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GETTING SMART ON
LEARNING
EXPERIENCE
DESIGN FOR
HIGHER
EDUCATION
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
01.........Introduction
03.........ROI of Deeper Design for Online Higher
Education Programs
05.........Learning Experience Design vs. User
Experience: Moving From “User” to
“Learner”
07.........The Importance of Learning Experience
Design for Higher Education
09.........Conclusion
Introduction
PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING EXPERIENCE DESIGN
Learning Experience Design is an effort to understand
who students are, where they’ve been, what they want and
currently need and where they’re headed; educators can then
design effective learning experiences for students based on
that pertinent knowledge.
Learning experiences involve any interactions where learning
takes place. Learning experiences may take place in a
traditional classroom setting, but more often than not, these
experiences also happen outside of the classroom: in taxis, at
home, on laptops or on airplanes, for example. We can now
use technology to learn anytime, anywhere.
With this ability to learn anytime and anywhere—and with
the availability of MOOCs, YouTube videos and other open
educational resources—it is vital that education outlets offer
high-quality learning experiences. A world of opportunity
awaits at our fingertips, and with so many options available,
course providers must offer lasting and impactful learning
experiences.
There are five key principles of Learning Experience Design:
1. The learner, not the educator or the delivery system,
remains the primary focus of Learning Experience
Design, though the process accommodates multiple
stakeholders. The work of Learning Experience Design
can be simply characterized as a continuous dialogue
with the learner, as the product or learning experience
is designed and built iteratively.
2. Learning Experience Design examines the totality of
a learner’s experience, including emotional reactions,
social and cultural supports, developmental stages,
personal learning preferences and out-of-school
activities. Successful Learning Experience Design
evokes positive emotional, behavioral and cognitive
experiences that are both memorable and relevant to
the learner’s educational goals.
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#SmartBundle March 2015#LXDesign
Jessica Slusser
Project Coordinator at Getting Smart
Lear
ningEx
perien
ceDesign

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3. Learning Experience Design theory is based on educational pedagogy and the learning sciences.
4. Learning Experience Design processes are a synthesis of instructional design, educational
pedagogy, neuroscience, social sciences and UI/UX, among other disciplines.
5. Working closely with technical partners, Learning Experience Design front-loads the development
process and works on perfecting a version of the product that can then be scaled up. Traditional
educational production starts with an unvetted idea that goes straight into production, and errors
are often found after the product has entered the marketplace.
As this collection of blogs illustrates, Learning Experience proves critically important in the development
of higher education instructional materials. Adult learners bring different challenges to education, which
are all solved by offering relevant, engaging and memorable experiences for higher education students
provided by good Learning Experience Design. These students are busy, often juggling a career and
family responsibilities on top of their educational pursuits.
Higher education students also start (or resume) a formal program with previous knowledge and
experience that professors would be wise to acknowledge. These students typically respond well to
knowing what is expected of them and why. Students also want to know that following prescribed paths
will lead to successful learning. Great Learning Experience Design helps students successfully navigate
their educational journey.
Learning Experience Design, for instance, may allow educators to immerse students in interactive
simulations wherein they make choices as they face real-world challenges and receive immediate,
customized performance feedback. This adds a dimension to education that was not always achievable in
a classroom.
Too often, instructional design focuses on the needs of the instructor and treats the learner as an
individual existing outside of any context; Learning Experience Design understands that learning is
impacted by the environment and by one’s peers, teachers and staff, whether in the classroom, online or
in the real world.
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The growth of student participation in distance education has started to hit a saturation point, and
being “good” will no longer be enough to drive program growth and maximize student retention. We’re
moving into a new era of online learning where institutions will need to find ways to create something
great in order to successfully compete in the marketplace. Being “great” will mean understanding
students’ needs and goals on a deeper level and using the specifics of that knowledge to design learning
environments that support and challenge learners. Deeper knowledge of the students and better design
translate to investing a little more in the early stages of the process. If an institution uses these insights to
boost student enrollment and retention as well as to improve the overall student learning experience, it
can see a very real return on its investment.
In the current white-hot higher education market, where traditional higher education institutions fight with
MOOCs, competency-based learning and online resources for student attention and allegiance, every
advantage counts. But there’s a new way to capture those elusive hearts and minds—Learning Experience
Design. This discipline utilizes qualitative and quantitative techniques from the social sciences and User
Experience (UX) to deeply understand the student population—who they are, where they’ve been, what
they want and currently need and where they are headed.
If we take a deep and honest look at the student population we want to serve, even to the point of
gaining empathy, we will be in a better position to know what they really need as well as to understand
why. This knowledge enables us to carefully design how social interaction, support and interventions
should happen.
When it comes to ROI of online and blended courses for an institution of higher education, there are two
metrics that matter: 1) Student enrollment and 2) Student retention.
Enrollment
Let’s look at enrollment first. Enrollment is driven by marketing reach, and marketing is driven by a
compelling and honest story targeted toward the potential student about how this program will help
you, yes you succeed. Not students in general. You, the unique individual. Learning Experience Design
practices can capture critical data to better identify your target audiences, what is important to them and
how to best appeal to these individuals.
Retention
Now let’s look at retention. There are three primary factors that impact student retention: students’ self-
discipline, the quality of interaction between faculty and students and student support as well as student
connection with the institution. Institutions such as Utah State University understand that in order to boost
retention rates, it is key to “determine student characteristics and needs, set priorities among these areas
ROI of Deeper Design
for Online Higher
Education Programs
Jason Gorman, VP of Learning Experience Design Services at
Six Red Marbles and Margaret Weigel, Director of Curriculum
and Learning Experience Design at Six Red Marbles

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of need, identify available resources, evaluate a variety of successful programs and implement a formal,
comprehensive retention program that best meets the institutional needs.” And institutions utilizing
Learning Experience Design methods to capture this information are likely to enjoy a higher ROI than
their competitors. These practices can help your students to thrive—and to commit.
• Emphasize student self-discipline. In recent years, research by Carol Dweck, Angela Duckworth
and others has brought to light the importance of student persistence and discipline, which remains
one of the many significant challenges facing the non-traditional student population. While we can
do little to change the socioeconomic or cultural dispositions of such students, skills such as grit
(persisting in the face of difficulties) and metacognition (understanding how today’s tasks inform
future outcomes) have been directly linked to better long-term student outcomes. Scholarship has
shown that these skills are not fixed at birth; they can be actively encouraged in students and taught.
If these abilities can be taught, then they can be embedded in higher education course design as
well.
• Foster quality interactions between faculty and students. Similarly, many of us remember a
professor who gave little to no feedback beyond inscrutable letter grades. We remember this
because it was a terrible experience. It was also terrible design. Learning Experience Design discovers
how students and faculty want to engage with each other and then creates ways to encourage and
facilitate desired, high-quality interactions.
• Better understand support and student connection with the institution. Finally, higher education
learners comprise a stunningly diverse population. A common error involves assuming these students
are more or less the same. We think we know what they want, how they should learn and how to help
them succeed. But students are different across various institutions, across different programs within
an institution and even from course to course. Further, if you have 20 students in a course, you can
be certain that all 20 have significant variability in their learning preferences and needs. Learning
Experience Design can uncover the dimensions of this diversity and design interactions that speak
not just to a mythical “average” student, but to all students.
Learning Experience Design succeeds because, unlike traditional instructional design practices, it is not
about merely conveying information, but designing for the total experience of the learner. And a satisfied
learner leads to someone more likely to commit to a program and an institution for the long term, to sing
the praises of his or her experience to others and even to become an enthusiastic alumnus.
For more, see:
• ●Pathways to Success: Integrating Learning with Life and Work to Increase National College
Completion
• MOOCS and Online Learning Entering the ‘Plateau of Productivity’
Originally posted on Six Red Marbles blog.

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Smashing Magazine’s 2010 overview of User Experience Design (UX) succinctly captures the spirit of the
early web: “We built [user] interaction based on what we thought worked . . . with little to no thought of
how the people who would use the website would feel about it.” Times have changed, thankfully, and
many modern websites provide users with delightful experiences that exceed their expectations.
Today, UX is critical for companies serious about successfully competing online. And my colleagues and I
at Six Red Marbles feel that Learning Experience Design—a synthesis of instructional design, educational
pedagogy, neuroscience, social sciences and UI/UX, among other disciplines—proves similarly critical for
any organization looking to succeed in the growing online higher education market.
Learning Experience Design shares some important attributes with UX, particularly with respect to
processes. But it also differs significantly in one key respect—the user, or as we prefer to say, the learner.
The unique characteristics of the higher education learner dictate what that experience entails and how
to best design for that specific experience.
Similar Processes
Learning Experience Design practices freely borrow from the user experience design thinking toolbox—
and why not? Both Learning Experience Design and UX focus on creating enhanced experiences. Today
these experiences often occur in digital spaces, from freestanding games to nimble websites and apps
for mobile devices. Here are some common similarities between Learning Experience Design and UX:
• Starting Small: When building a digital media asset, both Learning Experience Design and UX best
practices recommend an iterative practice that starts with broad strokes and gets refined with each
successive version.
• ●Thinking Big: In the initial stages of digital media asset production, Learning Experience Design and
UX processes travel the same path: a discovery or research phase that identifies core goals, followed
by a brainstorming phase that both challenges those goals and pushes concepting into uncharted
territory.
• ●Knowing Thy User: At the heart of both Learning Experience Design and UX rests the idea that
users drive product design—the “empathy” element of design thinking. Both disciplines typically
employ a research phase that uncovers what defines the user: their likes and dislikes, their previous
experiences, their habits of mind and their goals, to name a few.
• ●Testing and More Testing: To ensure that outcomes align with user needs, Learning Experience
Design and UX designers frequently test their early ideas—everything from low-fidelity prototypes to
paper-based scribbles—to gauge learner reactions.
Learning Experience Design
vs. User Experience: Moving
From “User” to “Learner”
Margaret Weigel, Director of Curriculum and Learning Experience Design at Six Red Marbles
and Jason Gorman, VP of Learning Experience Design Services at Six Red Marbles

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Different Conditions
With respect to processes, Learning Experience Design and UX share a lot in common. The two diverge,
however, around the terrain of the user—or as we prefer to say, the learner. Learning Experience Design,
rooted in the learning sciences, pedagogy theory and practice plus the neuroscience of cognition, can
provide an engaging and relevant experience that helps facilitate many types of learning.
• ●Thriving in Different Conditions: Recent neuroscience research has confirmed what Six Red Marbles
has always known: learning is a collaborative enterprise fueled by peers and the environment. The
best learning happens when a student feels supported by fellow students and educators and when
informal learning outside of the classroom—with friends, family and the world beyond—is integrated
into instruction. Digital media is poised to capture and synthesize these disparate elements of
learning. In order to succeed, UX users, conversely, are less dependent on broad-based external
supports.
• Facing Different Challenges: A learner by definition is tasked with mastering and retaining new—and
often challenging—information. This task can trigger a range of emotions, from frustration and rage
to pride and elation. Good Learning Experience Design can mitigate negative emotional responses
and encourage positive ones. Conversely, much of UX design does not require mastery, only
successful usage and the presentation of a relatively frictionless, pleasant and enjoyable experience.
• Addressing Different Goals: Higher education learners come in all shapes and sizes, with a wide range
of personal and professional goals. There is typically more at stake for learners than for users, who
can more easily turn their attention toward another website or another mobile app. A single higher
education course can cost hundreds of dollars and can require that countless hours be devoted to
class and coursework—a significant investment of both time and money.
• Assessing Learner Mastery: A learner enrolled in a course must contend with assessments, the
successful completion of which are necessary in order to prove competency and advance. Most
UX engagements do not assess the user’s mastery of material in order to advance. The more
personalized, menu-based approach to learning, such as competency-based education, depends on
a demonstration of content mastery.
Learning Experience Design’s holistic, interdisciplinary approach lands somewhere between instructional
design’s focus on content and UX’s focus on user experience. This new and rapidly expanding discipline
is poised to revolutionize how learning happens, with the goal of capitalizing upon the affordances of
digital media—and to transform users into learners.
For more, see:
• Elements of Learning Experience Design
• UX for Learning: Design Guidelines for the Learner Experience
• A Day in the Life of a Learning Experience Designer
Originally posted on Six Red Marbles blog.

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In 1972, approximately 25% of all 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled in a postsecondary, degree-granting
institution in the United States, such as a college or trade school. Forty years later, that figure had soared
to nearly 41% and shows no sign of slipping anytime soon. Even more remarkable, this data doesn’t
include students pursuing competency-based education (CBE) or MOOCs. The figure also does not
account for students older than 24.
Clearly, there is a passion and a need for postsecondary education. But learning does not just happen
through the simple completion of coursework. Across the learner spectrum, content does not teach itself;
simply placing material in front of someone does not automatically result in positive learning outcomes.
For highly motivated learners, some success may come from the “if you build it, they will learn” approach,
but for most, this method will be less than optimally effective. This proves especially true for adult
learners in higher education settings, many of whom juggle employment and family responsibilities, in
addition to coursework.
Good Learning Experience Design can create relevant, engaging and memorable educational
experiences that successfully address the specific challenges of these adult learners. The following
guidelines are particularly salient for postsecondary students and adult learners in general:
• Design a purposeful journey. It is important to remember that a student actively moves along a path
toward successful learning. Adults participating in higher education want—and need—to understand
the educational journey that has been laid out for them. They will respond positively to objectives
being clearly defined and tangibly mapped according to the activities in which they are participating.
• Make efficient use of limited time available to learners. Time is a commodity for adult learners
in a way not typically applicable to those in grades K–12. According to recent research, 23% of adult
learners attending a four-year institution and 59% attending a two-year institution do so on a part-
time basis. Part-time students in four-year institutions often experience “disrupted college pathways,”
or uneven college attendance.
• Directly link learning goals to activities. An easy way to distract busy adults from course tasks
is neglecting to clarify why they are being asked to complete them. Adults will lose focus as soon
as they sense that what they are engaged in may be “busy work.” A clearly designed learning
experience can mitigate this.
• Build upon existing understandings and address gaps in understandings. Learners who do not
adhere to the traditional higher education path have likely learned much on their own; they also may
have inadvertently missed out on key concepts. The Learning Experience Designer can (and should)
leverage the experience and knowledge of the adult learner wherever possible. Linking educational
material to real-world situations already understood by learners is an excellent way to bring concepts
to life and to make them immediately relevant. Case studies, “war stories” or even simple personal
anecdotes from the instructor or subject matter expert can go a long way toward promoting
improved learner understanding and recall. Assessing and/or giving credit for prior learning can
The Importance of Learning
Experience Design for
Higher Education
Jim Frey, Director of Learning Experience Design for Higher Education at Six Red Marbles, and
Margaret Weigel, Director of Curriculum and Learning Experience Design at Six Red Marbles

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be helpful as well; adaptive learning techniques can help personalize the experience to best fit the
needs of each student.
• ●Provide immersive, real-world simulations or experiences. Learning experiences can simulate
real-life situations that learners have encountered or will encounter, providing speedy, targeted,
specific feedback on the decisions they make. This creates a high level of engagement, relevancy and
information retention.
Emerging trends in competency-based education (CBE) and personalized learning approaches provide
new opportunities as well as new challenges for Learning Experience Designers. CBE, which dispenses
with the traditional “seat time” metric and emphasizes content mastery as a measure of student learning,
offers more flexibility than traditional models.
All of the above guidance still applies, however. How do we create a more flexible, competency-based
model that offers the adult learner a sense of participation in an experience that is intentionally and
logically designed? Learning Experience Designers are currently in the process of determining the most
effective ways to provide credit for prior learning, to accommodate different learning styles and to assess
incoming students in exciting ways. As the phenomenon grows and gains more attention, we can all look
forward to seeing the types of Learning Experience Design approaches that different institutions will
create around competency-based education.
Whether future higher education students attend lectures and study groups on a campus or create their
own custom degrees from a selection of coursework, Learning Experience Design practices can help to
ensure that students’ time and money are properly spent on memorable, effective and enjoyable learning
experiences.
For more, see:
• ●It’s Time to Invest in Learning Design
• Growth for Online Learning
• Predictors of Success for Adult Online Learners: A Review of the Literature
• The Condition of Education: Characteristics of Postsecondary Students
Originally posted on Six Red Marbles blog.

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FIVE WAYS YOU CAN IMPROVE LEARNING EXPERIENCE NOW
Good design is good business. And Learning Experience Design practices can help organizations,
administrators and other stakeholders in the education space to succeed in the highly competitive (and
often lucrative) K–12, higher education and workplace development marketplaces.
Given the customized nature of Learning Experience Design work, we’re hesitant to share a list of generic
tips on how to integrate these practices into your product. Learning Experience Design is based on a
thorough investigation of current conditions and future business goals. And each project involves unique
components that form a complex process of translating data points into an actionable product plan,
based on needs.
But what exactly are these data points? Find below five questions that a Learning Experience Design
team asks at the start of every project:
Who are your stakeholders?
Who are you building your product for? There are two obvious answers to that question: the client
and the learner. But a successful product also takes into account the needs of less prominent
stakeholders, such as those who will administer and maintain it over time, parents and future
employers.
What do your stakeholders want? What do they need?
Different stakeholders typically have divergent needs. The client may want to maximize profit or to
make a splash in the marketplace; the administrator may want a low-cost product he or she can pitch
to the local school board; the higher education learner may want to master accounting practices in
order to get a better job; and the learner’s younger brother may want to goof his way through junior
high math class.
As impossible as it sounds, a way usually exists to satisfy all these stakeholders. However, it certainly
can be challenging to negotiate successful solutions to every item on the “wish list.” Ranking these
items in terms of priority can help distinguish what seems appealing and what is critical—the “needs
list.” This is just one of many approaches in the Learning Experience Design toolkit that can help
cultivate consensus among very different stakeholders.
Where do your learners live?
Good design meets learners where they already live, metaphorically speaking. Do your learners
have robust, reliable, consistent access to technology? If not, you should consider designing your
platform and delivery systems to accommodate this situation. Are your learners captivated by their
cell phones? You may want to prioritize mobile learning options. Are they partial to video games?
Consider embedding opportunities for game-based learning throughout their engagement. Do
they have significant real-world experience but little college credit? Perhaps a competency-based
education program would work well for this audience.
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Getting Smart and Six Red Marbles Staff
Conclusion
#SmartBundle March 2015#LXDesign

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PUBLISHED BY:
Understanding not only how people learn,
but also how they broadly engage with the
world around them, will allow you to create
successful learning experiences with low
barriers of entry and significant impact.
What is the spectrum of your learners?
A persistent myth in product design suggests
that an average user exists and that this user
can guide development. In reality, focusing
on the average user only serves to hide
important variations between your learners.
Six Red Marbles starts with a model that
identifies learners on both ends of a given
spectrum—such as existing achievement,
goals or age—to better capture variations of
learners. For example, Student A, enrolled in
a distance learning higher education program
at a regional university, may be fresh out of
high school and earning credits before he
transfers to a traditional brick-and-mortar
school; Student Z may be in her late thirties,
raising a family and struggling to find the
time to complete her undergraduate degree.
Focusing primarily on an average or “typical”
learner, however, would mask these important
differences.
How will you answer these questions?
Learning Experience Design doesn’t claim to
have all the answers to every higher education
technology challenge, but we can ask the
right questions to find the answers.
Six Red Marbles employs proven techniques
from diverse fields including instructional
design, educational pedagogy, neuroscience,
social sciences and UI/UX to first identify and
subsequently focus on the unique challenges
of a specific goal, be it broad or narrow. We ask
these questions early and often in the product
development cycle, saving schools and businesses
from costly fixes—the product development
equivalent of the old carpenter’s adage: “Measure
twice, and cut once.”
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IN PARTNERSHIP WITH:
All content and graphics are licensed CC BY-NC / Attribution-NonCommercial by Six Red Marbles and Getting Smart. This license lets others
use and build upon this work for non-commercial uses, but only with proper attribution to the original source. Those wishing to use content or
graphics must acknowledge and link to the original document and the document’s authors.
red cut vinyl to match
Pantone 199c
grey cut vinyl to match
Pantone 5425c