vs time commitment

Instructional designers create content-rich elearning courses that provide deep dives into specific topics over long periods of time.

While these types of courses are often beneficial, they can also be off-putting to busy learners who want quick solutions to specific problems.

By contrast, LXD is focused on creating meaningful elearning experiences that encourage people to learn at their own pace over short periods of time—sometimes just minutes or hours at a time. 

Learning as an activity vs passive consumption 

The traditional approach to elearning course development involves spending months or even years writing elearning content, then distributing it via traditional channels like PDFs and videos.

By contrast, LXD encourages educators to think about what kinds of activities will make information stick with learners as opposed to merely communicating ideas through written elearning materials and presentations. 

Designing courses based on goals vs knowledge transfer

Instructional designers spend significant amounts of time analyzing why students need a particular skill set so that they can select appropriate methods for transferring those skills from experts to novices.

It’s helpful to think about where each method excels. For example, if you want to teach someone how to use a certain piece of software, instructional design may be best because it helps learners master foundational elearning concepts before moving on to advanced ones.

However, if you simply want users to gain familiarity with an interface, consider using learner experience design instead because its goal is primarily behavioral change rather than knowledge transfer.

At TheLearning LAB, we create amazing learners experience designs

The learning experience design is what defines an engaging, effective, and fun course. We understand that when people think of creating an eLearning course, they often get stuck because they try to think up all these ideas first. 

There is a certain process to go through. That is why we have broken down each step so that you have a guideline when creating your own in-house elearning course or designing with our team.

At TheLearning LAB, We create unique and amazing learning experience designs, choose us today.

We have excellent software developers, audiovisual designers, and user interface specialists who help create engaging e-learning experiences. 

Our consulting team will work with you every step of the way to ensure you are getting what you want from start to finish.