Human-centered instructional design: Building empathy (and courses)

Background Theory

Technology, and technologically-mediated learning, can be dehumanizing; but it doesn’t need to be. Instructional designers, and the tasks assigned to them, can vary widely among institutions. Large, fully online programs often have very specific templates to which their courses must adhere. The instructional designer’s task is simply to gather (and occasionally create) content from a “lead instructor” and plug it into the template. This work is often required to be completed months in advance, and the course remains rigid and unchanged until after the course has finished (or for years at a time, in some cases). In these cases, course design offers scant regard for the learners, instructors, and designers involved - they are all simply part of the machine. Even in less extreme examples, desired outcomes, the need for scalable efficiency, and local workflows marginalize the very people present in the learning community.

Human-centered instructional design places people at the heart of the course design and delivery process. Rather than a strict rubric or series of steps, human-centered instructional design involves a series of questions, practices, and principles that might help guide the process. It looks to build both empathy (among the key stakeholders in the course design and delivery) along with courses. Digital technologies and content are decentered and considered holistically in the service of, rather than as the end of, the instructional design process.

References

Fink, L. Dee. Creating significant learning experiences: An integrated approach to designing college courses. John Wiley & Sons, 2013.

Franklin, Ursula. The real world of technology. House of Anansi, 1999.

Freire, Paulo, Antonio Faundez, and Tony Coates. Learning to question: A pedagogy of liberation. New York: Continuum, 1989.

Hooks, Bell. Teaching to transgress. Routledge, 2014.

Morris, Sean Michael and Jesse Stommel. An Urgency of Teachers

Watters, Audrey. “PLATO and the History of Education Technology (That Wasn't),” Hack Education (blog), January 25, 2018, http://hackeducation.com/2018/01/25/plato .

Presentation

As participants arrive, they will be encouraged to write down their thoughts in response to the following prompts

1. What is an instructional designer?

2. What is the first thing you do in an instructional design session (or, if you are not an instructional designer, what is the first thing you expect to happen in an instructional design session)?

Participants will also be asked to respond to a presentation-embedded poll identifying their primary role at their institution (i.e. full-time faculty, part-time faculty, administrator, instructional designer, student, _________, etc.).

The presentation will:

• Discuss ways in which the cited background literature might inform the instructional design process.

• Describe, and engage participants in, some of the questions, practices, and principles of a human-centered instructional design process. At this stage, participants will be directed to discuss certain prompts in smaller groups and later share out their thoughts.

• Identify barriers and support structures that have been encountered in at least two different institutions.

• Work to build empathy with each other and our collaborators (in our home institutions).

• Consider future directions of a human-centered instructional design process (i.e. ways to center learners more explicitly in the process).

Q&A / Group Discussion

While opening the floor up to participant questions, the following will serve as organizing questions for our discussion time:

• Is human-centered instructional design possible at your institution? is it desirable?

• What are some barriers you might expect to encounter in implementing a human-centered instructional design? What are the shortcomings of this model?

To end, participants will be asked to write a brief (no more than 50 words) vision for what they would like instructional design to be at their institution. Participants will be invited to share these as comments to be posted on a blog page.