Learning Trends Infographics

Responsive design in e-learning can be used for remote employee development. This infographic explains responsive e-learning design and how it can be used to improve learning experience. It was created using Piktochart. I created this artifact for my Learning Technologies course, during the Summer 2020 semester.

​

What did you learn?

I considered this class the pivotal class in my ICT program, since my research focus was on learning technologies itself. My goal was to build upon my forecasting and usage recommendation research to look the practice of e-learning. The instructional design content of the course was not new to me, however I was looking to improve upon my existing knowledge. With emerging technologies such as mobile learning, I saw the ID field as changing. My belief was, and still is, that instructional designers may need to take a more holistic, design thinking approach. In addition, the widespread popularity of social media, YouTube, and MOOCs would require us to be curators of content, not just creators of it. The shift to remote work and the demand for informal and on-demand learning meant that the traditional ADDIE model could give way to more dynamic models like SAM and AGILE. Even if, for example, mobile learning is not currently adopted in an organization, it is important to "future proof" courses by designing them to be easily made available on smartphones or tablets in the future.

How did you learn this?

I chose to focus my research on responsive e-learning, which is an offshoot of responsive web design. Responsive design allows for the viewing of web page on any screen size. It has been increasingly become of a feature of e-learning platforms and authoring tools. To name one example, Articulate Global offers responsive publication within its core authoring tool Storyline, as well is a separate web-based authoring tool called Rise. I created two artifacts: an infographic and a module to analyze and test the concept of responsive design.

The infographic artifact shown here demonstrates both my skill in designing a job aid, and what I learned about responsive design for e-learning. At the same time as I was taking the Learning Technologies class, I was also doing an ATD professional development certification course in Microlearning. This influenced my ideas about need for responsive e-learning design. I looked at this research from the perspective of the modern learner and designing learning that is easily accessible at the moment of need.

What were some challenges that you overcame?

The summer session was only eight weeks long (compared to 12 weeks for a normal semester), so I would have liked more time to have engaged in deeper research into this subject. As it was, from a design standpoint, presenting all of the research I did gather into an infographic was still challenging, because infographics are supposed to graphically oriented with text limited to short bites. So in the end, it may be that what I found was more than sufficient.

How will you apply this information in the future?

I am putting my knowledge of responsive design to direct use designing e-learning content. Between summer of 2020 and winter 2021, I've put theory into practice by publishing a series of responsive courses using Articulate, including another artifact for this Learning Technologies course. In addition, what I've learned from creating this artifact will be useful in making recommendations regarding the adoption of learning technologies, particulate for mobile and remote learning.