Evolution of Experience concept
It has been evident that, over the past decade, economy has changed from commodity to product to service, and now to experience; with special emphasis on involving emotions and feelings. It is changing the way products and services are offered; and learning is no exception.
“Learner experience is the core concept in active deep learning”.
So, how it became so? And what is Learner experience?
A Learning experience refers to any interaction, course, program, or other experience in which learning takes place. It could occur in both traditional and untraditional academic settings and could include both classic and nontraditional educational interactions.
In our approach, we choose and insist on using the term “learner” experience not learning; as we are urging facilitators and designers to focus on each learner, and take care of every individual needs and interactions; thus channeling the main focus on the human not the learning content or curriculum.
The learner experience will occur anyway, however, our objective is to make it a positive planned experience whose impact and outcomes last longer than the training duration1.
Learning experience waves
The global LX movement started in 2016 with a conference in Netherlands, and again in 2017, that included a group of international pioneers interested in developing the concept of Learning experience.
Our approach is closely aligned with the global LX movement, and the below waves show the progression of the directions in learning in three different stages: we represent it with 3 waves.
Presentation
The primary focus of this stage is the content, how to adequately create and present content. This stage is content centric, it promotes presentation skills where the main emphasis is to present all the content. The learning outcomes here could be only knowledge; it is really very difficult to add skills through normal presentation styles.
Training
The focus here starts to shift from only presenting content to passive listeners, to adding some activities within the training process. So, it is not only content centered; learning outcomes here incorporate skills in addition to knowledge. This stage requires Training Of Trainers (TOT) for the trainers, and it is trainer-centered phase.
LX
It is now the era of learner experience, and the focus is not any more on the curriculum, or tackling some skills during the training; it is rather designing the complete learner experience. This incorporates the learner’s thoughts and emotions, which eventually encompasses the attitude dimension.
So, we now agree that to have a fulfilling experience, good content is never enough; if we drop other components. As we now want to move from content to learning which tackles new dimensions as skills and attitudes, this requires adding the “how to” of learning and education; both for learner experience design (LXD) and learner experience Facilitation (LXF).
New Roles in learner experience
T he roles packaged within the Learner Experience has reshaped to adequately suit its parameters:
- So instead of using the term “Instructional Designer”, we now use LXD (Learner eXperience Designer)”.
- And instead of using the term “Trainer”, we now use LXF (Learner eXperience Facilitator)”
A Learner experience facilitator not only focuses on delivering the learning material and assessing learning outcomes, but also pays attention to the whole learning experience of the learners, and the learning environment in which he/she facilitates using previously designed session flow.