<commit_before>---
title: Learning Design
layout: course_page
categories: [modules]
excerpt: Revoluntary ideas, practical methods. You'll learn how to structure project-based learning experiences, design for different types of learners, and how to develop content that sparks & sustains participation. 
---


# Learning Design: Assignments, Content, Length 

<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p2pu/social-learning-course/gh-pages/img/SocialLearning.005.jpg" width="690" height="388"> 

## How to Design a Learning Experience that Works

[<NAME>](http://bavatuesdays.com/) is the wizard behind the curtain at [ds106](http://ds106.us/), or Digital Storytelling 106--widely known as one of the most vibrant and successful learning communities on the internet. In this chat, we tackle:

- What were the design principles behind your course?
- How do you develop content for an open online course?
- How do you motivate learners to sustain their interest?


[![<NAME> - Learning Design](http://img.youtube.com/vi/T_1ONj1vFBk/0.jpg)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_1ONj1vFBkt=2s)


## Learning Design: Motivation, Play and Styles

### When Did Learning Get so Boring?
Imagine playing with Legos as a kid. You were probably relaxed, curious, and not particulary focused on what the final outcome might look like. You might have built a little bit, decided what whas working and what wasn't, and perhaps even lost track of time in the process.

We strive to create learning experiences that are like playing with Legos. When we don't feel the pressure of time, of outcomes, of what other people are doing or the "right" answer, we imagine what's possible and we follow our passions. 

For every learning module, think through:

- Playful projects. 
How could someone make a project where they fiddle, tinker and lose themselves in it? Open-ended projects and thematic prompts help learners find their own paths and ideas. These types of assignments nurture ["Flow"](http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow), where learners become completely engaged and [intrinsically motivated](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Intrinsic_and_extrinsic_motivation) to work on the activity.

- Low floors, wide walls. 
We recommend  activities that can work for both beginner and advanced learners. Activities of this type have few barriers to entry (with easy-to-use tools Googledocs or Twitter) but that advanced folks can layer in more complex elements. That way beginners can learn from the projects of advanced learners, and more advanced students are still challenged by the project.

## P2PU Example: Play With Your Music
An example of a playful activity with low floors and wide walls is from our [Play With Your Music course](http://www.playwithyourmusic.org/). Learners were prompted to select their favorite song, and write down where they heard the various instruments in space. From there, they were asked to map on out a Googledoc graph where they perceived the instruments and sounds in the song. 

<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p2pu/social-learning-course/gh-pages/img/Screen%20Shot%202014-07-06%20at%209.02.24%20PM.png" width="690" height="388"> 

At the same time, we didn't want learners to feel constrained by the structure of the activity. If learners wanted to try another tool, we welcomed that creativity. 

>As you might have guessed, we encourage you to be creative in this course. If you find our Perceived Space Graph Template >limiting, feel free to use your imagination and develop a different template than the one shared in Step 2, above. Some >people prefer to work with pens, markers, and paper. For others, Google Charts is fine. If you decide to create multiple >space graphs for your song, we encourage you to edit them into a video using iMovie or the free web-based Mozilla Popcorn >Maker11 synchronizing your graphs to the recording. Whatever method you use, be sure to either share a link or take a >photograph of it and post a photo of it to your learning ensemble.

- Learning styles. 
We want learners to feel comfortable and give them options for how to engage. Like the Play With Your Music course we mentioned above, we encourage folks to convey the information in different ways--visually (like mental maps), audially (like pronounciation clips), or via text (like readings or Wikipedia entries). We recommend that you offer content that appeals to different styles, and give learners options for what sorts of projects they might want to undertake. 

## Developing Content

Traditionally, online courses followed this very top-down, regimented formula:

<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p2pu/social-learning-course/gh-pages/img/Online%20Learning%20Formula.003.jpg" width="690" height="388"> 

But open online courses think about content a bit differently. Since learners will find their own resources and interact with others, knowledge emerges organically. Here are a few ways that you can think about developing content in your course: 

- Peers co-create the content. 

In the video above, <NAME> mentions that content is the "residue" of interactions in the course. What this means is that, when the activities are open-ended and creative, the social interactions around them build out much of what we think of as "content" for an open course. 

In another P2PU course, [Rhizomatic Learning](https://p2pu.org/en/courses/882/rhizomatic-learning-the-community-is-the-curriculum/), <NAME> asked learners to participate in the design of the course--the community was going to decide what to learn together. After Dave "officially" stopped running the course in week 6, the course continued to evolve without him--proof of success if there every was one. 

- Use openly-licensed content that already exists.

Creative Commons licenses and the Open Education movement have given rise to a wealth of open educational resources. If you'd like to pull together a few foundational resources, [MIT OpenCourseWare](http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm) and the [Saylor Foundation](http://www.saylor.org/) both are great sources for OER you can use in your course. Don't forget to attribute :)

- Learners can create tutorials for other learners.

Seasoned educators know that when a student teaches another student, their understanding deepens. That's peer learning in a nutshell. You might want to prompt learners to create a ["Teaching Kit"](http://discourse.webmakerprototypes.org/t/activity-1-create-a-teaching-kit/332) to accompany their project. For our [Mozilla Webmaker course](https://training.webmakerprototypes.org/en/), learners created these tutorials to help someone else complete the project in the future. 

These teaching kits/tutorials ask learners to reflect on their project and model a ["reflective practice"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_practice) (mmmmm, tasty self-assessment). At the same time, learners are creating their own OERs to contributione to the wider open learning landscape. 

## Course Length

Let's re-think "length." Because ideally what you are building is an online community--one that is ongoing, self-sustaining, and engaged. And in a community, you're never really "done." When is the last time you were done being a musician? Or a teacher? Or a writer? 

When you look at your community longitudinally, it's natural that folks are going to participate in different ways. Our fellow community-builder [<NAME>](http://dangerouslyawesome.com/) subscribes to the 80/20 rule: your community will break down into gradiations of someone active to most active participants:

<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p2pu/social-learning-course/gh-pages/img/Kickstarter%20Copy.001.jpg" width="690" height="388"> 

Participation is a continuum of activity, and our data at P2PU bears that out. When looking at our recent P2PU course, folks reported engaging on a pleathora of ways:

<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p2pu/social-learning-course/gh-pages/img/Kickstarter%20Copy.002.jpg" width="690" height="388"> 

So instead of thinking about beginning and finishing, you might think about the course you are developing as *an onramp to your ongoing community* that lives on P2PU or somewhere else. Maybe you run Arduino 101 every 8 weeks, but the Arduino G+ group is always there to help. That way the expert folks can help newbies. 

Some relevant data as your design your onborading: recent research by [<NAME>](http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2013/12/design-responses-to-mooc-completion-rates.html) and [<NAME>](http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html) indicate that, no matter the discipline, there seems to be a 4-week long "sweet spot" in active participation. 

<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p2pu/social-learning-course/gh-pages/img/Fig4_1.png
" width="690" height="388"> 

So the first 30 days of your course make all the difference. We'd recommend a four-week onboarding course that runs regularly as an introduction to your learning community. 


# Other peoples good ideas

## Motivation & Mindset
>In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. >They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent >alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.
>In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard >work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is >essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities.
[<NAME>, Mindset](http://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/)

## Learning Styles
>In developing technologies for older learners, we try to 
>achieve a similar effect. Our guiding principle is “many 
>paths, many styles” – that is, to develop technologies that 
>can be used along many different paths, by children with 
>many different styles. Too often, educational technologies 
>are overly constrained, such as tutoring software for 
>teaching algebra, or simulation software for modeling 
>planetary motion in the solar system. Our goal is to provide 
>tools that can be used in multiple ways, leaving more room 
>for children’s imaginations. 
[<NAME>, All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking)I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten*](http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/CC2007-handout.pdf)


## Learners Constructing Knowledge

I can identify examples (as an existence proof) that constructionism can work for adults as well as children.

Teachers know that if you want to learn a new subject, sign up to teach the new subject. Constructing the course and teaching it to others is a great way of developing that knowledge.

Programmers take on new projects to learn a new method, language, context, or community. My former PhD student, <NAME>, wanted to know what professional game development was like. Because he’s an exceptional software engineer, he was able to land himself an internship with a game company one summer (with no prior game experience), explicitly to learn game development.

[http://computinged.wordpress.com/2014/05/23/constructionism-for-adults/](http://computinged.wordpress.com/2014/05/23/constructionism-for-adults/)

## Learning Styles and Accessibility

<img src="//discourse-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/132cf9b76ed895d43ed6c956d8535e85c2734e14397.png" width="690" height="426"> 

CAST, "[Post Secondary Triple Blended Courses](http://udloncourse.cast.org/page/planning_course#.U3-6AVhdVy9)"

# Projects

## Project 6: Design your course activities. 
Now that you have your learning goals, for each module/learning goal, create a prompt for a project that:
- is open-ended and playful
- learners have the freedom to choose how they will complete it
- is easy to get started but learners can take as far as they want to go
- prompts learners to find resources or create content together
<commit_msg>Fixed pullout quote typos, add a bit to projects.<commit_after>---
title: Learning Design
layout: course_page
categories: [modules]
excerpt: Revoluntary ideas, practical methods. You'll learn how to structure project-based learning experiences, design for different types of learners, and how to develop content that sparks & sustains participation. 
---


# Learning Design: Assignments, Content, Length 

<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p2pu/social-learning-course/gh-pages/img/SocialLearning.005.jpg" width="690" height="388"> 

## How to Design a Learning Experience that Works

[<NAME>](http://bavatuesdays.com/) is the wizard behind the curtain at [ds106](http://ds106.us/), or Digital Storytelling 106--widely known as one of the most vibrant and successful learning communities on the internet. In this chat, we tackle:

- What were the design principles behind your course?
- How do you develop content for an open online course?
- How do you motivate learners to sustain their interest?


[![<NAME> - Learning Design](http://img.youtube.com/vi/T_1ONj1vFBk/0.jpg)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_1ONj1vFBkt=2s)


## Learning Design: Motivation, Play and Styles

### When Did Learning Get so Boring?
Imagine playing with Legos as a kid. You were probably relaxed, curious, and not particulary focused on what the final outcome might look like. You might have built a little bit, decided what whas working and what wasn't, and perhaps even lost track of time in the process.

We strive to create learning experiences that are like playing with Legos. When we don't feel the pressure of time, of outcomes, of what other people are doing or the "right" answer, we imagine what's possible and we follow our passions. 

For every learning module, think through:

- Playful projects. 
How could someone make a project where they fiddle, tinker and lose themselves in it? Open-ended projects and thematic prompts help learners find their own paths and ideas. These types of assignments nurture ["Flow"](http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow), where learners become completely engaged and [intrinsically motivated](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Intrinsic_and_extrinsic_motivation) to work on the activity.

- Low floors, wide walls. 
We recommend  activities that can work for both beginner and advanced learners. Activities of this type have few barriers to entry (with easy-to-use tools Googledocs or Twitter) but that advanced folks can layer in more complex elements. That way beginners can learn from the projects of advanced learners, and more advanced students are still challenged by the project.

## P2PU Example: Play With Your Music
An example of a playful activity with low floors and wide walls is from our [Play With Your Music course](http://www.playwithyourmusic.org/). Learners were prompted to select their favorite song, and write down where they heard the various instruments in space. From there, they were asked to map on out a Googledoc graph where they perceived the instruments and sounds in the song. 

<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p2pu/social-learning-course/gh-pages/img/Screen%20Shot%202014-07-06%20at%209.02.24%20PM.png" width="690" height="388"> 

At the same time, we didn't want learners to feel constrained by the structure of the activity. If learners wanted to try another tool, we welcomed that creativity. 

>As you might have guessed, we encourage you to be creative in this course. If you find our Perceived Space Graph Template >limiting, feel free to use your imagination and develop a different template than the one shared in Step 2, above. Some >people prefer to work with pens, markers, and paper. For others, Google Charts is fine. If you decide to create multiple >space graphs for your song, we encourage you to edit them into a video using iMovie or the free web-based Mozilla Popcorn >Maker11 synchronizing your graphs to the recording. Whatever method you use, be sure to either share a link or take a >photograph of it and post a photo of it to your learning ensemble.

- Learning styles. 
We want learners to feel comfortable and give them options for how to engage. Like the Play With Your Music course we mentioned above, we encourage folks to convey the information in different ways--visually (like mental maps), audially (like pronounciation clips), or via text (like readings or Wikipedia entries). We recommend that you offer content that appeals to different styles, and give learners options for what sorts of projects they might want to undertake. 

## Developing Content

Traditionally, online courses followed this very top-down, regimented formula:

<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p2pu/social-learning-course/gh-pages/img/Online%20Learning%20Formula.003.jpg" width="690" height="388"> 

But open online courses think about content a bit differently. Since learners will find their own resources and interact with others, knowledge emerges organically. Here are a few ways that you can think about developing content in your course: 

- Peers co-create the content. 

In the video above, <NAME> mentions that content is the "residue" of interactions in the course. What this means is that, when the activities are open-ended and creative, the social interactions around them build out much of what we think of as "content" for an open course. 

In another P2PU course, [Rhizomatic Learning](https://p2pu.org/en/courses/882/rhizomatic-learning-the-community-is-the-curriculum/), <NAME> asked learners to participate in the design of the course--the community was going to decide what to learn together. After Dave "officially" stopped running the course in week 6, the course continued to evolve without him--proof of success if there every was one. 

- Use openly-licensed content that already exists.

Creative Commons licenses and the Open Education movement have given rise to a wealth of open educational resources. If you'd like to pull together a few foundational resources, [MIT OpenCourseWare](http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm) and the [Saylor Foundation](http://www.saylor.org/) both are great sources for OER you can use in your course. Don't forget to attribute :)

- Learners can create tutorials for other learners.

Seasoned educators know that when a student teaches another student, their understanding deepens. That's peer learning in a nutshell. You might want to prompt learners to create a ["Teaching Kit"](http://discourse.webmakerprototypes.org/t/activity-1-create-a-teaching-kit/332) to accompany their project. For our [Mozilla Webmaker course](https://training.webmakerprototypes.org/en/), learners created these tutorials to help someone else complete the project in the future. 

These teaching kits/tutorials ask learners to reflect on their project and model a ["reflective practice"](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflective_practice) (mmmmm, tasty self-assessment). At the same time, learners are creating their own OERs to contributione to the wider open learning landscape. 

## Course Length

Let's re-think "length." Because ideally what you are building is an online community--one that is ongoing, self-sustaining, and engaged. And in a community, you're never really "done." When is the last time you were done being a musician? Or a teacher? Or a writer? 

When you look at your community longitudinally, it's natural that folks are going to participate in different ways. Our fellow community-builder [<NAME>](http://dangerouslyawesome.com/) subscribes to the 80/20 rule: your community will break down into gradiations of someone active to most active participants:

<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p2pu/social-learning-course/gh-pages/img/Kickstarter%20Copy.001.jpg" width="690" height="388"> 

Participation is a continuum of activity, and our data at P2PU bears that out. When looking at our recent P2PU course, folks reported engaging on a pleathora of ways:

<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p2pu/social-learning-course/gh-pages/img/Kickstarter%20Copy.002.jpg" width="690" height="388"> 

So instead of thinking about beginning and finishing, you might think about the course you are developing as *an onramp to your ongoing community* that lives on P2PU or somewhere else. Maybe you run Arduino 101 every 8 weeks, but the Arduino G+ group is always there to help. That way the expert folks can help newbies. 

Some relevant data as your design your onborading: recent research by [<NAME>](http://nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk/no_good_reason/2013/12/design-responses-to-mooc-completion-rates.html) and [<NAME>](http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html) indicate that, no matter the discipline, there seems to be a 4-week long "sweet spot" in active participation. 

<img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/p2pu/social-learning-course/gh-pages/img/Fig4_1.png
" width="690" height="388"> 

So the first 30 days of your course make all the difference. We'd recommend a four-week onboarding course that runs regularly as an introduction to your learning community. 


# Other peoples good ideas

## Motivation & Mindset
>In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.
In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities.
[<NAME>, Mindset](http://mindsetonline.com/whatisit/about/)

## Learning Styles
>In developing technologies for older learners, we try to 
achieve a similar effect. Our guiding principle is “many 
paths, many styles” – that is, to develop technologies that 
can be used along many different paths, by children with 
many different styles. Too often, educational technologies 
are overly constrained, such as tutoring software for 
teaching algebra, or simulation software for modeling 
planetary motion in the solar system. Our goal is to provide 
tools that can be used in multiple ways, leaving more room 
for children’s imaginations. 
[<NAME>, All I Really Need to Know (About Creative Thinking)I Learned (By Studying How Children Learn) in Kindergarten*](http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/CC2007-handout.pdf)


## Learners Constructing Knowledge

>I can identify examples (as an existence proof) that constructionism can work for adults as well as children.

>Teachers know that if you want to learn a new subject, sign up to teach the new subject. Constructing the course and teaching it to others is a great way of developing that knowledge.

>Programmers take on new projects to learn a new method, language, context, or community. My former PhD student, <NAME>, wanted to know what professional game development was like. Because he’s an exceptional software engineer, he was able to land himself an internship with a game company one summer (with no prior game experience), explicitly to learn game development.

[http://computinged.wordpress.com/2014/05/23/constructionism-for-adults/](http://computinged.wordpress.com/2014/05/23/constructionism-for-adults/)

## Learning Styles and Accessibility

<img src="//discourse-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/132cf9b76ed895d43ed6c956d8535e85c2734e14397.png" width="690" height="426"> 

CAST, "[Post Secondary Triple Blended Courses](http://udloncourse.cast.org/page/planning_course#.U3-6AVhdVy9)"

# Projects

## Project 6: Design your course activities. 
Now that you have your learning goals, for each module/learning goal, create a prompt for a project that:
- is open-ended and playful
- learners have the freedom to choose how they will complete it
- is easy to get started but learners can take as far as they want to go
- prompts learners to find resources or create content together
- has rituals for completion and success

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