This cluster of short courses deepens participants’ capacity to design inclusive, equitable, and responsive learning experiences by foregrounding social justice, co-creation, professional identity, and data-informed decision-making. Together, these courses support participants in becoming thoughtful, justice-oriented professionals who can navigate the complexity of learning design with care, insight, and collaboration.
Designing for Social Justice
Course overview
This course aims at supporting participants to unpack the necessity of a social justice approach to learning design, with a particular focus on designing for care and engagement in highly inequitable contexts, such as South Africa. We will introduce learning design approaches, based on elements of participation, care and justice and explore how they could be applied in participants’ contexts. We will introduce theoretical framings for care and engagement, such as Nancy Fraser’s participatory parity, Joan Tronto’s ethics of care, Maha Bali’s intentional hospitality, and Freirean influenced critical digital pedagogies/humanising online learning approaches, drawing both from international and local research.
Learning objectives
After completing this course, participants will be able to:
- Demonstrate understanding of social justice and ability to design courses that are accessible and equitable;
- Apply learning design that is fit-for-purpose in different contexts, including low-tech contexts;
- Understand and critically reflect upon their own contexts and how these impact on learning design decisions; and
- Critically reflect on notions of social justice and equity and how they apply to their own practices create learning experiences based on care and compassion that foreground community and belonging.
Becoming a Learning Design Professional
Course overview
This module focuses on the learning designer (LD) and their agency in their contexts. An important element of socially-just learning design is the understanding and exploration of how our own positionality impacts on our practice. Who we are and how we are positioned influences our voice and spheres of influence. This unit will increase participants’ understanding of themselves and their context, and empower them to become change agents in their own practice. Career progression across different contexts is also part of this conversation. This course will also be used for participants going through a Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) application process.
Learning objectives
After completing this course, participants will be able to:
- Explore a selection of models that help participants to articulate and critically reflect on change and power across different contexts;
- Understand and critically reflect on their own positionality and how it impact on learning design decisions;
- Critically reflect on leading self, teams and communities;
- Understand and reflect on their agency in their own contexts;
- Plan their own development journey through learning design spaces; and
- Identify and adopt strategies to enhance the LD voice.
Co-creation in Learning Design
Course overview
This course aims to promote approaches to learning design that welcome stakeholder participation in the whole process of teaching and learning, starting with involving participants in the design, facilitation and research of teaching and learning. It will explore the potential of including a range of voice in the design, creation and quality assurance of courses and course content as a powerful remedy for injustice where previously marginalised and silenced voices can be heard. The course will discuss opportunities and challenges of co-creation approaches, such as increased responsiveness to participants’ needs, as well as tensions between more participatory and co-creative approaches with institutional requirements and limited access to resources. Unpacking equity-oriented learning design approaches, such as the equityXesign principles, will help students navigate power differentials in these contexts.
Learning objectives
After completing this course, participants will be able to:
- Advocate for the potential for co-creation in learning design;
- Describe and choose different co-creation approaches depending on their context;
- Discuss and devise mitigating strategies to address possible challenges in co-design;
- Facilitate a co-created design process; and
- Show critical reflective skills in relation to co-created learning design.
Learning Analytics for Learning Designers
Course overview
This course aims at introducing participants to the field of learning analytics as a subfield of data analysis used by learning design. It will explore widely adopted approaches to learning analytics that can inform the design, facilitation and evaluation of learning experiences. It will also cover the limitations, ethics and trends in learning analytics that learning designers need to engage with in practice.
Learning objectives
After completing this course, participants will be able to:
- Distinguish between the approaches followed in learning analytics from those in the broader data analytics field;
- Assess the appropriateness of different ways of using learning analytics during the design, facilitation and evaluation of learning interventions; and
- Discuss opportunities, limitations and ethical dilemmas when using learning analytics.