A Visual Language for Planning Effective and Engaging Learner Support Strategies

Session Time Slot(s): 
Institutional Level: 
N/A
Abstract: 

Join us for this interactive discovery session and learn a one-of-a-kind visual design technique for creating effective, engaging learning support experiences. We’ll apply this innovative visualization approach to a current or future project you’re planning. Come discover a solution that will transform the way you help students learn!

Extended Abstract: 

Anyone with the responsibility of helping others learn has experienced the challenges of designing interactive, engaging learning activities that meet the needs of diverse learners and learning environments. Collaborative planning experiences that involve professionals representing different skill levels and backgrounds can add another dimension to design challenges in the absence of a shared proficiency in a common design language. Unlike many fields, instructional design lacks a common language for communicating one’s vision for learning experiences, whether for a primary lesson or for supplemental learner support. This poses a challenge when it comes to making design decisions that best promote learning outcomes, communicating instructional designs to others participants in the design process, and assessing the effectiveness of the design for helping students achieve learning outcomes.

Taking a few minutes to stop by this discovery session to learn about this unique visual design technique will revolutionize your learning design efforts! Learning Environment Modeling (LEM) offers an innovative solution to these design challenges by providing a common language that is easy to learn and easy to use for planning learning experiences in any environment—academic or corporate, online, blended or in-person. LEM is a one-of-its-kind visible, tangible visualization technique comprised of four primary features: five building blocks, four contexts, three actions, and notations. Building blocks describe elements in the learning environment, contexts identify the time, space, and formality of the environment, and action arrows show transitional and connective relationships between building blocks and indicate who initiates actions between components. Notations provide limitless opportunities to add detail and a greater degree of specificity as needed. These components can be assembled in infinite configurations to represent any learning environment imaginable. Intentional, strategic, coordinated implementation of LEM assists educators in creating engaging and innovative learning experiences and student success initiatives that promote learner success.

LEM’s easily rearranged, quickly identifiable building blocks make instructional planning fun and engaging and ensure effective, interactive, high quality learning experiences. Used to develop new instructional designs, LEM helps instructors make smart design decisions that ensure that learning experiences promote lesson objectives. Applied to existing designs, it is ideal for the analysis, diagnosis, and revision process. In addition, it provides an invaluable tool for creating and sharing instructional design templates that serve as invaluable resources for new educators or those facilitating a topic for the first time. This internationally award-winning visual language and planning technique can also be leveraged to create effective and engaging group or personalized, informal or supplemental learner support experiences that promote learning success and increase completion and retention rates.

In this interactive session, we will experience the ease of becoming proficient in LEM by putting it into action with examples you provide. You will also have the opportunity to ask questions about the learning design needs and challenges you face and learn how LEM can empower you to design and innovate learning to meet the needs of learners and educators in your organization.

Participants in this session will have the opportunity to:

  • learn Learning Environment Modeling (LEM), a proven visual language and technique for designing engaging learning support experiences that increase student success and completion and retention rates
  • practice using LEM to develop a plan to meet a current learner support need in their organization
  • explore inspiring examples of innovative and successful learning support materials created using LEM
  • ask questions about how best to leverage LEM in their organizations
Position: 
1
Conference Session: 
Concurrent Session 11
Conference Track: 
Learner Services and Support
Session Type: 
Discovery Session
Intended Audience: 
All Attendees