Last November 7, 2022, the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) held the pilot session of Learning Lounge, at the ALB Living Room. Learning Lounge is a series of in-person meetings where teachers can share, discuss, and leave ideas about everything that is teaching-and-learning. A different take on the typical workshop, each session is more relaxed (more similar to a brown-bag meeting), and is overall a safe space, to encourage teachers to participate and engage in the conversation.
CTL invited Habi Education Lab to initiate the conversation on learning experience design with selected faculty members.
Who is Habi Education Lab?
Habi Education Lab, or Habi for short, is a team of learning experience designers composed of teachers, designers, and researchers. Founded in 2014, Habi started as a professional development group for teachers. While Habi members come from different backgrounds and expertise, they come together with the sole mission of improving how people learn, with empathy as its core value.
Get to know more about them on their website.
Why did CTL choose Habi as the first guest?
From June to November 2021, CTL took up a series of master classes under Habi, along with the same faculty members who were invited in the pilot session. Being a newly-established unit, CTL made the commitment to fully understand the principle of designing learning experiences, and to apply it to the varying teaching-and-learning contexts in the university.
What were our takeaways?
Reflect on your leanings
For the pilot session of Learning Lounge, we had Habi Executive Director, Gerson Abesamis, as the conversation starter. Gerson mentioned that it’s a good exercise to ask ourselves which elements of LXD we tend to lean towards and which ones we tend to forget. Some of the participating faculty members mentioned they prioritize “content” (e.g., their subject is technical so they need to make sure the content is clear), while some are more inclined to “inspire” (e.g., they want their students to see the connection between their subjects and their actual work). A few also mentioned they tend to forget the element of “inclusion” especially when in a bigger class size. All things considered, observing the little things can do a lot in knowing our strengths and areas for improvement! And when it comes to improvement, Gerson mentioned that sometimes we fall into a “floodgate mentality” where we try to “boil the ocean”. In other words, we try to improve everything all at once, and if we can’t, we won’t do it at all. But, really, we can take baby steps! So, if we’re trying to improve the “inclusivity” aspect of our classes, there’s nothing wrong with starting small 😊
We encourage you to do this same exercise with the U.N.I.T.A.S. Design Principles and maybe think of ways to (1) maximize the ones you already practice and (2) to start doing the others!
Leave space to create, prototype, and explore
When it comes to LXD, it’s important that teachers have the space to create, prototype, and explore. When designing their learning experiences, they should be able to bring in their own strengths, personalities, and most importantly, their possible limitations. In UA&P, new hires go through the Teacher Development Program. In Part 1, they learn all about how to make good learning outcomes, activities, and assessments, but it’s up to our teachers to use their unique personalities and strengths to come up with activities and assessments that are engaging and relevant. They are given the space to make the learning experience their own.The CTL team has seen a bunch of submissions where the activities and assessments are well-thought-out, creative, and fun (check this out to see some of our favorites)!
Tips in using your intuition and discernment
You might be wondering, how can I determine my strengths, and maybe even weaknesses, as a teacher? How do I know if my students enjoyed the activity, or if it actually helped them absorb the lesson better? Though the Learning Experience Surveys are a good jump off point, professors shared that maybe the LX survey doesn’t capture everything. This is where discernment comes in. Take a look at your results – do you notice a pattern of things you do well? Maybe a pattern of things you need to improve on? Sometimes seeing a negative comment from a student hits hard, but it’s important to look at the bigger picture – is the comment an outlier? You might also notice that certain teaching habits of yours come up during certain semesters – for example, seasons of busy admin or office work may lead to slower lead time in uploading materials your students need. It’s important to take time to reflect on the results of your surveys to see how you can create good learning experiences in future classes. You may even find that our current LX surveys do not encompass all the feedback you wish to hear from your students – take the opportunity to create your own feedback mechanisms so you can get the information you need.
As you try to keep the UNITAS Principles in mind as you design your learning experiences, we mentioned earlier you may find yourself learning more heavily towards one or the other. Again, it’s good to play to your strengths! But it is also important to make sure you aren’t focusing too much on one aspect, to the detriment of the others. For example – you may make a huge effort to incorporate a new tool in class, but do not realize that not all your students may have the gadgets to use it. While this meets the principle of “Systematically reviews and improves the learning experience,” it misses out on “Understands the learner.”
Don’t be discouraged
Designing a learning experience can get overwhelming — only if you feel the need to be perfect. While teachers normally feel the need to be completely in-control or make sure that everything runs smoothly, there are times that knowing which aspects of the experience actually worked is more valuable rather than focusing and overthinking on what went wrong.
Gerson shared, “It’s hard to teach how we were not taught.” As humans, we tend to look to our past experiences to figure things out when we hit a roadblock — trying to figure out a new, engaging activity or way of delivering a lecture is no different. We tend to think, “How was this lesson taught to me before?”, then go on teaching how we were taught, in ways familiar to us. Sometimes this works, but oftentimes it doesn’t. And it’s okay to try both the old and the new as you design a learning experience – what is important is that you always strive to improve and create better learning experiences as time goes on.
Don’t be too hard on yourself if things don’t go right the first time. One of the key ideas behind learning experience design is that while you have control over your content, there are many other aspects that you cannot control — and that’s okay! There are different factors to how students receive the lesson or interact with the activity. Just as teachers have a unique teaching style, students also have their own unique learning styles and past experiences which affect their learning experience. So while accommodating each and every student is quite impossible, Gerson affirmed that being able to accommodate some students is still better than not accommodating anyone at all.
The truth is, radical changes can make you and your students uncomfortable — so keep in mind that your wellbeing plays a big role in the learning experience. Don’t be afraid to play to your strengths first (and maybe in small ways) as you try out new things in your classroom.
