Why you need more LXD in your life- your learners will thank you for it!

Everything we learn comes from an experience. We feel emotions during an experience and?emotions make the experience more memorable… in one way or another.

It is the existence of emotion in the learner’s journey that sets Learning Experience Design (LXD) apart from traditional teaching and learning methods. It is the power of this emotion, and the resultant learner investment and motivation that it provokes, that makes knowing how to leverage the magic of LXD very much our business.

So, did you ever get emotional about a textbook? Let me rephrase that- did you ever experience positive, enjoyable emotions from a textbook? Remember those old Choose Your Own Adventure books, where the choices you made could result in being the hero of the story or complete catastrophe? Can we get that invested in course work? Why yes, we can. We know it as scenario-based learning and the psychology behind gamification. LXD is rife with it.

LXD is a multidisciplinary approach that combines elements of instructional design, educational theory, user interface (UI) design and user experience (UX) design. ?It is underpinned by human-centred design, with a red-hot focus on the learner and the goals they want to achieve.

In itself, LXD is a design discipline using design principles, skills and methods. It is not a step-by-step systematic exercise, but creative, experimental and iterative, involving prototyping and user testing. ?And as in many design fields, LXD is collaborative. It can involve educators, graphic designers, UX and UI designers, cognitive psychologists and coders - to create a deeply engaging learning experience.

LXD emphasises interactive elements like simulations, gamified learning, and real-time feedback to keep learners engaged and motivated. Data analytics can be used to create adaptive learning paths, providing personalised content that responds to the learner's progress and performance.

This sounds very tech-heavy because it its- leveraging technology is a key aspect of LXD today, but it was not always so. In this age of burgeoning AI, we have the opportunity like never before to incorporate powerful approaches to gamification and augmented/virtual reality.

As LXD encourages critical thinking and problem-solving skills, with learners often placed in active, problem-based learning scenarios, it provides a particular relevance to education at this very moment. Internationally, many education thought-leaders are reconsidering project-based learning- as an antidote to students merely developing their skills in prompting and copy-pasting rather than actual educational content. As we continue to navigate the challenges and opportunities of technology in education, embracing LXD is not just beneficial – it’s essential.

As educators, it is a very technologically exciting time to be alive.

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