Principles related to the learner’s reality

One of the best ways for students and staff to be partners on a learning journey is to take the learner’s reality into account and design accordingly. Content must be accessible, inclusive, and respond to how learners learn best.

Accessibility:

• Accessibility means taking into account the hardware learners have access to, as well as their internet and data access.
  • For example, given the historical context in South Africa, it is likely reasonable to assume that learners will often access the platform via mobile phones. Therefore, the user interface must be mobile-compatible. 
  • Unless they are able to do some of this learning at work, learners are likely using their own data. Streaming videos and interactive infographics can be slow and use a lot of data. For learners with limited access to high-speed internet and data, HD resolution should be avoided to speed up download times and economise data usage. Also, where alternative activities and elements can be used equally well, they should replace data-heavy elements. Use gifs in place of screencasts as one example.
• Provide downloadable content and transcripts so that students can work offline if needed, like during the commute home on public transport, or at home if they only have internet at work.
• Include affordances in the user interface, such as alt text, adequate colour contrast, font size, button size, avoiding a wall of text, readability for screen readers etc.
• Affordances should be clear and easy to follow since many of the students are older and may feel less confident using technology.
• It’s advisable to follow the web content accessibility guidelines (WCAG) as a benchmark for making content accessible in an online environment.

Learning experience: 

• Learners learn best when learning includes thinking, doing, and feeling. Any learning journey should include activities with opportunities for all three elements. Managing cognitive load and emotional load is important if learners are to remain engaged.
• Chunking content into modules, units, activities, and within lessons (and other components) with sections and subsections helps to manage cognitive load.
• Many working learners have work and family responsibilities, especially females taking courses. This implies that they may complete course work in small chunks. Each activity or component within the learning journey should be easy to complete in less than an hour. Otherwise, learners may become despondent if daily life interrupts a task and they have to start all over again.
• The activities in the learning journey should contain a balance between prior knowledge and challenge; if the challenge is too great, learners will experience cognitive overload with overwhelming feelings, and may give up or freeze.
• English may be a second or third language for many of the learners. Therefore, the English used should be simple yet elegant to manage cognitive load so that learners understand without feeling humiliated or talked down to. Language usage is as much an accessibility consideration as a learning experience one.

Many qualifications have clear requirements that learners must meet. Therefore, the content requires that learners can prove they can do certain things. The most important design principles here are backward design and scaffolding.

Backward design:

• Backward design means starting with what learners should be able to do once they complete each course and the programme. These skills can be written up as learning objectives. With those goals in mind, the content can be scaffolded to reach them.

Scaffolding:

• Scaffolding means creating a learning journey with elements that build on one another going from foundational concepts to higher order thinking.

• Scaffolding should be present in the broad design and within micro-design. At the highest level, learning outcomes and learning objectives should be scaffolded using a learning taxonomy, for example Bloom’s revised taxonomy.
• Chunking content, as described above, is a micro-design process that can serve a scaffolding purpose while also managing cognitive load.

Academic integrity:

• Generally Accepted Accounting Practice, International Financial Reporting Standards, and tax laws all provide clear standards for the topics covered in this programme that should be used as a checklist.
• All the examples provided, problems with model answers, readings, discussions, etc., should be academically sound, current, and originate from reputable sources.
• Use proper referencing and citation to avoid plagiarism. This also models the type of ethical behaviour that accounting professionals and citizens are meant to embody and practice.

Time is a non-renewable resource that neither students nor staff can get back. Staff can only do one thing at a time, so if the design forces them to go beyond scope, there are other things that they must leave aside. Design principles need to respect and care for people’s professional and personal commitments and well-being. Design principles also need to take the resources and constraints into account. Two important principles in this regard are: keep content evergreen; and efficiency.

Keep content evergreen:

• Course maintenance is time-consuming and labour-intensive.
• Examples and scenarios should be  relatable for the learners and stand the test of time. This means avoiding statistics and figures that change quarterly or annually, for instance.
• Time and dates should be specific, especially in media assets that are costly, complex, and time-consuming to update. Avoid using “last year” or “next month”, for example.
• Linking out should be to reputable websites that are stable over time.

Efficiency:

• Stay within the scope governed by the learning objectives and the learning times. This has the added benefit of managing cognitive load as well.
• Choose activities strategically to effectively meet the learning objectives and scaffold properly. This will eliminate burdening the staff member and junior staff member with avoidable student queries because the activity will effectively convey the content.
• Use the simplest yet quality method to convey content given the available production staff, as well as the budget and tools.
• Use activities and features that can be built in-house as far as possible since independent contractors tend to be costly.
• Consider how to assess learning outcomes with learners without placing the bulk of the load on the academic contractors. Use quizzes, and discussions (a form of peer review) where the content allows for this.
• Design activities that are easy to upload and maintain on the LMS.

Activities that are didactic in nature are most closely associated with developing the knowledge learning objectives. Using notes, casebooks, screencasts, instructional videos, and sometimes even guided readings, will transmit core concepts while also developing active and conceptual thinking.

Adding pause and reflect elements and linking out to interesting content that goes beyond the scope of the core content can foster critical thinking and provoke curiosity.

Activities that engage students relate to doing. Doing activities in the form of enrichment activities, guided readings, mock problems that unlock model answers once complete, asynchronous discussions, quizzes and assignments all build towards achieving the skills and learning objectives.

Engagement features can also be part of the micro-design of both  didactic and doing components.  Consider the use of interactive infographics, games, flip cards, polls, and surveys that enable learners to develop confidence and apply problem-solving and creative thinking. 

Activities that foster a sense of belonging with other students and a sense of partnership with academic staff generate positive feelings that aid learning. Live sessions and well-designed asynchronous discussions are two activities in this vein. These activities also develop relationships.

As mentioned in the discussion of the learning experience principle in Section 2.1, all activities can produce an emotional reaction depending on how they are designed and presented. A good design will ask whether learners feel represented in the examples and can identify with them.