Who wants the metaverse?

I’m not sure what kind of mindset drives someone to troll dystopian sci-fi for your “next big thing”, but it seems to be a big in Silicon Valley. It’s from one of these unheeded fables that Zuckerberg’s Metaverse emerges. Rather than try and fool a population and lull them into a false sense of safety […]

Leading Through Fog

“I feel called on to “lead”, even as I am not sure what to think.” On return to campus planning, this beautiful writing speaks to the challenge of leading in fog. https://twitter.com/brlamb/status/1448448092190109697@katemfd This week was a big one. I’ve been so focussed on recruiting and developing the team, getting work practices established and building momentum […]

The System vs The Game

I had this thought the other day – when was the last new social system developed? Sure we’ve seen plenty of technological systems come and go, but what about those that affect how we live, and perhaps more importantly live together? The bulk of our social systems came about in the post-war era, obviously required […]

The Key to Success is to Iterate

This is part of a series unpacking each of the Principles of Agile Learning Design. The biggest change in moving from a traditional waterfall approach to an agile one is the concept of iteration. Rather than a linear approach, the secret ingredient to adopting an agile methodology is to iterate. What I find counterintuitive is […]

Ask Big Questions for Little Details

This is part of a series unpacking each of the Principles of Agile Learning Design. In the last post I spoke about purpose — this principle is how do we establish what that is. From the outset ask big questions – like how do you want to change students? What will they remember in 5 […]

Design with Purpose

This is part of a series unpacking each of the Principles of Agile Learning Design. Design with intent and purpose. Know what you want in the course and design it in. Ask and map out the points of Wow and Joy and design for them. We get to define the whole experience, so don’t leave […]

Understand the Constraints

Previously I’ve described design as problem solving within a set of constraints. It’s a definition I believe works across the various media and disciplines we might apply design to – web, graphics and yes learning. In my early career I was a graphic designer. I’ll admit that I was never the flashy kind, my work […]

Containers and Fidelity

So last week I dropped down some principles for Agile Learning Design and I want to unpack each of these a little. However, I figured there’s one there that might need some extra explanation – number 5 – so let’s start there. Content is content until it is something else. We use “content” as a […]

The Principles of Agile Learning Design

So far I’ve given you a bit of an origin story for Agile Learning Design and spoken a little bit about the Design itself. The next thing I thought I’d do was lay out some principles for Agile Learning Design. This post is more manifesto than explanation — some of it definitely needs to be […]

The Design in Learning Design

Before I get into some of the meatier discussion around Agile Learning Design I want to take a quick detour and have a quick chat about learning design. Without a dedicated degree or qualification it seems that learning designers come into the profession via two streams – education or technical. I came to it from […]