The Learning Designer Playbook

 How much support should I offer in my course? by Dr. Catrina Mitchum This question popped up in a course creation group I’m in. I answered it there, but felt like comments on social media don’t give enough space to do the answer justice.  And so here we are.  TL/DR: It depends.  It depends on you, the course goals and content, and your learners. These are the key three that impact most of the choices that you’ll make in your course, and support is one of them.  Because it can be easy to burnout on support, I like to start with three lists across those three areas. You What kind of support are you willing to give? What kind of space do you have in your life to give support? You need to start with you for a few reasons.  If you don't have the time and energy to support the kind of course you want to create, then you have to rethink the kind of course that you want to create. It will help you actually set boundaries and design your course in a way that you fe...

I’ve been referring to the experiences in learning that we carry with us as learning baggage. This can be the red pen on your paper in the first grade or being told you’re stupid because you read slow in the 4th grade. It can be the glowing recommendation from a teacher or the “aha!” moment in a class you were struggling in. It can be the time you practiced over and over and over to perfect that skateboard trick or draw those hands so they didn’t look like AI generated hands. These experiences can shape (for better or worse) how you experience future learning. Because expectations matter. And past experiences shape future expectations. How you anticipate things to play out impacts motivation and success.  This is why it’s important to understand learning baggage. Whether it’s your own or your potential learners (learners can be clients, students, employees - anyone that’s going to be learning something from you).  Knowing what color glasses are tinting your experience, or thei...