What was the most surprising thing that you learned by participating in the design thinking process and designing and developing your digital learning resource?
What I enjoyed most about the design thinking process and found most compelling was the needs assessment portion. Observing and engaging with the learners I was designing for, gave me the opportunity to understand more than just the learning-related traits, but everything from the environment, design elements, and external factors that impact the overall learning experience. After “walking in their shoes” and immersing myself in their working environment, I felt I was far better equipped to design something to meet their needs. The combination of design-based research, learning theories, and the needs assessment proved to be an effective foundation to start building something that could work.
What suggestions and improvements did you receive? Did you get any feedback that you did not expect? What feedback needs further investigation?
I received feedback related to the learning objectives I had set and agree that they could absolutely be more direct in terms of actionable verbs to be used, as well as proper measurable ways to evaluate whether or not they had been met. I also received some very constructive recommendations that I will absolutely be using when designing the remainder of this digital resource. Specifically, incorporating functionality to track advancement will be important to highlight the accomplishments and progress of the learners; it will also be beneficial for our succession planning tool as well. It was also suggested that I build a journey out of the various modules to help in managing the overall learning outcome while providing a clear path for the user. A recommendation was also made to keep some face-to-face training in place to allow for networking and social interaction, I will look at how to keep this interactive option open even if it can’t be done in a physical event form.
What are the next steps you would like to take to build upon your digital learning resource?
The next steps will require a rebuild of the learning objectives, not just the module I made but for the entirety of the management training system. I will also need to dive deeper into the needs assessment when looking at the entirety of the management learning journey as opposed to the one in-class element.
Also, consider how you might utilize the design thinking process for the design and creation of digital learning resources in the future, or for other tasks that you may encounter within your instructional context.
After completing the design thinking process from beginning to end, I will now incorporate this model in my workplace. The biggest missing piece was the empathy phase and I believe that by introducing this in future design projects it will only continue to help our team as we elevate our course offerings. Evaluation and reflection are also steps that have been redefined for me, and rather than doing rigorous “post-mortem” evaluations that focus primarily on saturation numbers, a deeper dive in areas related to learning objectives will allow us to evaluate more areas of effectiveness.