Designing for Learners and Learning

In this program, I have learned that designing for learners and learning differs from designing in general. When designing for learning, we must always keep the learning objective in mind. The ultimate goal is to help learners understand new content, and be able to remember and apply this content in relevant situations.

During my Fall semester, I took a course called Principles of Fostering Learning. In this course, we learned about human cognition, and what goes on in the brain during learning. One of the topics from this course was cognitive load. I learned that when there are distractions (such as unnecessary noises or animations) this can increase extraneous load, and get in the way of learning. When designing, you want to make sure the learner's brain power can be focused on completing the task at hand and encoding new information into long-term memory.

From this course, I also learned about preparation for future learning. Sometimes, jumping right into direct instruction is not the best approach. If you are trying to teach an abstract concept, learners may be confused, or not understand when this content would be used. In these types of cases, it can be useful to have learners encounter a phenomenon first. This encountering can serve as the basis for future direct instruction. This can also serve as an "anchoring event" to refer to during instruction, which can help with memory, since the content will be "anchored" by this encounter they are seeking to explain. By having an experience come before an explanation, the explanation will be better understood, and learners will see the real-world application.

When designing for informal STEM environments in the future, I will utilize what I have learned about designing for learners and learning. When creating museum exhibit components, I will be aware of cognitive load. I will make sure that I am not presenting too much information at once. In science museums, guests often interact with each individual exhibit component for only a short time. I will need to ensure that they are getting the most out of each exhibit component, and not becoming overwhelmed.

In addition, I will utilize what I have learned about preparation for future learning when designing for informal STEM environments. Hands-on experiences can serve as "anchoring events" for future science learning. In these hands-on experiences, learners will encounter a science concept. They will then be able to refer back to this hands-on experience when learning about the STEM concept. For example, in my Immunity project learners will manipulate physical virus and antibody pieces. This can serve as an anchoring event for learning about immunity concepts. Learners will be able to make sense of information about immunity by relating back to the anchoring event.