Learner Intelligence (LI) design easily blends with other design strategies and is not an “all or nothing” design decision. A common blended design is when a course starts in a linear fashion because the content is required and remains the same for all users. Then at some point during the course, an adaptive design is used to address the diverging needs of learners.
This might be the approach taken for a new product. The course begins by explaining what the new product is, something all learners need to know. When it comes time to explaining how the product is used, the learner is given options to explore numerous different usage scenarios. Similarly, a compliance course may start the same for all users, then offer different perspectives based on company role or years of experience.
Another blended design would be adding a small adaptive section to a traditional linear design. This might be helpful when learners understand the subject but are having difficulty applying the information. A section designed using a Learner Intelligence approach could allow users to explore different ways of applying learning in a self-directed way.
The idea of sporadic adaptability provides the designer a great deal of creativity. Existing courses can be quickly enhanced by adding adaptive sections at key places in the course. For example, during an adaptive role play the user can switch among multiple job positions such as CEO, CFO, operations, and IT to get a comprehensive
The prospect of combining both LI and AI design in one course has great potential for getting the best from both approaches. While AI must observe user actions and past activity before making recommendations, LI allows users to modify the course instantly at the time of need. AI makes recommendations for the learner, while LI encourages active autonomous learning.
There are two important concepts for a designer to keep in mind. First, Learner Intelligence provides the designer another tool that can be used when pushing the same content to all users is not effective. LI design enables the designer to customize learning to individual learners for the entire course or selected parts of the course. Second, Learner Intelligence can be used as an unobtrusive formative assessment by tracking usage patterns. Information gathered in this way can be more accurate than survey questions. This will be explored more deeply in a future post.
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