Learning Engineering Spotlight (Jan. 26-31): Your Weekly Dive into LE Research & Practice

Engineering Better Learning: A Process for Transformative Education

Education today faces challenges of unprecedented scale and complexity. From preparing students for high-stakes exams to designing global learning platforms, every learning experience requires intentional design, thoughtful implementation, and rigorous evaluation. Enter learning engineering: a powerful, iterative process that leverages learning sciences, human-centered design, and data-driven decision-making to meet these challenges head-on.

The Learning Engineering "Process"

At its heart, learning engineering is a repeatable process that begins with a challenge and cycles through investigation, creation, implementation, and refinement. Like baking cookies with a recipe, it involves clear inputs, defined steps, and measurable outputs, all fine-tuned over time.

Key features of the learning engineering process include:

• Challenge Identification: Understanding the learning problem within its specific context.
• Creation: Designing solutions that integrate insights from learning sciences and engineering practices.
• Implementation: Piloting solutions in real-world settings to gather authentic feedback.
• Investigation: Analyzing data to measure impact and inform iterative improvements.

This continuous loop allows learning solutions to evolve, ensuring they address the unique needs of diverse learners and contexts.

The "Process" in Action: The Electrostatic Playground

Consider the Electrostatic Playground, a project aimed at helping first-year physics students understand challenging 3D concepts like Gauss’s Law. Using virtual reality (VR), students explored electrostatic principles collaboratively in immersive environments. The iterative learning engineering process involved:

• Identifying the Challenge: Students struggled to grasp abstract concepts in traditional 2D settings.
• Creating the Solution: A VR environment allowed students to visualize and interact with 3D representations of electric flux.
• Implementing the Solution: Initial pilots included recorded mini-lectures followed by hands-on exploration in VR.
• Investigating Outcomes: Data revealed “aha!” moments when students achieved breakthroughs in understanding. Insights from these analyses informed further refinements to the VR experience.

This project highlights the adaptability of learning engineering to tackle even the most abstract educational challenges.

A Framework for All Learning Contexts

Learning engineering is designed to address a wide range of challenges, from small-scale classroom initiatives to large-scale educational platforms. Its flexibility is exemplified in projects like:

• Early Childhood Learning: Designing numeracy games for two- and three-year-olds.
• Global Education: Creating a learning platform serving millions of university students across 3,000 courses.
• Professional Training: Developing VR-based ethical training for medical professionals.

Regardless of scale, the process thrives on collaboration. Multidisciplinary teams—comprising educators, technologists, researchers, and learners—work together to ensure solutions are contextually relevant, ethical, and effective.

Core Principles of Learning Engineering

1. Context Matters: Every solution is shaped by the learner’s environment, prior knowledge, and resources.
2. Team Collaboration: Addressing complex challenges requires input from diverse experts.
3. Iteration is Key: Solutions are refined through cycles of testing, data collection, and improvement.
4. Human-Centered Design: Learners remain at the center of every decision.
5. Ethical Considerations: Values and ethics guide every phase, from design to implementation.

Why It’s Revolutionary

The iterative nature of learning engineering ensures that solutions remain dynamic and responsive to changing needs. By combining systems thinking with an engineering mindset, this approach empowers educators to tackle nested challenges—such as improving both learning experiences and the tools to measure them.

In the words of the Learning Engineering Toolkit, “complex challenges call for engineering mindsets, systems thinking, and modular design.”

Join the Movement

The future of education demands innovative, evidence-based approaches to solving learning challenges. Whether you’re an educator, technologist, or policymaker, learning engineering offers a roadmap to create meaningful, scalable, and impactful solutions.

Dive into the Learning Engineering Toolkit and explore how this process can transform education in your context. Together, we can engineer a better future for learning.

Beyond the toolkit, the International Consortium for Innovation and Collaboration in Learning Engineering (ICICLE) has 'open' meetings throughout the month. Take a look at the ICICLE calendar to learn more: https://sagroups.ieee.org/icicle/meetings/.

Read the full chapter (open access):

Kessler, A., Craig, S., Goodell, J., Kurzweil, D., & Greenwald, S. (2022). Learning engineering is a process. In J. Goodell, & J. Kolodner (Eds.). Learning engineering toolkit: Evidence-based practices from the learning sciences, instructional design, and beyond (pp. 29-46). Taylor & Francis. https://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003276579-5

Acknowledgements: A special thanks to Aaron Kessler , Scotty Craig , Jim Goodell , Dina Kurzweil , and Scott W. Greenwald for authoring an extremely practical, yet thoughtful exposition on this topic.

*This newsletter was generated with the help of ChatGPT 4o (Jan 26 version).