Design for How People Learn (Voices That Matter)

Ask Interesting Questions

We take guesses—What do you think? What do you know is a wrong answer? I’ll ask a struggling learner for a wrong answer. Give me a number that’s too high. Give me a number that’s too low. I’m involving students at a very low investment that has a huge return.

Use job aids to change something from a recall to a recognition task. Job aids change the task from “recall the steps” to “follow these steps,” reducing the need to rely on memory. If you do use job aids, give your learners a chance to practice with the job aid as part of the learning.

“My job as a game designer is to make the player feel smart.” I think the same is true for learning designers. Your job is to make your learners feel smart, and, even more importantly, they should feel capable.

Michael Allen’s Guide to e-Learning

explicit memory. You know it and you know you know

You can see that if we are going to focus on developing software that our users want and like, it’s essential that we know and understand our audience, not just the subject matter. I would suggest that you research the brands, hobbies, and media (television, films, games, websites, etc.) that your target audience enjoys. This should give you a bett

tacit rules can usually only be learned by seeing lots of examples and starting to recognize patterns.

There’s a beginning, middle, and end.

but before you get to goals, it’s really important to define the gap you are trying to fill or the problem you are trying to solve.