Designing Cross-platform Learning Systems

Introduction: While designing cross-platform learning systems, we focused on three pillars: teaching, practice, and improvement. Together, these pillars form the structural foundation and design philosophy of our digital learning model.

A model that combines guided sequential lesson curriculums and cyclical activities akin to the waterfall design model. With feedback loops between progress and lessons/activities liken to the agile or responsive model. Allowing students to build foundations first, then improve through continuous practice and feedback.

Refer to the diagram below. Where lessons deliver teaching materials, activities enable practice, and progress displays improvement over time. With direct links from Progress back to the Lessons and Activity phase allowing for continuous improvement.

In the following article, we will define each individual phase and establish its contribution to the resulting learning systems.

Lesson: The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines a lesson as a period in which teaching and learning take place. With the Merriam-Webster Dictionary placing its origins from Middle English and Anglo-French leçon, ultimately from the Latin lectio, meaning “a reading”. Commonly equivalent to 课 (kè), meaning a lesson or class, and referring to a school course, as defined in the Xinhua Dictionary.

This phase is designed to introduce and/or reinforce a topic, with the number of lessons and their breakdowns determined by the level of clarity required for full understanding of the material. Features including, but not limited to, embedded activities, read-aloud text-to-speech, and on-the-fly navigation to specific sections of a lesson are incorporated into the design language to encourage curriculum curation.

By facilitating the selection, organization, and evaluation of high-quality, relevant educational materials this pillar strives to meet specific learning/teaching goals of students, teachers, and their corresponding institutions.

Activity: The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines an activity as a task or exercise that learners do as part of the learning process. With the Merriam-Webster Dictionary placing its origins from Middle English through French and Latin, from activus, meaning “active”. Commonly equivalent to 活动 (huódòng), composed of 活 (“active”) and 动 (“movement”), meaning an activity or organized event, as defined in the Xinhua Dictionary.

This phase includes various active learning modules such as homework, quizzes, and tests. Each generated programmatically to increase variety and customizable to gauge difficulty. All modules contain assessment question types that include but are not limited to short answer, multiple choice, and true or false. Limitless practice is this phase’s design language.

By repeatedly completing the available activities we hope that individuals can improve proficiency and mastery of a specific lesson or group of lessons.

Progress: The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines progress as the improvement or development of a learner’s knowledge, skills, or understanding over time. With the Merriam-Webster Dictionary placing its origins from the Latin progressus, meaning “advance”. Commonly equivalent to 进步 (jìnbù), composed of 进 (“to advance”) and 步 (“step”), meaning progress or improvement, as defined in the Xinhua Dictionary.

This phase tracks a user’s lesson history and activity performance. Using a mix of numbers and graphs, we can capture progression at specific moments in time (day, week, and month). Additionally, by analyzing this data, we can highlight areas for improvement and maintain motivation by displaying historic accomplishments.

Conclusion: The combination of the Lesson, Activity, and Progress phases enables users to learn, practice, and pinpoint specific areas for growth. Utilizing a dual feedback loop to bridge learning gaps, misunderstandings, or misinterpretation of a specific topic.

We intend to implement this model in systems covering early education topics like math, science, and English. Once our data is finalized, our findings will be published openly to help improve public education resources.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read this article. I’d appreciate any feedback, ideas, or thoughts on the piece. Thanks again, Tom Jr.