The Learning Designer is a relatively new role at Falmouth and is often referred to as an ‘academic developer’ in our community. Our responsibilities mostly involve being the voice of the intended person a learning activity is being delivered to. Through our experiences and research, we advocate for good practice, proven pedagogical practices, and the learner’s motivations.
A large part of our role involves… designing! We focus on meeting the needs of a learning opportunity and use our creative problem–solving skills to put a solution in place using the resources and time available. We co-ordinate the development of the solutions to these problems making sure to draw on expertise from within and outside of the Digital Learning team, and learn from wherever we can to adapt and apply effective practice to learning opportunities.
We’re here to help you put that good practice into your teaching. Through evidence–based research we can advise on practice that actually works; the kind of practice that students engage with. Having everything in a module ‘designed’ means that we can provide a rationale for why something is placed within in a certain activity, why it is put in at a particular point in a sequence, all backed up with evidence as to why this is the most effective way for learning.
We will also work with you to ‘prototype’ content. This means that we discuss the subject matter, the assessment, the context and create structured learning activities and content that most effectively deliver key concepts, and ultimately the learning outcomes. We don’t have all the answers here though, so we will all also work with the Learning Technologists and Learning Resource Designers to pull together the best tools and look and feel for the job. We will also draw on other teams at Falmouth (eg. Library, ASK, Inclusivity) to use their expertise.
So, you could think of us as a project manager (although I prefer ‘coordinator) of sorts. We are responsible for the development of your module in terms of ensuring deadlines are met, all the components of the module make sense and have the student experience at the heart, and everyone that needs to be involved in the development of your module is involved. We will be with you all through the Academic Approval process from course design right through to release. Plus, we will work with you on enhancements to your module on Learning Space or Canvas once we’ve learned from its first iteration.
Any questions, just give us a shout. To book in a session with one of us please use our booking form.