The Learner Sandwich: A Recipe for Effective Curriculum Design
You’re designing your curriculum all wrong. Your biggest mistake?
Ignoring the voice of your learner.
Now before you come at me with one/ more of the following:
“What do our learners know?”
“They don’t know the subject themselves - how will they tell us what they want?”
“I’m an expert at curriculum design.”
Let me start with an example!
Say you’re designing a curriculum to cook your meals at home in India for working professionals. What are the first few things you’d do?
Here are my top guesses:
Understand the universe of food in India
Look at home cooking and what’s possible
List equipment, ingredients and recipes
Build meal plans
Do you think after all this you’d be able to make the curriculum? Probably.
Will it be useful? Most definitely not. The voice of the learner is missing!
Here is what I’d do instead - build a learner sandwich 🥪
Start with the learner: Understand the Who (Demographics, psychographics) and the Why (Challenges, needs and expectations)
Look at the ecosystem: Elaborate on the What aka topics that exist & what might be worth learning
Go back to the learner: Narrow down at the what (what is worth learning for this learner) & test out the How (or the manifestation of the curriculum into content/ resources etc)
Let’s get into each of these in detail:
Layer #1: Learner (Who & Why)
🧑🏻🎓 WHO
Build a learner persona. Define the following for your ideal learner:
Age
Geography
Background (Educational/ work)
Past knowledge/ experience on the topic
Challenges
Motivations
You can do this by:
Doing 1:1 interviews with learners
Talking to someone in the team who might have first-hand experience with your learners (If you can’t access them yourself)
Doing secondary research (Videos, research etc)
🤔 WHY
Articulate the current and end state of your learner. What is the delta you’re trying to dive?
From the challenges that your learners face, pick the top 5 - which of these can you realistically solve?
You can do this by:
Doing a visioning workshop with your team
Building an empathy map for what your learner will think, feel, say and do if your curriculum is successful
Layer #2: Ecosystem (What)
🧠 WHAT
Make an exhaustive list of Knowledge, Skills and Mindset that are critical for anyone to excel in this topic.
Do not filter for your learners at this point. Be exhaustive.
You can do this by:
Doing 1:1 interviews with experts in the domain
Brainstorming with your team/ experts on different things that come under it
Doing a trends analysis on what is coming up in the domain
Layer #3: Learner (What & How)
🧠 WHAT
Filter out the list you made earlier for your learners into - what is useful for your learners & things they already might know.
This is the part which most people skip out. The curriculum has to be designed for your learner!
You can do this by:
Looking at the interviews/ secondary research you did
Doing 1:1 interviews with new learners - people who might have recently learnt what you’re trying to teach
Doing 1:1 interviews with experts - trying to figure out where most novices struggle
📒 HOW
Build a learner journey for your learner. Think of how your curriculum comes to life and manifests into different things.
These could be training, content, videos and so much more!
You can do this by:
Making a list of everything that you imagine is a part of the learning experience - think async and sync
Now sequence them into a week or a month - how do they come together?
What is unique about them? How are they different?
In a Nutshell 🌰
Remember, if there is a choice between a designer’s opinion and a learner’s - the learner ALWAYS wins!
And don’t forget to eat the learner sandwich:
Learner (Who & Why)
Ecosystem (What)
Learner (What & How)