A Time for Learning Experience Design: Ed Tech on Purpose
If the pandemic taught us anything, it鈥檚 that understanding the whole student matters. Since March of 2020, billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of person hours have been spent enabling remote learning access, rolling out strategic student supports鈥攑articularly around mental health鈥攁nd providing emergency aid for students struggling with basic needs. Whether its early learning, K-12, higher education, or job training, we have been forcefully reminded by COVID to focus on the whole student experience if we want our learners to begin, continue, and succeed on their pathways to and through education.
At this year鈥檚 ASU+GSV Summit, Mark Milliron, SVP of 91吃瓜网 and Executive Dean of the Teachers College; Kelvin Bentley, Senior Consultant of 91吃瓜网 Labs; and Nate McClennen, Vice President of Strategy and Innovation of Getting Smart examined lessons learned during the pandemic relating to innovative learning design, and the risks educators continue to face in terms of the general public confusing emergency remote learning with longstanding quality work in digital learning design.
鈥淭he last two years have been a mass orientation to digital tools,鈥� said Milliron. 鈥淎 whole host of K-12 educators, higher education leaders, and even employee developers suddenly had to dive deep into the tools available to them. It opened a lot of people鈥檚 eyes to what we could be doing in this kind of work.鈥�
Educators have tried to learn more about their learners than ever before 鈥� marked by more work on social-emotional learning, basic needs, mental health, and 鈥渄igital divide.鈥�
鈥淲e likely got to know our students better through the pandemic than we knew them before,鈥� commented McClennen. 鈥淚f we deliver an incredible online learning experience and neglect the mentoring and the one-on-one relationship-building, we won鈥檛 reach the goals that we have.鈥�
Educators need to embrace the rethinking of instruction and student support with learner experiences at the center, and are now challenged to embrace this perspective in a more fulsome and integrative way in the learning process itself. Put simply: now is the time for learning experience designers.
鈥淎cademic freedom is great, but it also has to be balanced with academic responsibility,鈥� said Bentley. 鈥淲e have to do a better job to keep students at the center of what we鈥檙e doing, and not always work in silos.鈥�
