Learning design

Our learning designers work directly with academics to co-create pedagogically sound content for an excellent online learning experience.

Two women sit in front of a large whiteboard in an office, one is pointing something specific out to the other — **What to expect and what you can gain**

Working with a learning designer is similar to having an ‘online teaching and learning coach’ – someone who helps you to hone existing skills in communicating information in an effective, clear way that supports the learning experience for the audience.
Many academics are already good at this but learning designers can help adjust these skills specifically for delivering online learning. They can delve into your own teaching practice and make you a more reflective educator with new teaching tools to use in your context.

Discover the learning design journey

It begins with an idea.

The course design process always begins with an idea. This sets out what the course might cover and who the audience might be. The idea will always be grounded in existing field expertise but could consist of any aspect of an academic’s research, be it a module from a pre-existing degree or a particular aspect of their independent pursuits.

Once the idea is formed, academics will morph their vision into a proposal pitch for the Cambridge Online Education team. We will then undertake competitor analysis, market research and work closely with the academic to decide whether to submit the course proposal for approval to the group responsible for commissioning all new courses: the Online Education Committee.

A team sit around a desk, all looking at a monitor at the tope of the table. Behind the montior, there is a wall of post it notes. — Assigning the team

All new and approved courses are given a team of dedicated individuals who will each be responsible for different elements of the process in order to guarantee everything runs smoothly. The team will all work closely with the academics at different stages to support them in the creation of content in their respective areas.
The course is first assigned a project manager who will oversee all activities and then a learning designer who will begin the learning design process. Our innovative media team is brought on board and will work alongside the team to develop new and creative ways of conveying the course information to learners. This makes each course unique – not just for its content but also its interactivity.

Introduction to learning design

The learning design process begins with meeting the assigned learning designer for an introductory workshop. A key point of this workshop is to explain how learning designers use the learning design framework to create content. This framework provides a starting point for aligning content appropriately for online learners and for ensuring consistency across courses.

Clarifying this process and the framework is key to establishing a healthy professional working relationship for the duration of course development.

An example of a learning journey roadmap - this takes you from Orientation, round through modules 1 to 8 laying out the key module objectives for each, and then through to the end of the course where we highlight our Alumni network — Establishing learning outcomes and the assessment strategy

Once the learning design introduction is complete, the learning designer and academic work together to create course learning outcomes. These form the foundations of the course and lay out what you are asking learners to be able do upon course completion. Module learning outcomes are derived from course learning outcomes and are established as the individual modules are laid out via the learning design framework. Again, these are measured actions that we want the learners to be able to do upon completion of the module. Both course and module learning outcomes ultimately align to the assessment strategy in the course.

Confirming the learning design framework

The learning design framework promotes a balance of active learning (60%), social learning (20%) and passive learning (20%). People learn best when they are actively applying concepts and the learning design framework helps to ensure this balance is achieved in the online course.

The learning design framework helps to ensure that the majority of learner time is spent in active learning, meaning learners are actively applying what they are learning.

They do this through activities that are co-designed by the learning designer and academic and which are rooted in distinct learning types:

Inquiry (learners actively review or find additional resources)

Produce (learners create something to work towards their assessment or share socially in the cohort)

Reflection (learners are provided with a reflective workbook template and are consistently prompted to reflect on their learning)

Practice (learners have space to practice concepts in the course in a formative way)

Discussion (learners share and discuss content in a guided way with each other)

Acquisition (learners learn passively by watching or reading lecture material)

The content and its format

From here the academic, with guidance from the learning designer, creates content to fit within the learning design framework. The content’s form is determined by what the learner is expected to do. Together the team decides what works best as media, visuals, text or activities, which the content development team then brings to life to complete the course creation process.