As we all know, you learn the most when you teach. The same is true when you design educational experiences. This semester is no exception. Here is something I’m learning about the role of external impact. As a student, I wrote countless papers, but I always felt I was first a consumer of work done by others. When…
Throughout my graduate program, we read study after study examining the effects on learning outcomes. Even my own dissertation considered the relationship between students’ perceptions of community in an online environment and learning outcomes (spoiler: no relationship was suggested in my data). However, the students’ perceptions of community within the class were significantly positively correlated with…
The first 17 years after college, I followed a traditional career path for a person graduating with a Finance major. I worked for large corporations, came to work early, stayed out late several times a month entertaining clients, dropped everything for last minute out-of-town work trips, picked up an MBA along the way, made enough…
This photo popped up on Facebook today reminding me of a daunting project I undertook in 2017 to scan, identify, and share family photos I inherited from my parents. They accumulated or inherited the photos over decades, and I hadn’t touched the box since my mom died in 2011 making the identification part kind of…
Truth be told … until I started working on our projects to design educational supports for adult basic skills education, I don’t think “empathy” for the learner played a huge part in my design decisions. Sure, I thought of the learners, but more as some set of characteristics and/or demographic data. From what I see…
Despite being eclipsed by Notre Dame tonight (see what I did there), my favorite school gave fans a unique chance to cheer on the hockey team at the United Center here in Chicago. #GoBadgers #OnWisconsin
Purpose. Truth be told, I think it’s what we’re all striving to find and achieve. In setting a course in life, we often conflate purpose with passion, but purpose is the selfless and external-facing iteration of passion. Purpose involves capitalizing on your talents and passions for a reason beyond yourself. Tonight, we watched Dumplin on Netflix….
In the course I’m teaching, one of the optional texts students can choose is Rogers (2004) “Diffusion of innovations”. I first read this book in my master’s program at Indiana University (IU), and it put into words (and importantly … through research) what I’d experienced countless times in my professional life. Time, users/stakeholders, competing priorities, etc. all…
I spend a lot of time contemplating the need that drives our work at Designers for Learning. It’s challenging to get the right mix of relevant statistics to frame the problem/need, empathy to share the human cost/importance, while avoiding condescension (e.g., labeling/deeming other humans as being “less than”). So, here’s today’s latest attempt. I’ve probably…
Designers for Learning is a proud member of the Chicago Literacy Alliance (CLA), a coalition of over 130 nonprofits dedicated toward a mission of a 100% literate Chicago. The CLA’s Literacenter, a 27,000 sqft co-working space, is Designers for Learning’s “home office” and my home away from home. I took this picture today at the…