Week 10. Designing for Knowledge

As Julie Dirksen (2016) states, "a lot of times learners already have some knowledge of a topic". If we go back to Bloom's taxonomy and look at the cognitive domain, we will see that almost every educator who is aware of what it actively utilizes the tool of connecting the theme of a lesson with the learner's prior knowledge. This is an effective way to conduct a so-called quick pre-assessment in order to know what your audience's experiences in the area are and be able to shape the content of the lesson accordingly. In addition, it will be an extremely useful experience for learners to think about what they already know and what they might want to know which will provide the instructor with the opportunity to create personalized learning experiences. There is a wonderful tip that Julie Dirksen gives in her book "Design for How People Learn" where she claims that, "Whenever you want to tell your learners something, first ask yourself if there's any way they can tell you instead" (Dirksen, 2016, p. 162).

As instructors, we all want our learners to both be able to apply what they learn in different real-life conditions and also enjoy the learning experiences we create in order to get them there. Here are a few tips that stood out to me this week after reading more of Dirksen's "Design for How People Learn":

• Let the learner construct their own learning - let them take their time and think about the facts related to the new material that they already know, what their ides, assumptions or hypotheses are, and what they think they need to learn about the topic to make the quality of their lives better.

• Make the important pieces of content "sticky" - we all tend to remember things if they are somewhat unusual. For example instead of lecturing learners could watch a video of some people discussing the topic and trying to make sense of the topic learners are working on.

• "Desirable difficulty" refers to what was called ZPD by Lev Vygotsky. Making important concepts a little bit challenging to learn about rather than providing the learner with a direct explanation can be highly beneficial in terms of helping to move the important understandings to the learner's long-term memory.

• If there is a way to SHOW how something works, do it.

• Social Interaction can be taken advantage of in multiple ways - learners can create something together, e.g. a short explanation of a concept they will later demonstrate in class to teach other students, participate in a debate, explore something and then present their findings in class, etc.

• Manage the right amount of content - LESS is more. In most cases, students get overwhelmed with a big amount of content and disengage easily. Instructors should always remember that what they assume the normal amount of content is, in fact, will be very different from what learners can actually grasp and stay engaged while learning.

• Be ready to deal with misconceptions - employ feedback loops and use "good and bad examples" technique where students can test how well they can differentiate those that demonstrate the way the concept works in real-life well from those that don't.

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To practice mindfulness for my Instructional Design Course and life, here are three things I am grateful for this week:

1. I am still healthy.

2. Whatever I cooked was very delicious which made me and my close ones happy.

3. I started working on a project that is very important for my career path and other people as well.