Category: Learning Design

  • A New Perspective for 2026

    A New Perspective for 2026

    This week’s Substack resource for paid subscribers includes six PNG’s that reflect the work I’ve been doing for over a decade on educational taxonomies for educational outcomes. Each of these taxonomies is standalone, although I advocate that any sound course and programme design would incorporate all five domains of learning. Priority is being given to different domains depending on the nature of the course. For example, one would expect the psychomotor domains to be more important in a dance course than the cognitive domain. Likewise, one would expect an affective domain outcome to be more critical than a psychomotor outcome in an ethics course. The important point is that we need to avoid over-reliance on Bloom’s original cognitive taxonomy.

    The new 2026 version of my circular representations of educational taxonomies is available as an A1 poster here

    Low Resolution of A1 Poster


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  • Revolutionizing University Assessments: From Essays to Portfolios

    Revolutionizing University Assessments: From Essays to Portfolios

    First posted on Substack

    The AI arms race still rages. Students will identify AI writing support tools, educators will rearm themselves with AI-aware plagiarism-detection software, and students will source apps that can bypass the detection software. Institutions are increasingly prioritising the ease with which mass assessments can be marked. Governments are revising legislation that banned ‘essay mills’ used for contract cheating to incorporate restrictions on Generative AI.

    Students may find themselves asked to handwrite their submissions to avoid the temptation to use fully integrated generative AI tools in their word processing software. Some shrewd students will (re)discover software that takes your typed text, AI-generated or otherwise, and turn it into a version that mimics your handwriting (calligraphr.com).

    Many institutions have already been thinking about this for years. In 2021, UNESCO issued a useful report, ‘AI and Education’, which remains a foundational reader for any institutional leader who wants to be able to go head-to-head with their head of technology services, and to be informed when members of the Senate repeat some of the dystopian viewpoints gleaned from their social media feeds.

    What we need is a revolution in the design of university assessments. This also means some radical redesign of programs and courses. Institutions should be redefining what assessment looks like. Not just because much of the assessments currently on offer lend themselves too easily to plagiarism, contract-cheating, or AI-generated responses, but also because they are bad assessments. Bad assessments, designed loosely to assess very badly written learning outcomes.

    Many universities face a fundamental problem: their entire assessment philosophy (if they have one) remains rooted in a measuring psychosis. One that sees its self-justification in measuring what the learner knows now, rather than what they could do before they undertook a specific course or degree, and how much they have improved. Each course is assessed against its own learning outcomes (where these exist and assuming they are actually well-formed). The odds are that these outcomes are heavily weighted towards the cognitive outcomes and have not moved beyond Bloom’s standard pyramid.

    Rarely are these course-level outcomes accurately mapped and weighted against programme outcomes. A student should always be able to match the assessment they are asked to complete against a set of skills expected as the outcome for a specific course. These skills need to be clearly mapped onto programme outcomes. Each assessment task is assessed against some formulation of marking rubrics or guides, often with multiple markers making controlled, monitored judgements to attempt to ensure just (not standardised) marks.

    Unfortunately, it remains common to see all of these cohort-marked assessments plotted against a bell curve, and top marks to be ‘brought back into line’ where convention dictates.

    Why? Surely the purpose of undertaking a university degree is self-improvement. There is a minimum threshold that I must meet, a pass mark, that allows me to demonstrate that I am capable of certain things, certain abilities or skills. But beyond that? If I got a second-class honours degree and my friend got a first, does that mean they knowmore than I do? Currently, given the emphasis on cognitive skills and knowledge, one can fairly say yes. Does it mean they are necessarily more proficient out there in the big, wide world? Probably not. We are simply not assessing the skills and abilities that most graduates need.

    I advocate for Universities to abandon isolated course-specific assessments in favour of programme-wide portfolio assessments. These are necessarily ipsative, capturing students’ disparate strengths and weaknesses relative to their own performance over time. There may be pass/fail assessments as part of any portfolio, but there are also opportunities for annual or thematic synoptic assessments. Students would be encouraged to draw on their contributions to the university drama club, the volleyball team, or their part-time work outside the university.

    I undertook a short consultancy last year for a university that has been a bit freaked out by the advent of Generative AI. The head of department had a moment of realisation that the vast majority of the degree assessment was based entirely on knowledge recovery and transmission. In reality, of course, their assessment strategy has been flawed long before the advent of ChatGPT. They’ve struggled with plagiarism detection, itself imperfect, obviously, and with reproducing answers that differ only at the margins between students.

    The existing assessment certainly made it easier for them to have external markers looking for specific words to match a pro forma answer. No educational developer worth their salt would have looked at this particular assessment strategy and thought it was in any way valid. The perceived threat to assessment integrity does offer an opportunity for those who are still naive enough to think that essay questions demonstrate anything other than the ability to regurgitate existing knowledge and, at its best, an ability to write in a compelling way. Unless such writing is a skill that is required of the programme of study, it’s a fairly pointless exercise.

    Confidentiality means I don’t wish to identify the organisation, let alone the department, in question. What became abundantly clear is that the assessment strategy had been devised as the programme grew. As they increased the number of students, they had contracted out significant amounts of the marking. This led to a degree of removal from individual students’ actual experiences.

    Surely one can see that it will become pointless to ask students to answer knowledge-based questions beyond a diagnostic exercise early in each course or programme.

    So what’s the alternative? With very rare exceptions, the vast majority of tertiary students will have lived for at least 18 years. They have life experiences that make their perspectives different from those of their fellow students. Suppose we can design our assessments around individuals’ personal epistemology, culture, and experience. We have a chance to differentiate between them. We can build assessment incrementally within specific courses and programmes. Each course in a programme can build on previous courses. In the case of this particular client, I suggested that eliminating as many electives as possible and narrowing the options would not deter applicants and would make the design of assessment strategies within the programme more coherent.

    Developing a personal portfolio of evidence throughout a programme of study gives students both a sense of ownership over their own learning and potentially a resource they will continue to augment once they graduate. The intention is to develop an incremental assessment approach. Students in the third year of studies would be asked to review coursework from previous years, for example. Students could be asked to comment and provide feedback on students in earlier years within the same programme. Blending the ipsative nature of assessments with credit-bearing assessment tasks is the crucial skill now required of learning designers.

    Maybe it is now a good time for you to review your learning outcomes and ask whether you are assessing skills and attributes?

    Paid subscribers will have access to assessment design tools

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  • Empowering Learning in the Age of Generative AI: A Manifesto

    Empowering Learning in the Age of Generative AI: A Manifesto

    FIRST PUBLISHED ON SUBSTACK

    In 2007, I was invited to deliver a ‘keynote’ at the opening of the National e-Learning Centre in Zagreb, Croatia. I was then the Head of e-Learning and the Head of the Centre for Learning Development at the University of Hull. I argued then that the “e” in e-learning should stand for Empowerment, not Electronic. In short, I outlined that ‘e’ stood for many facets of learning, most of which were misunderstood. These different dimensions will be explored for Paid Subscribers later this week.

    Looking back now, 19 years later, at the current landscape, I can say without hesitation that despite these recent years of “progress,” many institutions have used technology to automate compliance rather than liberate and empower learners. In reality, the ‘digital age’ has transformed the educational experience of learners and teachers alike, but in what ways has it actually enhanced it?

    The current candidate as a significant catalyst for change (as the advent of Wikipedia, Virtual Learning Environments, and ZOOM have been before) is the advent of Generative AI and automated grading. This issue certainly presents a range of questions worth discussing in departmental meetings and academic development workshops. I would start the debate with a simple question: Is the student more empowered today, or just more monitored?

    This Substack is called the ‘Educational Architects’ because it is aimed at providing the tools, blueprints and frameworks for designing and building learning resources and experiences. It is not just about tips and tricks for ‘classroom’ teaching (although there will be some of that), it is about personal practice, programme team vision, departmental management and institutional leadership.

    We need a “New Architecture”, one that isn’t about the latest Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) software or the need to scale up proctored exam invigilation, but about the cognitive and affective structures we build for our students. We need structures that empower learners to develop their psychomotor abilities, their metacognitive awareness, and the very human interpersonal skills.

    A major focus of this Substack is the need for effective, purposeful and beautifully designed programmes and courses. Course design has fallen into yet another “Box-Ticking” crisis. Regardless of whether validation services are internal to the institution or regional or national, too many courses aim for the minimum required to get approval. Why do so many course designs default to the path of least resistance?

    When we design for administrative ease, we sacrifice deep engagement. We produce graduates who are good at “doing school” but unprepared for the “messy middle” of professional practice. My personal mission has always been to broaden and heighten individual academics and learning designers’ appreciation of a richer educational landscape. Over the last 30 years, I have developed an 8-Stage Learning Design Framework (8-SLDF), Five Educational Taxonomies, a model for Student-Owned Learning Engagement, the Digital Artefacts for Learner Engagement framework and tools for identifying learners’ culturally centred epistemological orientations (POISE). I will be sharing this research and scholarship with you on this Substack.

    Why This Substack?

    This isn’t intended to be just another educational blog. This is a workspace for “Educational Architects” who want to reclaim the soul of pedagogy. It is a space where practical guidance is questioned, discussed and refined. Paid subscribers will receive toolkits and workbooks on a wide range of practical learning and teaching activities, and based on their feedback, these will be refined and re-shared with them.

    Subscribers will get one practical and strategic post each week, with paid subscribers receiving tactical tools or resources to help them build their practice with the support of colleagues and me.

    Call to Action

    My question to you, one I ask myself continuously, is “If you could tear down one ‘wall’ in your current institutional design, what would it be?”

    This could be a departmental structural issue, silos between disciplines, or compliance structures that are overly restrictive or entirely absent. It could be the lack of support for innovative teaching practices or the insistence on teaching to a prescribed ‘workbook’. It might also be poor assessment design or the inability to revise and update the curriculum. Whatever your structural challenge, I want to hear from you.

    Become a paid supporter and gain access to practical resources. This week, it is an enhanced version of the original 2007 keynote, with a transcript and prompts for professional questions.

    Simon’s Educational Architects Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber

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  • Flexible Learning and Policy Challenges

    Flexible Learning and Policy Challenges

    What impact is flexible learning having on learners from K-12 through to professional development?

    New Zealand has remarkably high levels of digital access across the population. Why aren’t we out performing other countries in educational measurements?

    This piece serves to introduce a series of six challenges faced by policy makers around flexible learning.

    These six challenges are:

    1. Unequal Access to Technology and Connectivity
    2. Socioeconomic Disparities
    3. Digital Literacy and Skills Gaps
    4. Quality Assurance and Consistent Experience
    5. Teacher Preparedness and Support
    6. Policy and Funding Models

    In this first piece I want to establish what I mean by ‘flexible learning’.

    Like many I struggle to have a single, concise, and consistent “definition” of flexible learning. I would say that flexible learning is a model of delivery that offers learners agency and control over various aspects of their learning experience. Flexible learning is a spectrum. Formal learning courses exist on a continuum between “rigid” and “flexible” delivery. The more control and choice given to the learner, the more flexible the learning experience.

    Flexible learning aims to “empower the student to choose what learning should be studied face-to-face and that which should be studied online, and how to go about engaging with that learning” (2022). This Means empowering the learner to make choices regarding:

    • When: synchronous or asynchronous learning, pace-mandated or self-paced progression.
    • Where: Learning in different locations (home, campus, workplace, etc.).
    • How: Different modes of engagement (online, in-person, blended, hybrid, hyflex).
    • What: Some degree of choice over content or learning pathways, though this is often more associated with “open learning.” Indeed in a world where students are overwhelmed with choices, there are strong arguments that having a prescriptive programme serves students well.

    In my article “Definitions of the Terms Open, Distance, and Flexible in the Context of Formal and Non-Formal Learning,” (2023) I argued that flexible learning is a model of delivery, rather than a fundamental mode of learning. I posit that there are only two core modes of learning: in-person (or face-to-face) and distance learning. Flexible learning then emerges from various combinations and approaches to curriculum design that empower learners to choose amongst these two modes

    As education has a habit of inventing new terms for marginally different practices it might be worth just pointing out the relationship I think exists between flexible learning and forms of Blended, Hybrid, and HyFlex learning. I perceive blended, hybrid, and HyFlex learning as specific models of delivery that fall under the umbrella of flexible learning. They all aim to give agency to the learner regarding how they engage with the material, combining elements of in-person and distance learning.

    I believe that designing for flexible learning means considering the learner’s context and perspective, and creating learning experiences that are relevant, meaningful, motivating, realistic, and feasible within an agreed timeframe. This also involves careful consideration of learning outcomes and assessment in diverse delivery contexts. This means course creators need clarity about learning design principles in relation to flexible approaches, such as working with Notional Study Hours (2020a) and the importance of Learning Outcomes (2020b).

    Based on my broad definition thatFlexible Learning refers to educational approaches and models of delivery that provide learners with a significant degree of choice and control over the time, place, pace, and mode of their learning, leveraging combinations of in-person and distance learning to enhance accessibility and cater to diverse learner needs, how do we face those six policy challenges?

    Watch this space…

    Atkinson, S. P. (2020a, April 14). Working with Notional Study Hours (NSH) or “How much is enough?” Simon Paul Atkinson. https://sijen.com/2020/04/14/working-with-notional-study-hours-nsh-or-how-much-is-enough/

    Atkinson, S. P. (2020b, April 4). Designing Courses: Importance of Learning Outcomes. Simon Paul Atkinson. https://sijen.com/2020/04/04/designing-courses-importance-of-learning-outcomes/

    Atkinson, S. P. (2022a, July 15). How do you define hybrid, or hyflex, learning?. Simon Paul Atkinson. Retrieved from https://sijen.com/2022/07/15/how-do-you-define-hybrid-or-hyflex-learning/

    Atkinson, S. P. (2023). Definitions of the Terms Open, Distance, and Flexible in the Context of Formal and Non-Formal Learning. Journal of Open, Flexible, and Distance Learning, 26(2).3 Retrieved from https://jofdl.nz/index.php/JOFDL/article/view/521

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  • the future of learning design. – Sijen

    the future of learning design. – Sijen

    There is a looming skills deficit across all disciplines currently being taught in Universities today. The vast majority of degree programmes are, at best, gradual evolutions of what has gone before. At their worst they are static bodies of knowledge transmission awaiting a young vibrant new member of faculty to reignite them. Internal reviews are too often perfunctory exercises, seldom challenging the future direction of graduates as long as pass rates are sustained. That is until is to late and failure rates point to a ‘problem’ at a fundamental level around a degree design.

    We, collectively, are at the dawn of a new knowledge-skills-cognition revolution. The future of the professionals has been discussed for some years now. It will be a creeping, quiet, revolution (Susskind and Susskind, 2017). Although we occasionally hear about some fast food business firing all of its front-of-house staff in favour of robotic manufacturing processes and A.I. Ordering services, the reality is that in the majority of contexts the intelligent deployment of A.I. to enhance business operations requires humans to describe how these systems operate with other humans. This is because at present none of these systems score highly on any markers or Emotional Intelligence or EQ.

    Image generaed by Windows Copilot

    Arguably it has become increasingly important to ensure that graduates from any and all disciplines have been educated as to how to describe what they do and why they do it. They need to develop a higher degree of comfort with articulating each thought process and action taken. To do this we desperately need course and programme designers to desist from just describing (and therefore assessing) purely cognitive (intellectual) skills as described by Bloom et.al, and limit themselves to one or two learning outcomes using those formulations. Instead they need to elevate the psychomotor skills in particular, alongside an increasing emphasis on interpersonal ones.

    Anyone who has experimented with prompting any large language model (LLM) will tell you the language used falls squarely under the psychomotor domain. At the lowest levels one might ask to match, copy, imitate, then at mid-levels of skill deployment one might prompt a system to organise, calibrate, compete or show, rating to the highest psychomotor order of skills to ask A.I. systems to define, specify, even imagine. This progressive a type of any taxonomy allows for appropriate calibration of input and output. The ability to use language, to articulate, is an essential skill. There are some instructive (ad entertaining) YouTube videos of parents supporting their children to write instructions (here’s a great example), a skill that is seldom further developed as young people progress into tertiary studies.

    Being able to assess this skill is also challenging. When one was assessing text-based comprehension, even textual analysis, then one could get away with setting an essay question and having a semi-automated process for marking against a rudimentary rubric. Writing instructions, or explanations, of the task carried out, is not the same as verbally describing the same task. Do we imagine that speech recognition technology won’t become an increasingly part of many productive job roles. Not only do courses and programmes need to be designed around a broader range of outcomes, we also need to be continuously revising our assessment opportunities for those outcomes.

    References

    Susskind, R., & Susskind, D. (2017). The Future of the Professions: How Technology Will Transform the Work of Human Experts (Reprint edition). OUP Oxford.

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