Why do we need learning designers and not instructional designers? And what can the field learn from Michael Foucault

As there are still multiple areas in the field of learning sciences where our knowledge is limited (Sawyer 2006), it is crucially important for education professionals to develop a coherent and informed vision of how learning should be designed.? Yet, unpacking the key principles of learning design is, no doubt, a challenging investigation. This is in part because of the frivolity with which the term tends to be used in a variety of contexts. Critically, learning design is frequently used interchangeably with instructional design, especially in corporate settings. And while “until not so long ago, the term ‘Instructional Design’ perfectly captured the discipline” (Newlin 2016), it does not seem to be the case anymore. With the new advancements in learning sciences and the educational landscape becoming more dynamic and volatile, the traditional conceptualizations of what it takes to create learning experiences quickly escape reality. As such, the logically precedent question seems to be what learning design is in the first place.

The main argument of this essay is that learning design is qualitatively different from instructional design. In the first part of the essay, the importance of this claim is explained by outlining instructional design’s shortcomings and, then, supported by one analyzed premise, namely, that learning design extends beyond instruction. In the second part of the essay, I connect this argument to some reflections on my own learning design projects completed over the course of the Fall 2021 semester at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Part 1: Learning design =/= instructional design

Perhaps, it is a bit unorthodox to bring Michael Foucault into an academic work on learning design, however, his concept of genealogy appears to be particularly apt for this investigation. Foucault argues that genealogy is a type of inquiry when we pay close attention to the history of those elements that “we tend to feel are without history” (Foucault 1980: 139). This kind of analysis makes us more attentive to the reasons behind some assumptions that we take for granted. Instructional design fits neatly into this category. Given the history of instructional design as a field that came into being to address the needs of training the growing forces of the U.S Army, it should not be surprising that “there is a sense that Instructional Design focuses on following pre-determined pathways that, if undertaken rigorously, will ensure a transfer of knowledge.” (Sims 2006: 1). This kind of linear thinking focused on the transmission of knowledge fitted well into the military objectives of spreading simple knowledge on procedures to as many people as possible. While the field of instructional design has clearly evolved over the past decades, its underlying epistemology frequently remains to be objectivism - that can be understood as a belief that knowledge is external (Driscoll 2005 in Sims 2006: 2). In other words, knowledge is a property that can be transmitted from instructor to learners. This epistemology has a number of different manifestations in instructional design. On the one hand, it can be found in the existing and dominant frameworks such as ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation) that assume there is a linear path that “focuses heavily on content design and development but does not pay as much attention to the interaction between instructors and students during course delivery” (Bates 2019: 167). On the other hand, it is painfully visible in the ubiquitous infatuation with the technology used to create e-learning “Las Vegas-style games''? (Clark and Mayer 2016: 29) that ignore cognitive processes behind learning.?

In light of scientific research, this approach is simply incorrect. We know that “learners are not empty vessels waiting to be filled” and that “students can only learn by actively participating in their own learning” (Sawyer 2006: 3). As such, the importance of my claim lies in the belief that making a clear distinction between instructional design and learning design can save the latter from the shortcomings of the former. I believe that successful learning designers’ articulation of the key principles of this field should strive to capture all constitutive elements of learning. Conflating it with instructional design contributes to the opposite. In particular, I argue that learning designers should be more attentive to one key premise highlighting my argument that these are two distinct fields.?

Learning is more than instruction

The most obvious challenge to the narrow-minded vision of instructional design can be found in its linguistic construction. The name suggests that the field in question concerns itself with designing instruction. But there are multiple reasons to believe that learning goes well beyond instruction.?

One reason is that some of the best learning happens in spaces where instruction does not exist. Some would even go as far as to claim that instruction should, in fact, not be considered a part of learning. For example, one of the principles of an experimental school in New Delhi - Mirambika Free Progress School - is that “nothing can be taught” because teachers’ “business is to suggest and not to impose” (Mirambika Free Progress School, n.d.). Insofar as this claim is, undoubtedly, a controversial one, there are many examples of learning spaces where the success of learning can be only partly attributed to instruction. Sarah Fine and Jal Mehta argue that in American high schools “extracurricular spaces are not only more fun and engaging but also actually more consistent with what we know make for good platforms for learning” (2019: 254). Analyzing the example of theatre they point out a number of factors contributing to deeper learning happening in an after-school theatre practice that has nothing to do with the quality or effectiveness of instruction. An example of such a factor might be the elevated level of intrinsic motivation arising out of the sense of community. It is not only an inspiring director or an innovative way of teaching acting but rather the presence of “mutual commitment that legitimated forthright passion for theatre—here was a space where it was okay to be into Shakespeare or to talk about acting as a craft” (Fine and Mehta 2019: 269). While this should not be equated with saying that the structure in which adult supervisors organized this space and the manner in which they taught the art in question is not impactful, it is rather clear that good instruction is not sufficient for deeper learning.?

Fine and Mehta also explain the phenomenon of theatre through the concept of apprenticeship. This points out another critical consideration: even when some direct instruction is involved, it is more about what happens to the learner than to the instructor. Allan Collins argues that the sine qua non condition for the successful implementation of cognitive apprenticeship is that “the learning environment has to be changed to make these internal thought processes externally visible” (2005: 48). This can be for instance in the form of assessment that encourages articulating learners’ thoughts. It may or may not involve the figure of the instructor. Regardless of the precise role of the instructor, the focus is applied here to the articulation of knowledge happening on the side of the learner rather than the instruction - understood as the transfer of knowledge - coming from the teacher. Collins is obviously correct in explaining that cognitive apprenticeship should be holistic - articulation should be combined with more instructor-involved techniques such as modeling, scaffolding, and feedback (Collins 2005: 51). The point, however, is not that learning designers should forget about instructors. It is about shifting the instructional design paradigm in which the transfer of knowledge is privileged over other elements of a learning experience that do not involve it. To illustrate this point with an intuitive example, let me turn to the very essay I am writing. In designing this assessment, it was perhaps equally important to create a prompt that would encourage me to articulate my thoughts, structure, and reflect on them (none of which require the transfer of knowledge) as it was to create opportunities to get feedback (which does involve transferring knowledge).?

Last but not least, the context and space in which learning experiences happen should not be underestimated. For “little has changed in the ways that schools divide time and space, classify students and allocate them to classrooms” (Tyack and Cuban 1997: 85). Those unconscious assumptions of how learning and teaching should happen constitute an important design consideration as they have an effect on participants of learning experiences. While it is more prevalent and visible in schools, all kinds of spaces and contexts carry with them some unspoken rules. Given the process of designing cannot be disentangled from those rules, it falls within the confines of learning designers to twist and tweak, challenge and contest, or conform to them. An interesting example of the interaction between the grammar of learning and learning design are cMOOCs (connectivist Massive Open Online Courses) whereby learning is happening in an unstructured yet networked environment and “there is no pre-set curriculum and no formal teacher-student relationship, either for delivery of content or for learner support” (Bates 2019: 224). This can be seen as a manifestation of a learning experience that directly challenges the existing grammar as it fully shifts the agency to learners. Regardless of the specific position towards these dominant grammars taken by a learning designer, there should be no doubt that the very act of taking such a position influences learning experiences. This stands in stark opposition to instructional designers who often work in corporate settings and are frequently deprived of an opportunity to challenge the predominant grammar - their job is to figure out the best way to transfer prescribed knowledge to a specific group of learners. Learning design should transcend that.

By now, it should be clear why I decided to start with my reference to the genealogy of instructional design. While I frequently refer in the above paragraphs to the transfer of knowledge as an assumption that features in instructional design, it does not necessarily mean that my vision of learning design has no place for the transfer of knowledge (which would be a fully constructivist stance). Peggy Ertmer and Timothy Newby explain in a compelling manner that learning designers should draw on a number of learning theories. Even frequently criticized behaviorism has some prescriptions that “have generally been proven reliable and effective in facilitating learning that involves discriminations (recalling facts), generalizations (defining and illustrating concepts), associations (applying explanations), and chaining (automatically performing a specified procedure)” (1993: 8). ?Yet, my stance is agnostic in regards to the possibility of the transfer of knowledge or lack thereof. However, I argue that it is fundamentally important to attend to unspoken assumptions behind definitions of the field. A skeptical reader might say that learning design is not free of the shortcomings addressed above. This is certainly true and all the more reason to avoid them when conceptualizing what learning design is as a field. All of the above should be sufficient to prove that effective learning designers ought to be cognizant of the fact that creating a good learning experience extends beyond the predominant focus of instructional design.?

Part 2: Navigating the practice of learning design

Practicing learning design while being mindful of the above-discussed considerations is a rather challenging endeavor. While we might exercise greater freedom in certain informal settings, most of the learning design jobs tend to be concentrated in corporate settings or higher education. With the highly-streamlined work, deadline-related expectations as well as institutional norms and conventions, it might be difficult to engage in the practice of learning design without following the beaten path of conflating it with instructional design.?

Over the course of my Fall 2021 semester as a graduate student at Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE), I had a chance to explore the realities of working as a learning designer in cooperation with the Teaching and Learning Lab - HGSE’s unit responsible for supporting and developing innovative and effective approaches to learning. In particular, my project teammate - Clara Choi, Ed.M. and I completed over the course of the Fall 2021 semester a capstone project focused on redesigning the part of the module covering alternative credentials. The asynchronous asset that we designed and developed in Articulate Storyline contains interactive activities and learning materials in the form of written text and videos. There is one aspect of this work that is worth reflecting in light of the argument made here.

Our work has been clearly influenced by one existing grammar of learning, in this case, the one that can be found behind the predominant mode of delivery of asynchronous experiences. In creating this course, one of the assumptions we started with was that there is going to be a video production element to our work. This was partly because our assigned mentor was a media producer and, very pragmatically, we wanted to take advantage of learning from him. Equally important, online learning seems to be dominated by videos. In a slightly different context - of MOOCs - Katherine McConachie points out that MOOCs “have continued to use video as their default medium of content transmission” (2015). McConachie seems to agree that it is nothing else but the grammar of MOOCs that is responsible for the dominance of videos. She argues that “rather than thinking critically about the theories of learning embedded in this pedagogical format or taking the opportunity to iterate on the model by asking interesting questions about how people learn, MOOCs take the use of video as a given, rather than leveraging it as an intentional pedagogical tool” (2015). With the pandemic-induced transmission to online learning, I would argue this point can be extended to a broader world of online higher education. Our final asset does have a video. Insofar as we did our best to ground the creation of the video and its specific form in existing research, I cannot help but think the decision to shoot a video was primarily influenced by the skewed conceptualization of learning design that I try to contest in this very paper. After all, there were certainly multiple ways in which we could have achieved our intended learning design objectives. Yet, influenced by the predominant vision of learning/instructional design, we submitted to it.?

Furthermore, one of the justifications to use video was to reduce the cognitive load caused by the huge amount of text present in the current version of the module. This justification should be familiar to any learning or instructional designer as working around the level of extraneous load can be claimed to be among the top rules of the industry playbook. There are good reasons for that. Most importantly - the wealth of research in the form of the cognitive load theory (Clark and Mayer 2016). Yet, the practice of learning design is not a scientific investigation. We do not conduct experiments that would evaluate the inner workings of the human brain when engaging with our learning experiences. At best, we use proxies such as learners’ feedback and/or assessment. More commonly, we assess the amount of perceived cognitive load through some heuristics. One that can be easily identified is the notion that huge amounts of text carry a higher cognitive load than other media. It may or may not be true. Clearly, there is nothing inherent to text that would suggest that and, as such, this ought to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Nonetheless, this is frequently not true in the world where video has become a golden standard of higher education online learning.

To evoke Foucualt one last time, it should be pointed out that “the point of genealogical analysis is to show that a given system of thought (...) was the result of contingent turns of history, not the outcome of rationally inevitable trends“ (Gutting and Oksala 2021). While we can use post hoc rationalizations when defending the manifestations of these predominant systems of thought (the same way we can argue that using video diminishes cognitive load), it does not mean our choices are not influenced by the dominant interpretations of the field. This essay is an attempt at showing that learning designers should be cautious of precisely that.?

Thanks to prof. Joe Blatt and prof. Jal Mehta - faculty for the

course LDIT101 for which this essay was written; Felipe Estrada Prada - my Teaching Fellow for LDIT101; William Wisser - the project's supervisor in TLL.

References

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