Designing “experiential learning”

If you’re reading this, it means you probably value instructional design as much as we do. We can’t stress enough the importance of this cornerstone of adult education. We live and breathe instructional design. We eat learning outcomes for breakfast.

Instructional design is a bit of catch-cry in the training world but when we use the expression, this is (some of) what we mean:

• Working out where the learners and/or organisation are and where we want them to get to (training need analysis, learning objectives);
• The best way to get them there (learning intervention);
• How we’ll know when they arrive (evaluation); and
• Underpinning all of this with current pedagogical theories and evidence-based practice.

The core of our best-practice instructional design is choosing the most appropriate tools and technologies to deliver learning experiences that facilitate the transfer of meaningful knowledge, skills and attitudes. The learning content and experiences we develop are relevant, well-constructed, and accessible.

One application of our method of instructional design centres on experiential learning.
Where possible, regardless of the delivery method, we focus on activity and practice.
We’ve created a ‘fire at sea’ using nothing but a smoke machine and a willing ‘victim’. We’ve reimagined eLearning’s darling ‘branched scenario’ as a choose-your-own-adventure video comic strip. We’ve thrown new recruits into a multi-million dollar simulator on their first day. A thousand times more effective and engaging than an hour-long PowerPoint presentation, no?

We’ve designed countless customised programs to meet specific organisational needs including context-specific ASQA-accredited courses. Highly technical programs are our speciality, but we also enjoy the challenge of designing soft-skills programs to deliver on organisational KPIs.

Our focus on sound instructional design is what has kept our clients coming back to us for over 30 years. We have face-to-face experts and eLearning experts, but there’s something all of our instructional designers have in common: tertiary qualifications in adult education and a passion for effective learning design.

We believe our collective knowledge and expertise in instructional design is unmatched in Australia. We welcome you to test our claim!