World of E's

(Working) Learning Design Principles

I posted a braindump a few weeks ago on things that felt like important considerations for our learning offerings. I’ve built on that list a bit more and presented it on the Learning Community call today. We got some great feedback and are looking for even more insight as we continue to evolve this list. These are important to get (mostly) right before we get too far down the road of developing our learning content. The current principles are listed below and the working document can be found here.

One thing to note: there are definite crossovers between these - overlaps which I think makes sense. If we do this right, there should be a diversity of deliverables and options but with a thread of a consistent feel or approach throughout. People should get a feel for what Mozilla learning is like/about and that feeling should carry throughout all of the different pathways we provide.

(WORKING) LEARNING DESIGN PRINCIPLES

Learning to make by making. Less yak, more hack.

• Built around tools and making exercises that ‘help teach’
• Learning is a byproduct of making

Hacking on things they care about at the core.

• Authentic, interest-based learning
• Meaningful making vs. arbitrary tasks
• i.e. stories for journalists

More pathways == better. Avoid (even “fight”) one prescribed way to learn.

• Leverage existing content and pathways. 
• Balance self-driven options, authority/faciliated options, peer options
• Ultimately: choose your own adventure approach 
• Offer/support multimedia options (online, offline, synchronous, asynchronous, etc)
• Support various levels / entry points (age, skill level, learning types, etc)

Support / encourage the “social”. 

• Encourage social interaction, collaboration, peer learning and sharing
• Leverage peer assessments and mentorship

Build in fun / play. 

• Explicit fun in cases where it makes sense, but also implicit
• Promote / support interest-driven exploration and tinkering
• Capitalize on intrinsic motivations already existing
• Support both:
  • Fun (pure enjoyment) vs Play (tinkering, messing around)
  • Might be two separate principles?

Embed assessments in the learning and learning in the assessments.

• Be innovative about assessment - honor the nature of the learning experience / making
• Authentic and relevant assessments built into the learning experience
• People should be able to learn more through taking the assessment as well as assessing other people’s work

Support graceful degradation - Fail well.

• Help users when they get stuck
• Build in trial and error as much as possible
• Congratulate people for failing; congratulate people for trying alternative methods

Give recognition.

• Legitimize this learning - make it count beyond the learning experience
• Build in badges

Design for extensibility / scale beyond ourselves.

• Make it easy to run events around learning content - event kit + plug and play content
• Modularity
• Mentorship and teach the teachers
• Nurture a community that can run itself

Reveal the universe.

• Show people everything there is to learn and how - let them see where they fit into it and where they can go.
• Recognize that not everyone wants to get to the same point you do

Produce consumer grade web experiences and software.

• High quality, authentic experiences
• Build experiences that feel like Mozilla

Again, more context on some of these can be found in my previous post.

What’s missing from this list? Are there other principles that we should consider? Again, here’s the working document - feel free to add thoughts directly to the etherpad. 

-E