As someone who is considering a career pivot to digital learning design from UX research/strategy/design consulting, I want this to be a strong portfolio piece, as well as a course I could develop as part of a marketable product or service. Also, I’d like to transition into an industry with complex problems that require learning resources, like finance, engineering, SaaS platforms, or health care which directed my efforts.
I found an amazing SME in the healthcare industry, Jan Berger, who could represent some of the needs she sees in learning, and in particular in AI. She shared that learning how to use AI to improve diagnosis and to create more personalized care plans is a strong need, and that became my overarching learning outcome for the course.
I chose the focus on adult-onset allergies because the frequency of this has increased, and it’s an area where there is a gap in the research that’s been conducted, with most research and care following pediatric-onset allergies. Medical professionals will benefit from being able to use AI to stay on top of the recent findings and to apply that to their research and decision-making, as well as their communications with patients and peers. I do see this course as being well suited to modification for different medical conditions.
After a focusing session with Jan, I worked with ChatGPT to research the topic and draft learner personas. This helped me settle on the format - something scenario-based and case study focused, with modular videos.
Because this will be for learners with little time and challenging schedules, my own challenge will be to figure out how to cover a lot of ground in a short period of time.
This was a very familiar exercise for me because we often used User Personas in my previous work in UX. That said, it was very helpful to explore the different sections specific to digital learning design such as digital learning preferences, devices, etc. It had a direct impact on how I entered the micro-design phase of things.
This was also a familiar area because I often worked as a UX Strategist, directly with clients. Balancing business needs with user needs (and in this case, learner needs) is always a bit tricky. In this case, some hospitals/clinics are more outcome-focused than others in how they are incentivized, so this section was the result of some very interested conversations with my SME Jan.
One of the newest and most useful elements of this section was diving in more deeply to Bloom’s Taxonomy. I had heard of it before but never truly applied it. This was definitely a case of not quite “getting it” until I had to apply it to my own work. In addition, having to run one of my outcomes through the ABCD framework was eye-opening.