Learning Types
One of the recurring challenges in learning design is the lack of a shared vocabulary focused on learning and the learner experience, rather than pedagogy and teaching. To facilitate true collaborative work, we needed to establish this common language.
Drawing on cognitivism, constructivism, and connectivism, we understood learning as the ability to assimilate new information into existing knowledge by making connections – connections formed through personal experiences, relationships, and sensory encounters. These connections and the structure they create can be understood as an individual's schema, and the act of learning and making connections could take many forms.
Diana Laurillard, in her Conversational Framework for learning, introduced the concept of Learning Types where learning could take a variety of forms and expressions. Through a range of collaborative efforts, these types evolved beyond the dialogic relationship between teachers and learners to focus on the broader experience that can be developed outside the confines of the classroom.
The Learning Types
These seven learning types provide different ways individual learners can to connect to someone's schema:
| Assimilative | Learning through presented information |
| Investigative | Learning by seeking information |
| Discursive | Learning by engaging with other perspectives |
| Formative | Learning by trying |
| Productive | Learning by creating artefacts |
| Evaluative | Learning through feedback |
| Social | Learning with others |
We also found it helpful to align the Learning Types to activities, what the learners will be doing and spending time in the course.
| Assimilative | Content | Creating information for the student to learn from. |
| Investigative | External Resources | Curating information for the student to engage with. |
| Discursive | Discussion | Creating opportunities to share and engage with different perspectives. |
| Formative | Practice | Providing opportunities for learners to try things out. |
| Productive | Assessment | Students produce artefacts as evidence of learning. |
| Evaluative | Review | Creating opportunities to learn from reflection and feedback. |
| Social | Interactive | Creating opportunities to learn from others. |
The language of the Learning Types also included a visual element, associating a consistent colour association that extended across tools used in the process.
Using Learning Types
The day-to-day work of Learning Design centres around learning, but it's often in an indirect way. We help create and build resources for learning, assessments of learning, instructions and activities that promote learning. The Learning Types enabled us to quickly build a shared understanding of what that learning is and how it occurs. This allowed us to quickly onboard our Course Authors and provide a lingua franca to discuss the learning experience. This allowed discussions to move beyond topics and content and into how students learn and engage with those ideas.
Course level planning
Learning Types were initially introduced and used to help define the learner's time-on-task to help understand the learning experience across the course. By allocating hours of the course we could quickly form an understanding of the priorities, but also begin to troubleshoot issues. Seeing too much time allocated to one type of learning or activity meant that learners were missing other opportunities to learn. A good learning experience combines multiple learning types in sequence, moving through them as part of a cohesive lesson.
Lesson level design
The Learning Types became an important part of the construction and planning of these lessons in the Course Map. A well-constructed lesson provides multiple connection points and opportunities to connect the lesson to the student's prior knowledge or experience. Because everyone's schema is unique, the more diversity, the greater the chance of creating connections. Building this into the planning stage of the course created a much clearer concept of what is being taught and how.
Development and reporting
Moving into Smart Storyboard, the Learning Types were used again, this time in terms of reporting what kind of experience was being developed in each lesson, module and across the whole course. The colour coding and linking time spent on different activities and learning helped to create visual guides and reporting figures. As the course was constructed we developed a clear sense of the learning experience and could make adjustments while still in development.
By embedding Learning Types into our design process we created a shared language that keeps learning at the centre of our work. This framework transformed how we discuss, design and develop learning experiences.