Feel

Students learn best when they are motivated and have the right attitude toward learning. The principles in this dimension touch on the inner world of the learner and refer to the fact that emotions play an important role in helping learners achieve success. They are highly interconnected both within the category and with the rest of the principles.

The Principles

• Intrinsic motivation: Students learn better when they are driven more by internal reasons than external rewards or consequences.

• Self-regulated learning: Students learn better when they take responsibility for their own learning.

• Learning goals and mindsets: Students learn more when they are focused on mastery rather than performance and when they believe that they are capable of learning and growth.

Application in Learning Design

• Make explicit why knowledge and skills are valuable in the field and necessary for success as a professional. Understanding the relevance of learning helps students integrate reasons for learning with their own personal beliefs and values. Recording interviews with practitioners and professionals can be a great way to achieve this.

• Design practice and assessments that let students choose a topic, allowing them to dig in on something that they find personally interesting.

• Design activities that ask students to track and reflect on their own learning process.

• Provide “low stakes” assessments as homework or asynchronous coursework in which students have opportunities to get feedback and fail without having to worry about it hurting their grade.

• To promote growth mindsets, expose students to examples of success narratives in the field via asynchronous interviews with alumni, documentary-style videos, or written case studies, focusing on the pathway followed and effort expended to succeed.