Theresa and Beata used design thinking to develop an e-learning course component to help students to identify their career goals. To encourage intellectual risk-taking and become active in their online learning the created environment considers approaches that allow students continued access to learning by reducing their vulnerability to social or individual dynamics they may hinder their progress (Zawacki-Richter & Anderson, 2014, p. 57).
Figure 1: Notes from the brainstorming
Theresa leads a non-profit organization and Beata supervises and teaches in a program at an institution. Although both groups have different needs, they require skills to engage online through collaboration, communication, and knowledge-building. Theresa trains placement students to find employment in their field. To assist with their goals, she needs to see the students’ aptitude and their visualized workplace. Beata’s adult learners need to identify their ideal workplace/environment to create a well-targeted portfolio website for job applications.
Using Keller’s four-stage ARCS model (Thomas, 2010) we structured a week-long component to synthesize a workplace goal/vision:
Attention – Online learning
Topic-specific video tutorials, short webinars, and self-test quizzes (Appendix 1) are provided in this stage to capture the learner’s attention, generate curiosity, encourage inquiry, and maintain the engagement (Thomas, 2010). The content is relevant for the adult learners and applicable for their real life (Knowles, 1968). When learners understand how information will benefit them, the connection between learner objectives and motivation is strong and they will acquire specific knowledge (McGrath, 2009 as cited in Chametzky, 2014).
Relevance – Show
Learners individually build a digital collage or mood board (Appendix 2) of their imagined perfect workplace. They use photos to represent their feelings to answer structured questions (Appendix 3). This activity aligns with an empathic design which focuses on everyday life experiences, and individual desires, moods, and emotions in human activities, turning such experiences and emotions into inspiration (Mattelmäki, Vaajakallio, & Koskinen, 2014, p. 67).
Confidence – Engage with the cohort
Learners comment on each other’s collage/mood board, ask questions, give suggestions. Students must post a predetermined number of comments. They need to update their collage/mood board based on the comments and their answers. This intellectual risk-taking through feedback prepares learners for the next step and establishes confidence in the learning process.
Relevance – Challenges/obstacles
Learners create empathy or mind maps (Appendix 2) to describe their anticipated challenges or obstacles to achieving their ideal workplace. Adults desire to be competent in matters that are valuable and necessary for their personal or professional growth (Thomas, 2010, p. 211). This activity keeps the learning relevant and reinforces learner goals.
Confidence – Engage with the cohort
Learners comment on each other’s challenge/obstacle maps, ask questions and give suggestions on how to face the challenges or overcome obstacles, based on readings/tutorials/experience/research. This peer coaching keeps the learners’ attention and boosts their confidence as they discover relevant solutions to their jobs/portfolios. Students must post a predetermined amount of comments/suggestions.
Satisfaction – Plan to develop
This final activity provides opportunities for learners to use their newly acquired knowledge (Thomas, 2010, p. 213) which leads to satisfaction. With guidance from the instructors, Theresa’s students create their enhanced learning plan, and Beata’s students create a portfolio site content plan and find 2-3 companies and 1-2 relevant job postings.
Throughout the activities, the instructor will showcase examples for collages/mood boards, work goals, and field-specific results to create connections with the learners and demonstrate empathy (Mattelmäki et al., 2014).
Figure 2: Sketches from the final solution
We see opportunities to generalize this component for any student group to visualize career/work environment goals with the utilization of field-specific content/questions. What do you think, would you be able to use it in your context?
We are looking for suggestions/ideas/comments by December 4, 2018. We would prefer to receive them sooner than later. After the mentioned date, finalization of Assignment 1 B begins.
Thank you for the thoughtful comments!
References
Chametzky, B. (2014). Andragogy and Engagement in Online Learning: Tenets and Solutions. Creative Education, 05(10), 813–821. https://doi.org/10.4236/ce.2014.510095
Mattelmäki, T., Vaajakallio, K., & Koskinen, I. (2014). What Happened to Empathic Design? Design Issues, 30(1), 67–77. https://doi.org/10.1162/DESI
Knowles, M. S. (1968). Andragogy, not pedagogy. Adult Leadership, 16(10), 350-352, 386.
Stanford University Institute of Design. (2016). A virtual crash course in design thinking.
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).
Tait, A. & O’Rourke, J. (2014). Internationalization and Concepts of Social Justice: What Is to Be Done? In O. Zawacki-Richter & T. Anderson (Eds.), Online distance education: Towards a research agenda. (p. 39-74). doi: 10.15215/aupress/9781927356623.01
Appendices
Appendix 1. – Example materials for Attention – Online learning Tutorial phase
Lynda.com video tutorials:
How to develop a portfolio site for freelancing
How to develop a portfolio site
Synchronous webinar on what information to include into the portfolio, what kind of people would look into the portfolio, what is the goal of the portfolio… etc.
Orientation video tutorials:
How we support clients in Emergency Housing
How we support clients in Transitional Housing
How we support clients in the Drop-in
How we support clients in the community
Synchronous webinar on how we connect programs and work with partner agencies.
Appendix 2. – Example tools for the different activities
Students are provided with a list of free photo websites, and online tools for creating collage/mood boards/empathy and mind maps to handle learners with differing levels of digital skills. All of the tools are available on smart small devices (Android, IOS).
Collage: https://www.befunky.com/features/collage-maker/ | https://www.photocollage.com/ | https://www.canva.com/create/photo-collages/family/
Mood board: https://www.canva.com/create/mood-boards/
Mind Map: https://www.mindmup.com/ | https://www.canva.com/graphs/mind-maps/
Empathy Map: https://realtimeboard.com/templates/empathy-map/ | https://vizzlo.com/create/empathy-map
Concept Board: https://conceptboard.com/
Padlet for featuring the image and comment or ask questions.
Free images: https://www.pexels.com/ | https://pixabay.com/en/
Appendix 3. – Example questions for Relevance – Show the ideal workplace phase
Web portfolio
What is the environment you wish to work in?
What kind of colleagues do you wish to work with?
Where (agency, corporation, small or middle-sized company)?
What kind of projects do you wish to work on?
Enhanced Learning Plan
Do you want to work one to one or with groups?
Do you want to work in one place like an office or shelter setting?
Do you want to work in different locations like outreach or housing based case management?
Do you want to manage a caseload or work on a collaborative team?
Do you want to work with clients in emergency housing or drop in or housing retention?
All illustrations are created by the authors.
November 27, 2018 at 9:54 am
You recognize, acknowledge, and illustrate throughout your blogpost how Keller’s Attention-Relevance-Confidence-Satisfaction (ARCS) framework of Motivational Design
1. serves to inform your choices of learning activities to meet the required needs of your students that you identified as engaging online through collaboration, communication, and knowledge-building (para. 2).
2. allows your students continued access to learning by reducing their vulnerability to social or individual dynamics that they may hinder their progress (Zawacki-Richter & Anderson, 2014, p. 57) (Appendix 2).
3. assists with their goals by seeing the students’ aptitude and their visualized workplace … identify their ideal workplace/environment [and] create a well-targeted portfolio website for job applications (para. 2).
As I understand your context, I sense you anticipate two types of changes for your students within the design of your learning environment. First, changes in the ways they usually learn new knowledge. Second, based on the new knowledge they instill, changes to their personal or professional environments. Please correct any of my misinterpretations.
If my interpretations are correct, I wonder if the prototype you propose is part of a larger program?
If so, might you explain how this week maps into the larger program?
If not, how do you envision the students will retain the new knowledge or sustain the motivation to learn your prototype offers?
November 27, 2018 at 4:20 pm
Deborah, you correctly assumed that in our case, in both of Beata’s and Theresa’s environments this component is to be part of a broader curriculum. At the same time, we intended to create something universal enough to be able to insert it into any other courses by switching out the learning materials and the structured questions to potentially reuse, revise, remix and redistribute the component in many settings.
In case of the institution, it is part of a 24-week program, where close to the end, during the last 8 weeks (amongst other advanced courses) the students are required to develop their professional portfolio site to showcase their portfolio pieces. This process seems straightforward, especially for “life experienced” adult learners, but most of them are entering a new field, and during the program whole new career options and possibilities are revealed for them. Before starting their portfolio development, the learners need to set their clear goals/outcomes/message/plans. The same way as we do set goals and outcomes when planning a learning environment. The planning process is less exciting for most of them, as they strive to be front-end developers (simply coding the provided design into an accessible website. When they understand the importance of the step, and the learning is peppered with exciting activities especially if it is related to “designing” a mood board or collage, they hopefully enjoy it.
I do plan on testing this component in the program from the January intake and reflect on it.
November 27, 2018 at 4:26 pm
Yes, Deb, I would agree with your interpretations. This component is expected to foster a collaborative learning environment which will allow for more interaction between instructors and students and, more importantly, more interaction within the cohort as a whole which will assist in them being a resource for each other.
This is definitely a component of a larger education program that will be delivered to students. How this maps into a larger program is that, in Beata’s context, this component would be placed near the end of a 24 week larger program so that it can inform the build of the students web portfolio and for Theresa’s context, this component would be placed at the beginning of a nine month education program that spans the placement students time at the organization and ultimately sets a stage for a collaborative program as well as helping to inform the students refined and enhanced learning plan that will be the blueprint for a more personalized learning experience.
The versatility of this component, I think shows how two completely different education programs can utilize this component unaltered yet placed in the most effective spot within the larger program. As Beata mentioned earlier, our hope is that this component could be transferable to many different contexts; not simply be a solution for our two but for any type of program or course that could benefit from this type of element.
November 29, 2018 at 5:26 pm
Thanks for sharing this idea Theresa and Beata; I appreciate how you thoroughly flushed out each stage and the types of activities that would happen in each one. In my position, I support and encourage experiential learning, and I like the idea of providing an opportunity for a reflective process centered on career goals following an experiential learning opportunity, so I could certainly see myself adapting a module such as this one. I wonder if adding more active components and opportunities to engage with classmates within the Attention stage might assist in encouraging further intellectual risk-taking. As designed, the first stage is fairly passive and allows learners little opportunity to get to know one another and feel more confident engaging within the learning environment. Slagter van Tryon and Bishop (2009) discuss the importance of facilitating opportunities to create group social structures in online learning environments that create dialogue, sharing and general ease. In each of your situations, students may already be quite familiar with one another, but if you were applying this model to other contexts, including more community building in the initial phase may help to increase comfort levels and facilitate intellectual risk-taking. Do you see an opportunity to add a component to the first stage to assist in community building?
Reference
Slagter van Tryon, P. J., & Bishop, M. (2009). Theoretical foundations for enhancing social connectedness in online learning environments. Distance Education, 30(3), 291-315. doi:10.1080/01587910903236312
November 30, 2018 at 6:20 pm
Thank you, Jessica, for carefully reading our post, and we are glad that you feel that our prototype is promising.
You conveyed correctly that in our case we have the context for the students, as in case of both authors it would be part of a broader program. In both settings, we ideated the use of Slack communication channel to encourage social interaction and get to know each other better and to provide them with a safe place to interact and potentially share questions without fear of being graded and minimize the feeling of risk. The learners can connect by including the facilitator or privately when there is no influence from the facilitator.
You asked whether we see an opportunity to add a step to the first stage to assist in community building. This relates to our intention that when this prototype is being generalized, an optional step could be added as an icebreaker where the learners connect. Depending on the field the following steps came to our mind:
– After watching/reading the learning materials, connect and introduce yourself to your team members professionally via LinkedIn.
– Fun icebreaker: One lie and one truth – ask participants to list two interesting things from the watched/read material.
– Based on the learning materials, create a resource Wiki (in our case career/workplace related).
– Check out the post by Amanda, Christy, and Lorne, which has an excellent component for the beginning of a program.
Theresa & Beata
December 3, 2018 at 5:17 pm
Theresa and Beata thank you for sharing your ideas after going through the design thinking process. I appreciated a number of things in your post.
1. It seems like you put a lot of effort and flushing out not only the overall design concept. You identified specific ways for materializing your concept, using a number of open source digital resources and tools. I think you have a very good grasp on how to engage your audience and encourage participation and intellectual risk-taking.
2. Jessica’s comment suggesting you create trust before seeking to engage your students was very valid and I liked your response for introducing social learning tools to invite your audience to meaningful interactions.
3. You used Keller’s learning theory to underpin your design thinking process. By doing this you managed to blend instructional design with Stanford’s Design Thinking. By doing so, you managed to design your learning prototype through a learning framework that helped you have a good flow.
4. I enjoyed learning about mood boards and how your learners can use them to design their own learning experiences. This allows them to communicate their thoughts and/or share them within their peers through visualization and identification of ideas using visual materials (Vera, 2009). Vera (2009) states that this method creates a deeper understanding of the subject matter because it supports action-learning.
Regarding the career aspect objective of this exercise in Beata’s case, I was wondering if you see value in including tutorials in resume writing, job application strategies and interviewing techniques. I believe this aspect will also help your learners win an interview and land a job.
Reference
Lucero Vera, A. A. (2009). Co-designing interactive spaces for and with designers: supporting mood-board Making. Eindhoven: Technische Universiteit Eindhoven DOI: 10.6100/IR641288
December 4, 2018 at 6:51 pm
Thank you for your careful reading Dino, and we do appreciate your list of compliments.
You had a question regarding the learning materials in stage one, which is the Attention phase in Keller’s ARCS model of motivation. This step is to gain/arouse the learners’ attention by for example a challenging problem to solve. In order to grab and hold learners’ attention, there are a variety of methods to employ, including real-world examples, humour or active participation.
Your question was whether we see value in including tutorials in resume writing, job application strategies and interviewing techniques. If in the answer we only consider the narrow scope of this particular component, namely Beata’s setting, in that case, there is no need for the listed tutorials. The web developer students have an individual course on resume and interview skills and one-on-one meetings with contracted professional IT career advisor.
However, if we move forward and turn this prototype into a standalone component and generalize it for different learning environments, the suggested interview/resume writing tutorials could be turned into useful optional elements in it.