As eLearning professionals, we are often so focused developing that perfect course that we often forget all about the systems that we use to deliver our content. We often don’t take the time to consider how our courses fit into these systems, and how their designs can play a large role in how effectively students can learn. This is where user experience (UX) design can come into play.
As eLearning professionals, we are often so focused developing that perfect course that we often forget all about the systems that we use to deliver our content. Whether this takes the form of a commercial learning management system or a custom application, we often don’t take the time to consider how our courses fit into these systems, and how their designs can play a large role in how effectively students can learn. This is where user experience (UX) design can come into play.
While proper instructional development is a critical need in developing successful learning experience, good UX design is just as important. Both instructional design and UX design draw from a common component, cognitive load theory. Both disciplines seek to minimize the cognitive load on extraneous factors so that the curriculum itself can take center stage. Understanding how instructional design and UX design fits together in achieving this outcome can ensure the best learning experience possible for your student.
During this presentation, we will define and explore the relationship between instructional design, UX design, and cognitive load. We will talk about the importance of each of these pieces and the role they play in developing an environment of effective learning. We will then move into presenting some general recommendations on how you can approach implementing effective UX design. Additionally, we’ll talk briefly about Interface Design (UI) and considerations that course designers need to think about in terms of the platforms they use or plan on building. We plan to draw on our own experiences and on other examples to demonstrate and reinforce these concepts.
Throughout the presentation, we plan on embedding interactive activities and samples of good and bad UX/UI design. Audience members will be asked to offer their own experiences with UX/UI, recommendations on how they approach it, and their success and challenges. Additionally, we plan to allocate a significant amount of time at the end of our session for audiences members to ask questions about our session topics or any other UX/UI issues.