This week’s we have a guest contribution from Souwoon Cho, a Senior Distance Learning Developer, to continue our ‘A – Z of BILT’ series.
Learning Design: Just one thing
Learning design is not an exact science, and there is certainly not one perfect approach. It can also feel like if you haven’t been trained in ‘Learning design’ or you don’t have it in your title then it’s not a skill you have or can develop. I’m by no means a learning design expert, but I believe that there are some key practices that can be adopted to improve everyone’s approach to learning design.
Make it active
Active learning describes a student-centred approach to learning design. This approach empowers learners to engage in interactive and experiential tasks, often with their peers, rather than passively consume content. By incorporating more active learning approaches into your learning design, you can enhance your students’ critical thinking, creativity, and teamwork skills needed now and in the future.
There are already great examples of active learning activities taking place across disciplines at the University of Bristol, these include:
- Case based / problem-based learning
- Collaborative learning
- Flipped learning
- Game based learning
- Reflective learning
With the Temple Quarter campus scheduled to open in 2026, this opens up more opportunities for teaching staff to incorporate active learning into their teaching. Reflecting on your own teaching, how active is your current approach? What activities could you introduce to make your teaching more active?
Think accessibility
It’s difficult these days to engage in any conversation about learning design without thinking about accessibility. Although you may be aware of the importance of accessibility and its’ benefits to learners – it can feel like an unsurmountable task to know how to turn your awareness into action.
A great way to start is by using Blackboard Ally. This is a tool available to staff via Blackboard which gives you a visual accessibility score for your existing resources and actionable steps to improve the accessibility of those resources. This can help build your understanding and practice of accessible learning design. Guidance for accessible design and Digital accessibility training is available via the Digital Education Office.
Apply visual design principles
Visual design principles such as negative space, contrast and visual hierarchy can be applied to your learning materials to improve engagement and comprehension.
Photo by Sonnie Hiles on Unsplash
For example, the rule of thirds principle often used in photography and visual arts, suggests dividing a space into nine equal parts with two horizontal and two vertical lines, placing key elements along these lines or at their intersections. This principle helps create balanced and visually appealing layouts, drawing attention to important content without overwhelming the viewer or learner. Research by Mayer and Moreno (2003) supports the idea that thoughtful use of visuals can reduce the learner’s cognitive load and learning efficiency when engaging with multimedia learning. So rather than fall into the trap of filling every inch of your slides with images and text – consider ‘less is more’ to improve the design and effectiveness of your learning materials. Although not specific to higher education, this Visual Design Principles for e-learning video on YouTube, gives a great overview of the key design principles you can start applying.
Just one thing
Of course, this is not an exhaustive list or even the tip of the iceberg of learning design. Inspired by the late Michael Mosely’s ‘Just one thing’ podcast, I hope you can take ‘Just one thing’ from this list to put into practice today to improve your learning design practice.
References:
Mayer, R. E., & Moreno, R. (2003). Nine ways to reduce cognitive load in multimedia learning. Educational Psychologist.
