Alfonso MacGregor & Fiona Prince
For this LRNT524 assignment, we used design thinking to develop a prototype of an elearning course that will help students begin to create a sense of inclusion in their new online learning community, encourage students to engage in intellectual risk taking and become actively engaged in their online learning.
Context
Since we (Alfonso and Fiona) do not work for organizations, we created the fictitious Tremendous Travel Agency for this assignment.
Using the d.school design thinking template (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, 2013), we interviewed each other concerning our own challenges with booking flights, cars, hotels, tours, and so on. We shared ideas about types of travellers who might need and want our services and our course.
Using Keller’s four stage ARCS model (Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction) we structured a 4-6 week course to include the following stages:
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Interactive online learning tutorial:
Video demos with transcripts and self-test quizzes on how to navigate the online learning platform and use the course applications/tools. This stage captures the learner’s attention, generates curiosity, heightens perceptions and encourages inquiry (Thomas, 2010).
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Share Your Ideal Travel Experience
Learners build digital scrapbooks of their ideal travel experience. This activity ensures the content is relevant to the learner (Thomas, 2010). It aligns with empathic design which “focuses on everyday life experiences, and on individual desires, moods, and emotions in human activities, turning such experiences and emotions into inspiration,” (Mattlemaki, Vaajakallio, & Koskinen, 2014, p. 67).
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Engage with Community
Learners comment on each other’s scrapbooks, ask questions, and update their scrapbooks based on feedback. This intellectual risk taking through feedback prepares learners for the next step and instills confidence in the learning process.
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Challenges and Obstacles
Learners create scrapbook pages with the challenges that prevent them from achieving their ideal travel experience. This activity keeps the learning relevant and reinforces what it is the learner is trying to accomplish. “Adults desire to be competent in matters that are valuable to them and necessary for their personal or professional growth and development,” (Thomas, 2010, p. 211).
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Peer Coaching
Learners review their peers’ scrapbooks, then suggest options to each other for facing challenges and overcoming obstacles. This peer coaching keeps the learners’ attention and boosts their confidence as they discover relevant solutions to their travel fears.
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Planning to TravelWith guidance from the instructors, learners plan their ideal travel, including how they will book their travel and accommodations, what they will pack, who will look after their home while they are gone, and other travel essentials. This final activity “provides meaningful opportunities for learners to use their newly acquired knowledge/skill,” (Thomas, 2010, p. 213) which leads to satisfaction.
Planning to TravelBy the end of the course, each learner will have developed a scrapbook of their ideal travel, the challenges they face, and solutions to those challenges.
We (Alfonso and Fiona) will reveal pages of our own scrapbooks throughout the course to create connections with the learners and demonstrate empathy (Mattlemaki, Vaajakallio, & Koskinen, 2014) for the process they will go through to become confident travellers.
We would love to read your comments, questions and suggestions! Travel with us and be our critical friends. 🙂
References:
Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. (2013). An introduction to Design Thinking. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-6182-7_1
Mattelmaki, T., Vaajakallio, K., & Koskinen, I. (2014). What Happened to Empathic Design? DesignIssues, 30(1), 67–77. https://doi.org/10.1162/DESI
Thomas, P. Y. (2010). Learning and instructional systems design. In Towards developing a web-based blended learning environment at the University of Botswana. (Doctoral dissertation).
Travel Agency image attribution: Source: https://blog.itravelsoftware.com/2012/10/travel-agency-system-5-things-it-must-have/
Scrapbook image attribution: https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7e/66/20/7e6620b70509f667f3c3ae09e7454cd8.jpg
Hi Fiona and Alfonso,
I am sorry to be so late in commenting, hopefully this does not create to much stress in your lives! I thought your idea to create a ficticious company was an interesting way to approach this challenge, and the way you worked through the steps, while also applying existing pedegogy was effective as well, good job. Since I am so late in responding I will keep my questions brief. For the video demos you mentioned, I’m curious as to the specific elements that you will include in them to ‘capture attention and encourage inquiry’? Also, how will you ensure that participants meaningfully engage in the commenting on each other’s travel scrapbooks? Do you have strategies in place to encourage commenting? Thanks for the post, and creative ideas!
Hi Fiona and Alfonso,
I enjoyed reading through your solution to engage risk adverse travellers as learners and the use of community to combat their unique challenges. Even as a frequent traveller, I’ve experienced the anxiety of travelling somewhere new. This has been helped by finding and talking to a friend that has already been to the country that I plan to visit, but this is not always possible (even with access to your networks via social media). Bravo on tapping into this challenge in your solution by giving your learners access to a traveller community.
In looking at your solution through my other context as an adult learner that doesn’t always have time to commit to courses, I’m wondering how you plan to keep learners actively engaged for four to six weeks? For example, will the video demos include activities and interactions every week to complete?
Also, if I’m correct in assuming that your course centers on building digital scrapbooks, how do you plan to handle learners with differing levels of digital skills? As a suggestion, I have found it useful when courses utilize the first week to provide an assignment that allow me to learn and directly apply tools or skills that will be required in the course to a specific situation. This way, you can tap into and support how adult learners “desire immediate, not postponed application of the knowledge learned” (Merriam & Bierema, 2013, p. 53). This suggestion could be integrated with your element of video demos/tutorials.
I hope these questions prove helpful to consider as you take on a learner’s lens of your design in Part B. Good luck with this next step and thanks for providing me with ideas to use in my future course designs.
– Nicolette
References
Merriam, S. B., & Bierema, L. L. (2013). Adult Learning: Linking Theory and Practice. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Thank you for sharing your concept and articulating the connection to the course reading so well. This design has piqued my curiosity as it reminds me of a sort of online, group, cognitive behavioral therapy. I’m wondering if the model could be strengthened by research in that area. It reminds me of some online prenatal support groups I have been a part of, where members shared their fears and hopes, and sometimes, people would a take a leadership on organizing activities to help people cope and prepare. I could see lasting connection and interests arising out of this. I could also see this model being generalized and applied in other circumstances and I would be very curious to see the outcomes of groups initiated by service providers or corporations.
Your post prompted me to search for some information on online support groups and I found this article which explores online support groups and the extent to which “therapeutic exchanges and processes such as catharsis, empathy, and problem-solving exist? … To what extent are social relationships developed?” (Finn, 1999) Your component is unique in that it is partly hard skills based and partly therapeutic. I imagine there is a significant amount of theory in cognitive therapy that could be informative to instructional design in general.
I look forward to part B.
References
Finn, J. (1999). An exploration of helping processes in an online self-Help group focusing on issues of disability. Health and Social Work, 24(3), 220-231.
Mary, you have given us a good area for research. Thank you.
On behalf of Alphonso and myself, I can say that we will be exploring your suggestion of cognitive behavioural therapies in an online environment. We started with the idea of modelling the course after AA support groups, but realized that we would be forcing people through a specific number of structured steps that may not apply to each learner.
Still, we had the idea of a Timid Traveller support group–I just didn’t include it in our 500 words. 🙂
In my past work (2007-2013) helping women start businesses, part of my coaching involved addressing ‘limiting beliefs’ that stop us from reaching our potential. In group coaching sessions, the participants helped each other get past their limiting beliefs because it’s always easier to solve someone else’s problem than one’s own. We hoped that with the Timid Traveller course, that learners would do the same with the instructors as guides rather than therapists.
Hi Alfonso and Fiona,
I like how clearly layed out this design is.
What type of tool do you have in mind for the peer coaching? If Padlet were used for the scrapbooking, then peers could use the commenting feature to comment on specific obstacles, etc. Thoughts?
Thanks Jason,
We hadn’t investigated tools for the peer-coaching part. You are right; it would depend on which tools were chosen to created the scrapbook pages, so a tool like Padlet that allows people to comment would work better than a Moodle-type discussion forum.
Hey Fiona and Alfonso!! What a cool idea. I agree it sounds like Pinterest, only with an online community to help you plan a cool trip. I’m just a little confused about when this would be used. If it were a travel agency, would it be free or paid for..? I think it’d be a cool part of travelocity or a larger site. I know absolutely nothing about travel agencies, though!!
Hi Krista,
The Tremendous Travel Agency is an independent company.
The course would be offered at no cost to the learner, but with travel discount incentives on course completion. It would be offered four times are year and marketed along with vacation packages.
The cohorts would most likely be small, but even if they weren’t, learners could choose to comment on as few or as many of their peers scrapbooks as they liked. The instructors would comment on all the scrapbook posts. We didn’t include that type of info because it would have taken too much of our 500 word limit 🙂
If the free version of the course worked for the public, then The Tremendous Travel Agency could create a commercial version for purchase by other Travel Agencies: bricks & morter, or virtual.
The point of the course is to help the timid traveller and to have timid travellers help each other. Perhaps it could be marketed through large travel sites like Travelocity and Expedia–now I’m really beyond the scope of this assignment. 🙂
Fascinating concept – planning for the timid! Love the fact you drew on the ARCS model to address the actual prototyping of the course. Your colleagues asked interesting question – the one that attracted my attention was the one asking if this might be used for training for travel agents … hmmm … yet another use of empathy and empathetic design. Of course, I’m always curious about the types of responses that the design thinking process might have prompted amongst you two. Hope you enjoyed the process and saw potential merit in it!
On behalf of Alphonso and myself, thank you for your comments, Susan. We hadn’t thought about training travel agents; however, with more time I think that idea would have surfaced and we would have included it. I have been thinking about how we landed on ‘timid travellers’ but don’t remember exactly how that happened.
I think that is the benefit of design thinking. As designers using this process (instead of unstructured brainstorming), we will take intellectual risks by letting our ideas out before they are fully formed; then we will draw on instructional theories and design models to outline a course. The details will come later as the idea, theories, and models align.
Alphonso and I started with Gagne’s Nine Events, but as we worked through the course design the model seemed forced as did some of the other models. ARCS was a better fit; empathic design was a natural fit. 🙂
Hi Alfonso and Fiona,
Thanks for sharing your creatively designed participatory travel agency, which was also well linked to the ARCS model. Do you view this as being something that can become a user generated travel agency? I was wondering what techniques you may use at the outset in order to motivate ‘learners’ to participate and add their own testimonials. Perhaps by introducing yourselves and modelling how you’ve created your own scrapbooks in order to establish a connection in the video demo section?
I really liked your section on challenges and obstacles, as this can allow participants to really engage with the greater community, and access the knowledge therein in order to garner tips which will help when dealing with specific travel challenges. Do you encourage the use of video here? What other types of ways can they post to their scrapbooks? I think that seeing someone’s face always helps (or at least a mix of images, text and videos).
I was also wondering, is the purpose here to help someone to plan a future trip? Or might this also be a way for travellers to connect with others with similar interests to share places to visit and/or to arrange a meet up or couch surfing etc. etc.? This may be something to consider. If there is a requirement to participate and a profile, it may create a situation where people can not only share information, but can perhaps connect on another level with fellow participants.
Stu
Hello Stu,
Thank you for your comments on behalf of Fiona and myself. On your first question you mention “a user generated travel agency”, during the brainstorming we commented on the possibility (since our target audience is the timid traveller) of looking at it as a sort of anonymous timid travellers group, mainly because we aimed at the person getting rid of the fear to travel. And yes, modelling for our clients is considered. The possibilities of what can be posted in scrapbooks is endless since we are considering digital media as the way to go, so it will depend on the traveler to use the resource or tool s/he feels comfortable with (this is all about feeling good, and travel). And also yes, a big yes with respect to serving as a connection forum for what the travellers might derive from there. Thank you again for reading us. Cheers!
Alfonso
Hi Fiona and Alfonso,
Laura beat me to the punch as I had similar questions as he did. 🙂
Your concept is interesting and nicely laid out in a manner that made it easy to understand. After further review, one additional question that I had was: What application would you use for the creation of the scrapbooks? Would it be one already developed (i.e.: similar to Pinterest) or would your organization create their own IP? or pay to have one developed and tailored from an outside developer? What budget considerations would you have to take into account for this?
Having yourselves (instructors) also reveal your scrapbooks is a great way to create camaraderie and safety amongst the group but will you also accept feedback from the learners as well?
Thank you for sharing your concept. It was enjoyable to read!
Cheers,
Gavin.
Hola Amigo!
On behalf of Fiona and myself, thank you for your comments and interest. Instead of developing a tool for the agency, we know there are plenty out there, and we have total flexibility for the travellers to select the kind of scrapbook tool they like. It can be a software to handle their material in the computer, and there is a wide variety to choose from like: MyMemories Suite, Memory Mixer, and Craft Artisan that are ranked the top three by TopTenReviews. com. There are also scrapbook apps for smartphones both Android and iOS, so the travellers have a wide arrange to find the right option. Setting the tone by modelling for the travellers puts us, the instructors, in the position of accepting travellers’ feedback as well. Again, thank you for reading our post. Cheers!
Alfonso
Hello Fiona and Alfonso,
My first question is, is this training for the travel agents in the agency, or for the clients? I could see this being applied in both ways. This would be a great process for the travel agents to learn how to better read the clients and tailor travel packages to their needs. For clients, this would be an interesting way to get them to explore areas they may not have otherwise thought of before.
As for the course itself, the tools and techniques to assess travel needs is a great idea. This could be a great example of Connectivism, “Learning environments are created and used by learners to access, process, filter, recommend, and apply information with the aid of machines, peers, and experts within the learning network” (Anderson, 2016, p. 43). I very much like the idea of the community sharing and feedback, as the first thing a many of us will do is seek out someone we know who has travelled to a location. Although ‘Tripadvisor’ does this, there are many ways to focus these discussions and make them more personalized.
The other questions that come to mind are how long would you expect the participant to take to complete the course? What would the be your competitive advantage, as opposed to just using something like ‘Expedia.com’?
Great ideas!
References
Anderson, T. (2016). Chapter 3: Theories for Learning with Emerging Technologies. In Veletsianos, G. (Ed). Emergence and Innovation in Digital Learning: Foundations and Applications. Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press.
Hello Laura,
On behalf of Fiona and myself, thank you for your comments. You bring up an interesting point by asking to whom the training is aimed. Fiona and I referred to the person travelling, since we thought of the agency dealing with timid travellers we did not think of the agents. But you are right! This idea can accommodate the sales force of the travel agency. Regarding the duration of the training we considered it would take from 4 to 6 weeks to complete. And from the competitive advantage perspective we thought the objective was more altruistic than commercial, although if it works the business benefits would be there in the end. Thanks again.
Alfonso