From Inception to Application: My Goals as a Learning Experience Designer

Original Goals and Rationale 

As someone dedicated to lifelong learning, I knew even as an undergraduate student that I wanted to spend a few years acclimating to classroom teaching and then pursue a master’s degree. As I searched through programs dedicated to education technology, curriculum, accessibility, equity, and leadership, Michigan State University’s Master of Arts in Learning Experience Design stood out to me. This program seemed uniquely situated to help me keep on top of educational trends, grow my practice as an educator, and work more with educational technology. In my application to the program, I wrote out three goals for myself:

These goals encapsulate my desire for personal edification and professional growth. I believed them to be broad enough to work with the varied classes I would take in this program, but narrow enough to allow me to make noticeable progress on them. 

Improving my Practice as an Educator 

My undergraduate program placed emphasis on accessible, inclusive, and equitable learning in addition to content knowledge. Therefore, I had a strong foundation to build on going into this master’s program. The Learning Sciences and Learning Design certificates helped me further analyze, iterate, and refine my standard practices to better suit my students’ needs – particularly in a post-COVID, increasingly technologically driven world. Having the skills to identify student needs, create learning experiences to meet those needs, then collect the data and iterate has been invaluable to my practice. I have increased my ability make accessible and inclusive experiences through these cycles of improvement.

Technology 

Prior to joining this program, I was largely skeptical of educational technology. I was of the opinion that since technology changes so rapidly, I did not want to overwhelm my students with the latest gimmick, only to have to teach them a new program the next year. I thought of technology as an afterthought to a learning experience. The Learning Design Graduate Certificate courses taught me how to leverage technology to make my designs more accessible and embed technology into the curriculum so that it is integral to the learning experience, and not independent of it. While I still have some reservations about technology and its application in education, I now have the tools to assess technology for pedagogical and learning purposes, accessibility, and safety. 

Considering New Growth

This entire program has helped me continue learning and growing in my practice as an educator. It is through this growth that I realized I needed to add one more goal to my initial list, and that is to seek out leadership opportunities and use my voice as a teacher, leader, and designer. Originally, I shied away from leadership roles, perceiving them to be more administration-oriented or outside of my purview as a novice educator. However, I have learned that effective organizational change does not always have to come from the top down, and can instead come from the ground up. Therefore, as I continue to evolve my practice as a learning experience designer, I want to grow my skills as a leader in order to better serve my students, school, and community.