Serendipity35 - Instructional & Learning Design

Andragogy and Microlearning

ronkowitz@gmail.com (Kenneth Ronkowitz) — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 09:40:00 +0000

I have referenced microlearning in earlier posts, but I want to say more about how microlearning works effectively with andragogy (adult learning theory), which differs from the more commonly heard pedagogy (children).

Microlearning provides the flexible format and focused content that perfectly complements the goal-oriented, self-directed nature of the adult learner. (Not that children don't want their learning to be self-directed, but they are less capable of doing that on their own.) Andragogy principles are strengthened by microlearning's ability to combat the forgetting curve. Microlearning often incorporates spaced repetition through short, periodic knowledge checks or quizzes. By revisiting core concepts in brief intervals, the information is reinforced, helping to move the content from short-term to long-term memory, which is vital for busy adult learners who may not have dedicated study time.

Adult learners, by definition, value autonomy and prefer to be self-directed in their education. So, microlearning modules are typically accessed on demand via mobile devices or learning platforms. Much of that learning occurs outside of traditional learning spaces. This allows adults to choose what they need to learn and when it fits into their busy personal and professional schedules, fully supporting their desire to take control of their learning path.

Adults are motivated to learn when the content is immediately relevant and can be applied to solve a real-life problem or job-related task. Each microlearning module is intentionally designed to focus on one specific learning objective. That might be "how to change the blade on a lawn mower," but also 'how to execute X function in the software." This problem-centered focus provides just-in-time training, ensuring the information is practical, immediately useful, and valuable for their current role.

Adults are most ready to learn when they encounter a specific need or challenge in their work or life.

Younger learners are more likely to accept the "authority" of the teacher that something needs to be learned at this time, even if they don't see a need for it themselves. It's not that younger learners don't sometimes do the same kind of "just in time," self-motivated learning. They might search for a video on how to do something when starting a task. But this is more likely to occur with older learners.

Adult learners have accumulated a wealth of experience and are often battling time shortages. They need efficient learning that builds on what they already know. Microlearning usually respects the adult's time by eliminating filler and focusing only on the "need-to-know" core information.

AI chatbots are certainly the latest form of just-in-time microlearning that is being used outside classrooms. Its use is not unlike someone earlier looking for a help video on YouTube, but it is incredibly fast and personalized.

AI Agents

ronkowitz@gmail.com (Kenneth Ronkowitz) — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 09:50:00 +0000

AI agents are something of concern for OpenAI, Google, and any other players. "AI agents" are software programs designed to perform specific tasks or solve problems by using artificial intelligence techniques. These agents can work autonomously or with minimal human intervention, and they're capable of learning from data, making decisions, and adapting to new situations.

Gartner suggests that agentic AI is the most important strategic technology for 2025 and beyond. The tech analyst predicts that, by 2028, at least 15% of day-to-day work decisions will be taken autonomously through agentic AI, up from 0% in 2024. Does that excite or frighten you?

They can automate processes, analyze data, and interact with users or other systems to achieve specific goals. You probably already interact with them in applications (Siri or Alexa), customer service chatbots, and recommendation systems (Netflix or Amazon). They may be less obvious to you when using an autonomous vehicle or a financial trading system.

There are many categories into which we might place these agents because there are different types of AI agents, each with unique capabilities and purposes:

Here are some possible categorizations:

Reactive agents respond to specific stimuli and do not have a memory of past events. They work well in environments with clear, predictable rules.

Model-based agents have a memory and can learn from past experiences. They use this knowledge to predict future events and make decisions.

Goal-based agents are designed to achieve specific goals. They use planning and reasoning techniques to determine the best actions to take to reach their objectives.

Utility-based agents consider multiple factors and choose actions that maximize their overall utility or benefit. They can balance competing goals and make trade-offs.

Learning agents can improve their performance over time by learning from their experiences. They use techniques like machine learning to adapt to new situations and improve their decision-making abilities.You could also categorize agents in other ways, for example, in an educational contex.

For personalized learning, agents can adapt educational content to meet individual students' needs, learning styles, and pace. By analyzing data on students' performance and preferences, AI can recommend personalized learning paths and resources. In a related way, intelligent tutoring systems can provide one-on-one tutoring by offering explanations, feedback, and hints the way that a human tutor might. They might even be able to create more inclusive learning environments by providing tools like speech-to-text, text-to-speech, and translation services, ensuring that all students have access to educational content. By analyzing students' performance data, they could identify at-risk students and provide early interventions to help them succeed.

AI agents can automate administrative tasks for faculty, such as grading, attendance tracking, and scheduling, freeing up educators' time to focus more on teaching and interacting with students.

Agents can "assist" in creating educational materials. I would hope faculty would be closely monitoring AI creation of tests, quizzes, lesson plans, and interactive simulations.

Though I see predictions of fully AI-powered virtual classrooms that can facilitate remote learning, I believe this is the most distant application - and probably the one that most makes faculty apprehensive.

Blended Learning and Hybrid Courses

ronkowitz@gmail.com (Kenneth Ronkowitz) — Wed, 20 Nov 2024 14:00:00 +0000

If blending learning was only this simple.

I saw a mention of "blended learning" in an article that reminded me of that approach that I once taught and endorsed to faculty. I have not heard the term used much in the past few years, but I am no longer involved full-time in pedagogy.

Blended learning is a pedagogical model integrating traditional face-to-face classroom instruction with online learning experiences. In some ways it was a transitional model going back to the shift from 20th century to 21st century learning. As traditional faculty were being asked to use more online tools or even convert their courses to being fully online, this approach was a softer way to launch.

The idea was to combine the best aspects of in-person and digital education to create a more flexible and personalized learning environment. A Personalized Learning Environment (PLE) was another term that emerged at the time. Probably everyone in and out of academia now has a personalized learning environment of a kind, though it may not be formalized. A PLE was supposed to allow students to benefit from direct interaction with teachers and peers while also taking advantage of the accessibility and resources available through digital platforms.

Key components of blended learning include:

    In-person instruction: Traditional classroom teaching where students engage with teachers and classmates in real-time.
Online learning: Use of digital tools and resources, such as videos, interactive activities, and online assessments, that students can access at their own pace.
    Integrated learning activities: Assignments and projects that blend both in-person and online elements to enhance understanding and engagement.
    Flexible pacing: Students can often progress through material at their own speed, allowing for personalized learning experiences.

Some of the advantages associated with blended learning were to provide a more dynamic and adaptive educational experience and addressing diverse learning styles and needs.

An effective blended learning module has a good range of learning activities: on-campus activities, such as lectures, workshops and seminars; off-campus activities, such as field trips, exhibitions, and visits to companies; online synchronous activities; and independent learning activities, such as completing tasks after reading case studies or watching videos.

The article I read was from the UK timeshighereducation.com and had suggested goals for blended learning. In brief, they are:
Find a suitable space when attending online classes
Use digital tools
Create a sense of belonging (a difficult goal because online interactions often feel impersonal and might not be well suited to every student - or faculty member)

One suggestion that interested me the most was to use different types of assessment. This was an area that I worked with faculty on frequently as an instructional designer. Blended learning modules should use a good range of assessment types. It was difficult for many teachers to accept that their main form of assessment was testing, especially objective, knowledge-based tests and quizzes. Written assessments, such as reports and essays, appeared in some courses (especially in the humanities) but were often absent in STEM courses. Faculty would tell me, "They are too subjective." "They take too long to grade" "My course requires them to retain lots of facts that I have to assess." The latter was especially true in foundation courses.

Using online tests and quizzes became more popular because once created they could be automatically scored. Easy for the teacher and immediate feedback for the student.

In-person or recorded presentations were more in the blended model but were time-consuming and more popular in upper-level or graduate courses. Interacting face-to-face with their peers as a team or audience during the presentation is also an important skill. I saw video presentations, e-portfolios, digital projects, posters, podcasts and simulation games all used in blended courses.

One concept that often met with faculty indifference or opposition was the student-as-co-creator of assignments and assessments, though this can serve as a valuable source to gather student voices and improve their learning experience.

The term "hybrid course" became used more than "blended" but was often the same thing or just used interchangeably. While both models integrate online and offline learning, blended learning is a broader pedagogical approach that can be applied at various levels of education and in different ways. A hybrid course is a specific type of course design commonly used in colleges and universities.

A hybrid course refers to a course that "officially" combines face-to-face (F2F) classroom instruction with online components. The term is commonly used in higher education to describe courses where a significant portion of the learning activities are conducted online, with the remaining portion happening in a physical classroom setting. This becomes an issue concerning the registrar and scheduling areas. A course that met F2F on Tuesday and Thursday from 10:30 - noon may now only be assigned a classroom on one of those days. The goal is still to balance the in-person interaction with the flexibility of online learning, usually reducing the amount of time spent in a physical classroom compared to a traditional course.

Of course, hybrid learning models should not be used simply to free up classroom space or reduce parking issues on campus, but unfortunately, I knew of cases where that was a motivation for using it.

The development of online and blended learning modules got a boost during and after the pandemic. To a degree, that was from necessity and convenience, but it introduced these approaches to more students and more faculty and some of it has remained in use.

Developing the right balance between these different teaching modes varies according to discipline, but a mix of synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous (self-paced) online activities, along with in-person classroom sessions.is still the pedagogical approach.

The AI-augmented Educational Support Professional

ronkowitz@gmail.com (Kenneth Ronkowitz) — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 12:50:00 +0000

Working with AI on instructional design isn't at this point. Yet.

You can find numerous articles online about how artificial intelligence (AI) tools and activities can create the "AI-augmented professor." I have seen fewer opinions on how non-teaching staff members who support the learning process at most universities will be affected.

Certainly, AI augmentation will also affect those who support faculty and students, such as instructional designers, researchers, administrators, and other nonteaching professionals.

I read a piece on insidehighered.com about this group and keyed in on instructional designers since that was my area. The article uses an awkward term - BYOAI Bring Your Own AI - for his group because of the hybrid nature of home and office work for this group. Of course, many faculty are also hybrid now, teaching in a campus classroom as well as from their home or office online.

Instructional designers are already using generative AI tools to create graphics, images and audio segments for classes. New tools, such as OpenAI’s Sora can generate full-motion videos from prompts. Chatbots can write or revise content. It can produce a rough draft syllabus for a new course.

This is also something that should concern those people coming into higher ed (and secondary education too, though perhaps to a lesser degree currently). Citing a survey by Microsoft and LinkedIn, ZDNet reported that “AI skills are so much of a priority that the report suggests 66 percent of business leaders wouldn’t hire someone without AI skills, and 71 percent of leaders would prefer to hire a less experienced candidate with AI skills than a more experienced candidate without them.”

Can Bloom's Taxonomy Teach Us Anything About AI?

ronkowitz@gmail.com (Kenneth Ronkowitz) — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 09:34:00 +0000

Image gettingsmart.com

When I was studying to be a secondary school teacher, Bloom’s Taxonomy often came up in my classes as a way to do lesson planning and a way to assess learners. Recently, there have been several revisions to its pyramid stack. An article on www.gettingsmart.com suggests a spiral might be better, particularly if you want to use it as a lens to view AI.

The author, Vriti Saraf, opines that the most important potential of AI isn’t to enhance human productivity, it’s to enhance and support human thinking, and that looking at AI’s capabilities through the lens of Bloom’s Taxonomy showcases the possible interplay of humans and machines.

It is an interesting idea. Take a look.

Rethinking Accessible Courses

ronkowitz@gmail.com (Kenneth Ronkowitz) — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 09:44:00 +0000

When I was working full-time as an instructional designer, I became very concerned with making courses (especially online courses) accessible. In the early days of this century, very often the college I worked at was quite focused on making accommodations for students with special needs. That was a quick fix but not a sustainable approach.

Retrofitting online courses became part of my department's purview. Our instructional design thinking believed that access(ible) are more than making accommodations. We knew that courses that were accessible for students who had particular needs were also courses that ate probably more accessible for all the other students too. There were so many small examples of things we did. It turned out to be useful to all the students in the course.

One semester now 20 years ago, I decided to provide audio files of my short online lectures and of explanatory talk about some of the more complicated assignments. Some students told me that they would listen to them while driving in the car, or commuting on the train, or on their walks with their dogs. Most of these audio files were taken from videos that I had made often with accompanying PowerPoint slides. So the visual was lost but we all know that a good number of PowerPoint slides used for lecture or text, so not all of the visual content was needed.

The fact that students use them this way, not only convinced me to continue the practice but made me rethink what I was putting in those slides. Perhaps the truly visual presentations needed to be truly visual and not offered as audio files so that students would have to sit down and view the video version. I was rethinking my use of visuals overall.

Instructional Design Is Learning Design

ronkowitz@gmail.com (Kenneth Ronkowitz) — Tue, 22 Aug 2023 11:35:00 +0000

I spent all my years in higher education working in instructional technology. One of the parts of the department I ran with that title was our instructional designers. I think that if you had asked me in the early part of the century what the difference was between instructional design and learning design - a term that was not in use at the start of my higher ed career - I would have said that instructional design is learning design. But today, there is a distinction.

"Learning design" and "instructional design" are closely related fields but learning design pertains to the overarching process of designing learning experiences and environments. It encompasses the full range of the learning process from determining learners' needs to assessment.

Instructional design is a more specific aspect of learning design. It takes the principles of learning and instruction and creates concrete plans for instructional materials and experiences. You may call someone a learning designer but I stay with the instructional designer (ID) being the one crafting course content, activities, and evaluations.

Learning design includes many kinds of designs - informal, experiential, and self-directed learning. The ID focuses on the actual learning experiences.

A book or course on learning design will present models like ADDIE. Learning design is holistic design. Instructional design tailors the content and activities for formal learning.

Push and Pull Learning

ronkowitz@gmail.com (Kenneth Ronkowitz) — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 08:11:00 +0000

Recently, a former colleague asked me what I thought about push versus pull learning. I knew the terms more from social media marketing but hadn't really used them in learning situations. In marketing, examples include whether to decide to subscribe to a newsletter by email or snail mail (you pull that information by choice) or a newsletter that comes to you automatically (it is pushed at you).

In general, I think people prefer to pull (choice) over having it pushed at them. Companies might prefer to push, but that probably comes with the option to stop that push (unsubscribe.)

Moving these approaches - or just the terms - to education makes some sense.

In a push approach, teachers decide on the information, approach, delivery method, and speed of delivery. It is how education has been done for centuries. It tends to start with what Bloom and his taxonomy would categorize as knowledge-level remember and understand questions. These would build toward more critical and creative thinking. With pull, students enter into creating, evaluating and analyzing that requires them to seek knowledge and understanding.

This conventional classroom-styled learning is not the only approach in the 21st century. Pull learning allows learners to access information at the point of need, the way they prefer (in some settings) at the speed they find comfortable. I think that the initial surge of MOOCs back in 2012 is a good example of learning that learners pulled as needed.

Pull puts learners more in control It flips the teacher-centered learning setting. However, we must acknowledge that learning in school at all levels is still very much push learning. Fortunately, the idea that students should be able to pull some learning as they feel they need it is gaining more acceptance and is being incorporated in instructional design planning.

Currently, pull learning experiences are probably best suited to workers who have learning needs based on job roles, personal knowledge, and advancing their career interests.

Ideally, learning is "push-pull" with appropriate information provided by a push and additional information required to complete tasks and goals pulled as needed. This is not really a new approach. When you were a student, you were certainly pushed information, but you might well have gone beyond what was provided and pulled additional information that you felt you needed.

MORE
https://www.responsiveinboundmarketing.com/blog/the-difference-between-push-and-pull-learning

https://www.teachthought.com/education/push-teaching-vs-pull-teaching-thinking/

https://barkleypd.com/blog/pushing-or-pulling/