Learning Plan Example

My example of a learning plan demonstrates the first two steps in the ADDIE process: analysis and design, which precede the other steps of development, implementation, and evaluation.

The learning plan is for on-the-job training for instructional designers who must often attend or chair meetings to successfully perform their job.

My design uses a constructivist approach in which a poll, an interactive infographic, online discussions, and an enrichment activity guide learners through comparing and contrasting their personal experiences in meetings with what they will need to do in their role. These add game-based components to the design, over and above a simulation using role play, that can elicit both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the learners.

Learners also benefit from cognitive disequilibrium to construct their own understanding and practice. The disequilibrium results from watching videos with vignettes of examples of good and poor meeting practices that they analyse in light of the notes and their personal experience. Here, the videos themselves serve as a kind of “culturally more experienced mediator”. Also, the live session in which learners role-play a meeting in which peers provide feedback on handling difficult situations helps use assimilation and accommodation to draw them into the zone of proximal development. During the feedback session peers and the facilittor participate in social mediation that results in the co-construction of knowledge and skills.

My design uses universal design for learning (UDL) principles to:

• Purposefully motivate and engage learners in activities that address their learning knot – through the use of game-based components that allow learners to assume an avatar, autonomously co-create a story, and go on a quest, as is the case with the role play of a meeting, as well as acquire cognitive knowledge through notes and interactive infographics, and build tools for future use through the enrichment activity and assessment;
• Represent content in different ways – text, videos, graphics, discussions; and
• Provide multiple ways for learners to express that they know – pausing to reflect, writing a meeting plan, self-test against a checklist, online and in-person discussions, role plays.

The learning outcomes have been created using the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy to scaffold the learning journey while also writing them in a general enough way that they provide room to comply with, and make room for, UDL.

Using UDL as a framework to guide the design is important because of the diversity of age, language ability, and socio-cultural backgrounds present within the learner cohort. In so doing, the resources (tools) used, with rules of engagement for the community of practice, create the possibility of implementing Engstrom’s third-generation CHAT in which multiple points of view and traditions are valued and provide contradictions that lead to change and development in all the learners. 

My design addresses the learning knot by ensuring that all IDs receive formal training on running meetings as opposed to the ad hoc training they currently receive. In addition, learners discover the different roles that are assumed in meetings, and through engaging with videos, participating in role play and feedback from peers, they develop skills to manage expectations, navigate conflict, keep to the agenda within the allotted time, and achieve the objective of the meeting. This formal training also aids learners that come from backgrounds that value different ways of meeting develop an understanding and practice that more closely matches what is expected of them at work.