Learning, Design, & Technology (LDES)
LDES 5000 Integrated Intro to the Field 3 Credits
The course will introduce students to Graduate Studies in the Field of Learning Design, Technology and Innovation, Learning Analytics, and Higher Education Leadership. Students will learn about the interconnectedness of critical concepts, gaining an understanding of how learning design, technology innovation, learning analytics, and higher education leadership impact one another in the field. Students will build a strong knowledge-base that will facilitate their navigation of learning challenges and solutions.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Learning and Design, Learning and Design, Learning and Design or Learning and Design.
LDES 5001 Methods of Learning and Design 3 Credits
This survey course draws on multiple disciplines to consider what learning is and how it happens. How do students process new information? What can you do to facilitate deep learning for students from varied backgrounds? Can there be universal design for learning? What is agility in learning and design methods? Learning key principles for how people learn and retain material will prepare you to design valuable learning experiences in higher education and beyond.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
LDES 5002 Technology Innovation byDesign 3 Credits
In this course, you will explore the role of technology and innovation in higher education. Taking into account historical and current educational challenges in higher education, you’ll explore the ways that institutions of higher education and student populations have changed over time, impacting the ways we use technology in education today. In addition to creating dynamic definitions of a variety of concepts, we will explore the challenges, opportunities, and effects technology and innovation—as well as theories of disruption and integration—have had on higher education. By the end of the semester, it is my hope that you will be adept at understanding the questions, contexts, and opportunities that technology affords higher education, and the role that innovation plays in the formation of students, the creation of new knowledge, and higher education’s contribution to civic and common good. As part of the studio approach to the course, you will design and propose ways that technology innovation can spur systemic change across the curriculum and beyond it, and investigate and integrate theories and models in balance with a practical understanding of past, current, and future educational technologies. Readings will include works by Christensen, Crow, Davidson, Bowen, and others.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Commun, Culture Technology, Commun, Culture Technology, Commun, Culture Technology, Commun, Culture Technology, Learning and Design, Learning and Design, Learning and Design, Learning and Design, Learning Design Tech, Learning Design Tech, Learning Design Tech or Learning Design Tech.
Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
LDES 5003 University as a Design Problem 3 Credits
This course approaches the future of the university by exploring the competing aims and missions of higher education and possible transformations. The course explores how future university designs are shaped both by the history of expansion, integration and innovation that have characterized US higher education and the emerging conditions of the new digital ecosystem. We will explore the interplay among pedagogical, curricular, structural and leadership strategies. We will frame these with the greater purposes of the university in society and its responsiveness to the imperatives for access, equity, and social mobility. In Spring 2019, the course will coincide with "Higher Ed Studio," an experimental context for planning and mounting a series of engagements around the future of the university with higher education experts from other institutions. Students in the course will be centrally involved in designing, framing, and executing the dialogues.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
LDES 5004 Educational Research Methods 3 Credits
In this course, we will begin to explore learning analytics concepts and acquire the foundations of a learning analytics toolkit, including basic statistics and principles of data analysis. We will investigate the relationship between learning, design, technology, and analytics through readings and discussions dealing with key topics related to positivist educational research design, educational data mining, and learner data ethics. We will also reflect on the implications for pedagogy and for higher ed administration of some recent advances in the fields of big data, machine learning, and natural language processing. This course will challenge us to incorporate data-driven and evidence-based reasoning into our understanding of learning theories, learning design, and the relationship of a university to its students.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Learning and Design, Learning and Design, Learning and Design or Learning and Design.
Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
LDES 5101 Design Studio I 1 or 2 Credits
Design Studio I introduces LDT students to practicing and learning in a studio environment. Students are introduced to design thinking and service design basics (process, methods, mindset) and given time to apply what they are learning to LDT coursework, portfolio development, or other projects during Studio sessions. Students learn how to be a good studiomates: critiquing with love, showing up completely, asking for help, caring for studiomates, and building learning design practitioner habits. Through Studio, students ask themselves: Who am I as a learning designer? How do I incorporate design thinking and service design into my practice? What does it mean to practice together? What does it mean for me to think, act and serve as a learning design practitioner?
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Learning and Design, Learning and Design, Learning and Design or Learning and Design.
LDES 5102 Design Studio II 2 Credits
Design Studio II continues the development begun in Studio I. LDT students work with their studiomates to deepen their Studio I skills by practicing together and confronting how to lead others and apply design thinking and service design to learning design challenges. Studiomates will create portfolio drafts and support portfolio development through peer portfolio critiques.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Learning and Design, Learning and Design, Learning and Design or Learning and Design.
LDES 5103 Design Studio III 1 or 2 Credits
Design Studio III focuses on applying design thinking and service design to shape how students will launch themselves as learning designers in a variety of fields. Studiomates work on how they will make the design thinking and service design process, methods and mindset covered in Studio I and II their own as learning design practitioners, how they will represent that journey in the stories they tell, and how they will create new working opportunities and thrive at work.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Learning and Design, Learning and Design, Learning and Design or Learning and Design.
LDES 5111 PortfolioWritingDesignStudio 2 Credits
The Portfolio Writing and Design Studio will offer an enhanced focus on the development of students’ electronic portfolios. Through design and writing exercises, students will work towards creating and iterating a cohesive portfolio, which includes understanding who their audience is, what the larger purpose of the portfolio is, as well as ways to tell their professional narrative across audiences. The course will also focus on building the digital skills necessary to create and maintain portfolios. Above all, however, the course will give students the opportunity to reflect on who they are and who they aspire to be, and how to use an online tool like an ePortfolio/website to achieve their personal and professional goals.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Learning and Design, Learning and Design, Learning and Design or Learning and Design.
LDES 5112 Portfolio WritingDesignStudio 2 Credits
The Portfolio Writing and Design Studio will offer an enhanced focus on the development of students’ electronic portfolios. Through design and writing exercises, students will work towards creating and iterating a cohesive portfolio, which includes understanding who their audience is, what the larger purpose of the portfolio is, as well as ways to tell their professional narrative across audiences. The course will also focus on building the digital skills necessary to create and maintain portfolios. Above all, however, the course will give students the opportunity to reflect on who they are and who they aspire to be, and how to use an online tool like an ePortfolio/website to achieve their personal and professional goals.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Learning and Design, Learning and Design, Learning and Design or Learning and Design.
LDES 5925 Internship Tutorial 0.25-3 Credits
Elective internship course
Level: Graduate
Grading: Pass/Fail Default
LDES 6101 App. LD: ArtsEnduring Meaning 1 or 2 Credits
In this course, LDT students will collaborate with Georgetown’s Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics to explore a unique design challenge at the Lab: how might we enhance our learning experiences with the arts to foster deeper and enduring meanings for our audiences? This project is an opportunity for students to apply theories of learning design, experiential learning, and museum education alongside a collaborator and their stakeholders. As an original theatrical production by the Lab, Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski starring Oscar-Nominated actor David Strathairn explores the contemporary resonance of Holocaust witness, Polish World War II hero, spy, diplomat, and Georgetown professor Jan Karski. Drawing from Karski’s life and teachings, the play is anchored in the themes of bearing witness to history, empathy, confronting injustices, and the role of the individual in fostering change. Students in the class will ideate and design prototypes to extend a learner’s—or audience member’s—experience with the production beyond a single viewing of the play. Students will also be able to present their final designs / prototypes / learning engagements to the Karski production team. Additionally, students in this course will have the opportunity to attend a performance of Remember This: The Lesson of Jan Karski, explore its corresponding web-based platform, meet the playwrights and other members of the Karski production team, conduct site visits, and engage with undergraduate students encountering the performance for the first time through IDST 107: Bearing Witness: The Legacy of Jan Karski Today.
Level: Graduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
LDES 6201 Edu China in the Digital Era 1 Credit
China has changed the scope of global education, where Chinese nationals increasingly occupy more positions as students and researchers at foreign (Western) colleges and universities. This entails meaningful influence to higher education communities based on a background steeped in a different and ancient culture. At the same time, the world has been revolutionized by information technology whose sociocultural impacts remain to be fully examined.
This course is designed to encourage original thinking into the development of new learning and pedagogy within the context of a digitally connected China. Students will explore a range of areas affecting higher education today, including the disciplines of political science, technology studies, linguistics, and education. Students can also expect to gain a greater understanding of the forces behind educational patterns related to China and can better be able to integrate such considerations into their future work supporting new learning and scholarship.
Level: Graduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
LDES 7101 Creativity and Design 1-3 Credits
Creativity is at the heart of many of the most meaningful human experiences and enterprises, including vibrant design. But what is creativity? Where does it come from? How does it work, and how can it inform our work? How could we design learning experiences to foster and support creativity? In this class, we’ll sample many perspectives—scientific, spiritual, self-help, and the lived experiences of creators themselves—in our attempts to explore and understand creativity and the creative process, with particular attention to the way it can play out in the work of designing learning experiences. In addition to analytical activities (discussing and writing about these ideas), students will also apply the concepts to their own creative projects, projects they will work on during the course of the class.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
LDES 7102 Gaming, Design, and Education 0-3 Credits
This class explores the intersection of gaming, education, design, and technology. We will explore both digital and tabletop games as students play, study, and build them, combining scholarship, creativity, and reflective analysis. This approach lets us explore a series of major themes, including: the nature of games; storytelling; access and accessibility; interactive design; how we learn through games.
The class structure combines hands-on work (and play), discussion, computer-mediated conversation, and presentations.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Learning and Design, Learning and Design, Learning and Design or Learning and Design.
Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
LDES 7103 Learning, Instruction, Design 3 Credits
In this course, we will explore the connections between learning, instructional, and design theories to build a common knowledge base for understanding different approaches to instruction. We will frame our exploration by asking what is, so what, and now what. As a result, we will create a repository of our collective knowledge of the different approaches. We will then use a virtual role-play simulation platform to dive deeper into the different approaches. The role-play scenarios will enable you to apply your knowledge in various situations and learning environments.
This course is designed following a sensemaking theoretical perspective that supports meaning-making based on shared experiences. Our exploration of the connections between learning, instruction, and design will therefore begin with sensemaking.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
LDES 7104 Societal Institutions The L 3 Credits
Welcome to Societal Institutions and the Learner. In this interdisciplinary course, we will examine and interrogate the development of the individual in the context of relationships within both formal and informal societal institutions. Our broader contexts in the world make up a lot of who we are and our decision making and thus naturally are very influential in how we learn, what we learn, and why we learn. Understanding how those influences work can inform educational systems and approaches can make us better educators and education designers. TLDR: We’ll learn how society influences how we become the learners we are!
Level: Graduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Learning Design Tech, Learning Design Tech, Learning Design Tech or Learning Design Tech.
Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
LDES 7201 Studies in Edu Technology 1-3 Credits
This course will invite students to examine the evolution of educational technology in higher education through various lenses, some broad such as sociocultural and legal, while others are more focused on information systems and management, instructional development, and innovation. Conducted as a survey of the history of educational technology, students will be invited to engage in focused research around various technologies to serve as an inflection point for the cultural assumptions undergirding the intersection of teaching and learning with technology. What’s arguably unique about this course is that students will work both independently and together to create a series of video segments wherein their research will be shared more broadly as part of an 1980s themed educational video series for kids. So, the course will oscillate amongst several elements: broad reading, focused research, and applied creative video production. The course will be a hybrid format, so we will meet face-to-face for at least part of the semester, and remotely for the remainder.
Level: Graduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Commun, Culture Technology, Commun, Culture Technology, Commun, Culture Technology, Commun, Culture Technology, Learning and Design, Learning and Design, Learning and Design or Learning and Design.
Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
LDES 7202 eLearning Development 1-3 Credits
This course provides hands-on experience in designing, developing, implementing, and evaluating online courses. We will cover topics including curriculum/technology alignment, learning management systems, multimedia integration, online learning requirements, and instructional design theories for virtual environments. By the end of this course, you will have developed an eLearning experience that includes a syllabus, rubric, and embedded multimedia.
Level: Graduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
LDES 7203 Impact of AI on Higher Ed 3 Credits
LDES 7203 - The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Higher Education: Exploring Generative AI in Teaching and Learning This course provides a critical exploration of artificial intelligence's evolving role in the future higher education, with a special focus on generative AI technologies like those popularized by OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2023. As teachers and students increasingly interact with AI tools, understanding their capabilities, limitations, and broader implications is crucial. In this course, you will work with a variety of AI technologies, examining their design, implementation, and impact on teaching and learning. You will gain a comprehensive understanding of how generative AI is reshaping higher education, and will explore some of the more pressing intellectual, ethical, and cultural questions raised by these new tools.
Level: Graduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
LDES 7204 Human-Centered Design 3 Credits
Design Skills for Breakthrough Success — Human-Centered Design for Creating Learning, Societal, Business, Professional, and Personal Solutions. Description: Design Skills is a hands-on learning experience that adapts each learner’s interests and goals. You will learn and apply 7 Design Skills that will help you:
1) create effective solutions, 2) accelerate your learning and improve your performance, 3) shape and lead teams, 4) approach change leadership as a design problem, 5) craft and tell transformation stories, 6) facilitate breakthrough workshops and meetings; and 7) shift systems so your solutions survive.
Dr. Stanford will provide a brief overview of a Design Skill. You will expand on the overview with short readings, short videos, podcasts, and small experiments. During in-class discussions you will connect your ideas and understandings to the Design Skill. In-class scenario workshops will help you experience applying the design skill. Each scenario workshop builds on the previous workshop and you will be able to apply all 7 Design Skills by the last scenario workshop. There will be one required book for everyone and you will choose a second book from a list of books connected to the Design Skills. At the end of the course, you will be able to apply the 7 Design Skills to creating and achieving what matters most to you.
Level: Graduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
LDES 7301 Studies in Higher Education 1-3 Credits
Studies in Higher Education will explore the varied and complex forces reshaping higher education. We start with change drivers outside of academia, including demographic, macroeconomic, and policy trends. We then address forces within higher education, such as new credentials, enrollment changes, the role of the library, tuition, and access. Next, we dig into digital technologies and their impact on colleges and universities. For final projects students will produce scenarios for possible future campuses.
Level: Graduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
LDES 7302 CritSpecDesign for Anti-Racism 2 or 3 Credits
How do the interwoven histories of slaveholding and colonialism shape the current landscape of higher education? And how might these legacies restrain our designs for the future of universities? By situating learning design as a liberatory process, this class will use the practices of critical speculation, speculative play, and design fiction to reimagine our educational institutions for an anti-racist future. Perspectives from fields like critical university studies and design justice will frame class discussions around the lingering effects of exclusionary designs in higher education. Alongside the theoretical context, this class also features the fantastical and the visionary; students will engage with speculative fiction, poetry, visual art, fugitivity, and Afro-futurism as both exemplars and essential components of a liberatory design process. By the end of this course, students will harness the power of rigorous imagination through an original, creative project so as to craft possible and future anti-racist institutions of learning.
Level: Graduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Mutual exclusion: LDES 495
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
LDES 733 Societal Institutions The Le 3 Credits
Welcome to Societal Institutions and the Learner. In this interdisciplinary course, we will examine and interrogate the development of the individual in the context of relationships within both formal and informal societal institutions. Our broader contexts in the world make up a lot of who we are and our decision making and thus naturally are very influential in how we learn, what we learn, and why we learn. Understanding how those influences work can inform educational systems and approaches can make us better educators and education designers. TLDR: We’ll learn how society influences how we become the learners we are!
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Level: Graduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Learning Design Tech, Learning Design Tech, Learning Design Tech or Learning Design Tech.
Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
LDES 7401 Ed Research Methods and LA II 3 Credits
The course will begin by reviewing some high quality peer-reviewed learning analytics research papers as a refresher and inspiration. We will consider research through a PQMA lens (problem, question, method, and answer). You will learn how to break down these research papers into those four components and understand the researcher’s rationale and intentions at each step.
The bulk of the course will be spent developing technical skills around data analysis. Students will learn how to generate, manipulate, analyze, and present data using both spreadsheet programs (Excel, Sheets) and the R statistical programming language.
Students will apply these skills in a final project where they conceive of and execute a complete quantitative research project from ideation to presentation.
Level: Graduate, Undergraduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment limited to students in the MA-LDES program.
Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
LDES 7949 Independent Study 0.25-5 Credits
Level: Graduate
Grading: Main Campus (UGrad, Grad)
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.
LDES 8000 Capstone
The LDT Capstone will be used to develop, present, and submit an ePortfolio that reflects your cumulative learning experience and practice throughout the program.
Level: Graduate
Grading: Pass/Fail Default
Course registration restrictions:
Enrollment is limited to students with a program in Learning Design Tech, Learning Design Tech, Learning Design Tech or Learning Design Tech.
Enrollment is limited to Graduate level students.