How do universities achieve learning design maturity?

The last few years have seen a growth in the number of learning design roles being created within universities and greater interest in learning design across higher education as a whole.

I’ve spoken previously about some of the contributing factors for this, but where the rubber really hits the road with learning design, is translating it into the existing organisational machinery and culture of universities.

Unfortunately, there are examples over recent years of learning design metaphorically running into the brick wall of the existing paradigm of university learning and teaching. One example of this is learning designers being recruited by universities and doing very little meaningful work on the design of courses.

Although there is evidence that work on the learning design of courses and programmes is becoming more of a feature in UK universities, it is largely of a particular type. Rather than being routine, learning design of courses and programmes is usually driven by higher-level changes such as new overarching teaching and curriculum strategies. In that sense it is reactive rather than proactive.

It is also most commonly manifested in what I would argue is a pretty limited way. The dominant paradigm for work between learning designers and academics/subject matter experts (SMEs) is one or multiple live group-based interactions - usually workshops. The majority of the widely cited learning design models in the UK use approaches that fall into this category of learning design largely as workshop facilitation. It’s all very compressed and largely synchronous.

What is far less common is an approach that entails a dedicated mix of academics/subject matter experts (SMEs) and multidisciplinary education professionals forming a team to design courses and programmes from inception up until teaching is enacted on them.

This kind of true partnership working is very rare. I have only evidenced this approach being used for online courses or programmes, often as a result of a particular and unique set of organisational conditions.

There’s a sense that even though there are more roles and more talk - the conditions are not really there yet for learning design to become a serious feature of higher education. Having worked with a number of education providers over the past few years, I’ve often reflected on the types of conditions that enable a more rigorous and thoughtful design of courses, programmes and other educational experiences. One of the ways in which I’ve thought about this is reaching a level of learning design maturity.

However, it was only relatively recently, after being introduced to BIM (Building Information Modelling) through some client work, that I was inspired to think about how one might create a model or framework with levels of learning design maturity.

Now it you’re unfamiliar with BIM it’s described by The Construction Industry Training Board (CITB) as:

a way of working together, a process for creating and managing all of the information on a construction project.

It is increasingly being used and mandated in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry in the UK, changing the way things are done in the sector.

You might be wondering what it has to do with learning design. Well the progression to BIM adoption is expressed in levels of maturity that are broadly based on the degree of collaboration and information sharing.

Whilst this is very obviously a completely different domain, I think this understanding of maturity can be a useful way-in to thinking about learning design maturity too.

The following is my attempt to provide a framework for learning design maturity in universities and other education providers. It’s expressed as three levels with three main areas that help to mark maturity. All the usual caveats about frameworks apply, they’re imperfect but can be helpful.

You can also download a copy of the learning design maturity levels and explanations contained on this page.

Below is a more detailed explanation of each level of maturity, select each heading to reveal the explanation.

LEVEL 1 | Low collaboration: educators and/or subject matter expert’s (SME’s) plan and prepare for courses, programmes or other learning experiences in a largely individual fashion with minimal to no involvement from other professionals.
LEVEL 2 | Partial collaboration: educators and/or SME’s plan and prepare for courses, programmes or other learning experiences utilising support from other professionals in either a largely transactional way (e.g. to resolve problems that arise, to help with the implementation of something or to receive discrete training), or through short-term engagements (e.g. a workshop).
LEVEL 3 | Full collaboration: courses, programmes or other learning experiences are designed with a team of multi-disciplinary professionals. A parity of esteem exists amongst professionals and the different specialisms and roles are understood and lines of responsibility are clear.
LEVEL 1 | No way of representing the design of a course and how it might be experienced by learners. Intentions behind course design might be inferred from course materials (e.g. overview, slides, assessment briefs, course description documents).
LEVEL 2 | Some means of representing course design, but this is largely ad-hoc and individually owned and developed. This may be shared discretely as a source of information to education professionals playing some part in the design process.
LEVEL 3 | Well-defined and tested means of representing course or programme design that clearly demonstrates the learning journey and progression on the way to achieving learning outcomes. This may take the form of different types of representation ranging from high-level to more granular and from the visual to the written. Suites of design representations and the purpose of them is clearly understood by team members and collaborators. All team members and collaborators have access to design representations and can collaboratively and iteratively work on them over time.
LEVEL 1 | Limited underpinning to learning design decisions taken. Professional decision-making and action is not informed by evidence and there’s no meaningful grappling with relevant domains of knowledge and practice (e.g. research on learning, pedagogical content knowledge etc) that might inform and be translated into this learning experience.
LEVEL 2 | Some underpinning to learning design decisions taken. Professional decision-making and action is punctuated by ad-hoc informed insight, questioning and discussion instigated by some team members who draw upon relevant domains of knowledge and practice. Some decisions with robust justifications are made, but this is the exception rather than the rule.
LEVEL 3 | Solid underpinning to learning design decisions taken. Professional decision-making and action is routinely informed by grappling with evidence, research and robust insights. Meaningful discussions are held to consider how relevant domains of knowledge and practice can help shape learning experiences and provide the best conditions for learning.

Collaboration

The first and really important component of learning design maturity is collaboration. This is as much an organisational culture matter as it is to do with new or established processes. The cultural shift needed here can be quite profound.

If learning designers and other education professionals are operating in a culture in which collaboration between academics/SMEs is either uncommon, perceived very negatively, not really understood, or all three, then this is far from fertile ground. If the interplay between education professions and academics/SMEs is either reactive transactions or piecemeal interventions then potential will be limited.

One key word here is team - although I understand how some academics/SMEs might consider working with others on “their” courses as undesirable, or be uncomfortable with it - this approach doesn’t have to diminish anyone, but should rather increase the collective intelligence and skill that can be drawn upon to design learning experiences.

In many ways, because of how higher education has operated for many, many years and because of perceptions of credibility of education support, which is sometimes justified and sometimes not - this is arguably the largest barrier to maturity.

Design representation

The second component is what I’ve termed design representation. I’ve thought for some time that this is a really deficient aspect of planning and preparation. Programmes and courses are complex experiences with different variables and many considerations. Creating a 2-3 page Word document containing a description, learning outcomes, assessment details and a reading list, accompanied by a set of slides does not strike me as a serious method of designing a sophisticated human experience.

Universities need to consider how representations of designs can be developed and used that address a whole range of considerations. Consequently, I tend to think of design representations as a suite of different formats that have slightly different roles and in which some might be succinct and others more detailed, or some visual and linear and others more text-based.

If the process of learning design is collaborative involving a range of professionals - having a suite of design representations contributes to this working cohesively as there is a shared information and work space or store.

Representations or other documents rarely seem to visually demonstrate how learners work through courses, or justify why things have been sequenced in such a way. Too often the way designs for courses are represented are either nonexistent or very one dimensional. Although, in fairness, there are very few formats out there to draw inspiration from and this is an area in which inspiration might be sought from other design disciplines.

Designing experiences that we hope lead to learning is a complex process, arguably as complex if not more so as other design processes. So just like in other design fields suitable and serious means of representing designs will contribute significantly to reaching a good level of maturity.

Evidence and underpinning of decisions and actions

The third component is potentially more nebulous but relates to the underlying culture and rigour of planning and preparing for educational experiences, and what informs, guides and shapes the decisions and actions taken in that work.

Being evidence-informed or based has become a simple credibility and in-crowd signaling phrase, but the extent to which properly understood research is being widely applied to the act of designing education experiences is debatable.

It should also be noted that this isn’t simply as a consequence of ignorance or being uninformed - it’s also related to the level of importance and time that is given to the design of educational experiences. If your workload model equates these things with the time it might take to construct a slide deck rather than grappling with a pedagogical and learning knowledge base then this becomes a significant challenge.

However, that’s not to say there isn’t a lack of enlightenment when it comes to pedagogical and learning knowledge. Although this is an imperfect comparison I’m reminded a little of the film Moneyball. The film starts with the quote:

“It’s unbelievable how much you don’t know about the game you’ve been playing all your life”

This encapsulates one of the themes of the film, which is the way scouts evaluate prospective baseball players. If you’ve seen the film, in the context of the baseball team in question, the process of evaluation could be rather generously described as anecdotal! As the film progresses it shows the adoption and application of an empirical analysis of baseball and baseball statistics to player recruitment and selection, with impressive results.

Now it’s important to say at this stage, that this analogy is not meant to advocate for some deep quantitative and computational approach to learning design decisions, but rather to illuminate this level of maturity as being one that is in opposition to an exclusively personal anecdotal and unthinking approach or one that’s just about doing it how it’s always been done.

The level of maturity is fundamentally a challenge to education institutions and educators as to what and how much knowledge and insight is brought to bear on learning design decisions and the integrity of that.

We’re now blessed to have a breadth of research and insight available on a swathe of areas related to learning from metacognition to motivation and from feedback literacy to forgetting.

How well and deeply is that understood by educators and learning designers? How much is research and insight shaping the processes, policy and position of education providers when it comes to teaching and learning?

Sometimes, when research on human learning for example, is brought up it can seem like a different language is being spoken, and the act of seeking to draw on that in the design of course is very alien. We might be able to name-check key works or models, but is the depth of knowledge and understanding always there?

This is not to apportion blame, because we have a fundamental issue in education which is an incredibly limited supply of credible training for both those that teach and those who design learning in higher education. This can sometimes mean that any kind of rigour is more by luck than judgement.

For learning design it can be largely dependent on how much energy and effort an individual is and has been willing & able to put into developing their knowledge and understanding personally, and this, rather than any credential, is one of the main differentiators of the level of professional ability in the field.

Therefore, achieving maturity can only arguably be addressed systematically by developing a pipeline in which educators and learning designers are trained such that they have a robust knowledge and skill base to bring to bear. That is quite a challenge.

From greater interest to organisational maturity

As I’ve acknowledged at the outset, all models and frameworks are in some way imperfect and this one is too. However, I think it has some use to universities and other education providers who want to become more serious about how they design educational experiences.

There are more and more examples of a greater amount of time being devoted to that activity and more roles being created to support it. This is an encouraging sign, but for a great many there is quite some way to go from this blossoming interest and growing sense of prioritisation to the level of learning design maturity I’ve described in this model.