Onboarding Software Engineers

Learn the basics of Learning Design

Holistic Learning Experiences

  1. “Start with the performance problem”
  2. “Determine if learning can help”
  3. “Clarify what success looks like”
  4. “Determine learners’ needs”

Authentic Learning Tasks

“An authentic learning task is a task as it exists in real life”

“you need to learn the main ‘complex skill’ in an integrated manner”

“Complex learning ‘involves integrating knowledge, skills, and attitudes; coordinating qualitatively different constituent skills, and usually transferring what’s learning… in training settings to … work setting”

Zone of Proximal Development

“we need to provide the appropriate level of guidance and support to help the learner complete the learning tasks at each ‘complexity’ level”

Direct instruction model

Feedback

“(feed up, back and forward)”

  1. Task level
  2. Process level
  3. Self-regulation level
  4. Self level

“only telling learners that they’re doing something wrong can be detrimental if they don’t understand why they’re doing it wrong and what to change to do it better”

novice learners benefit more when feedback is directive. advanced learners benefit more when feedback is epistemic.

Worked examples

“A worked example typically illustrates a principle or pattern, which helps learners to abstract the important/relevant information to map to similar or even different problems. It helps them go from the surface structure to the deep structure of problems, focusing on structural aspects of problems to derive the underlying concept common to the examples.”

Spaced learning

“The effectiveness of spaced learning comes down to this: tackling learning in various short sessions works better than learning than learning that same thing in one long session”

Retrieval practice

“They found that testing repeatedly works better than just one-time testing”

“Production (coming up with the answers yourself works better than recognizing answers)”

Interleaving

“Interleaving is basically a method to space practice”

“When we design related but different learning activities we achieve several good things, For starters, we add a layer where learners need to decide which strategy they need to choose… We help learners figure out what distinguishing elements there are on which they need to base their choice approach…”

Self-directed learning

“SDL is the process where someone takes the initiative to diagnose their own learning needs, formulate their learning goals, identify learning tasks to be carried out to support their learning, and perform those tasks”

“The learner doesn’t necessarily always start with determining a learning need. They might just try to complete a work task, run into problems and need to find a solution”

Personal learning network

“the network of people a self-directed learning connects with for the specific purpose of supporting their learning”