Building a bridge for learning

In Chapter 2 we developed an empathy map that helped show us our students’ needs and in Chapter 3 we have now developed an overview of the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values we want our students to gain throughout their time studying with us.

These two things give us a starting point and an ending point and between these two we want to design a learning experience that can help them go from one to the other.

In this way, instructional design is like building a bridge. The empathy map gives us the place the bridge needs to begin, and the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values grid tells us where our bridge needs to take our students.

Our job is to design what comes in between.

Knowing these two things can be the start of creative, effective, and engaging learning design but we can also use this as the starting point for some other important aspects of good teaching and learning.

Knowing our students’ needs and the knowledge, skill, attitudes, and values we want to develop can help us in:

• Curriculum planning and design.
• Lesson planning and preparation.
• Designing assessments for learning (more on this in Module 5).
• Supporting student reflection and self-evaluation.
• Lesson and teacher observation.
• Professional development.

Reflection Questions

In what ways do you already think about student needs, and the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values you want your students to develop?

Is this something that has a formal place in your instructional design process, or is it something more informal in the way that you think, plan, prepare, and teach?