Behaviourism: The behaviourist view of learning basically sees learning as having taken place when behavioural change is brought about by a person's interaction with their environment (Oyarzun & Conklin, 2023).  The multiple choice questions in our Rise course and the resulting positive or negative feedback based on the provided answer is the only component in our design that could be seen to draw from the behaviourist view of learning. 

Cognitivism: Cognitivism views learning as a process of acquiring and organising knowledge and information in the mind. This means that the focus is on the brain's internal processing, retention, and recollection of information based on how a student  has organised information into their existing knowledge structures, also known as schemas (Oyarzun & Conklin, 2023). The Rise course with its interactive elements, multimedia, multiple choice questions and Edpuzzle questions can be seen as an examples of cognitivism instruction, as they encourage students to engage in active processing and recall of course content, thus building and improving there schema on the registration process. 

Constructivism: Generally speaking, constructivism views learning as an active, social, and contextual process in which learners construct their own understanding and knowledge through interaction with their environment and others (Oyarzun & Conklin, 2023).  Our design includes several opportunities for our students to interact with course content (Rise), engage in self-assessment, and ask and answer questions in the Q&A forum. In one way or another all of these activities encourage students to actively construct their own understanding of the registration process from both a cognitive and social constructivist perspective. 

Self-Regulated Learning Theory: Self-regulated learning theory attends to, and has to do with, the development of three distinct processes,  namely metacognition , motivation and strategic action (Brenner, 2022). The theory essentially emphasises that students need to take an active role in their own learning and need to monitor their own progress.  Our Rise course includes self-assessment activities and e a "Rate Your Confidence" survey at the end, which encourages students to reflect on their own learning and progress. Our design also provides students with opportunities to receive feedback from faculty and peers in both the Q&A forum on Slack and during the check-in meetings.

Social Learning Theory: This theory's main view is that learning occurs through social observation and subsequent imitation of modeled behavior (Berge & Lyons, 2023). It can be argued that in our design, the Q&A forum and online registration check-in meetings provide opportunities for students to observe and interact with peers and faculty members. These interactions can potentially help students develop a sense of community and support, and they will most likely learn from the experiences and perspectives of others. 

In our analysis phase we were able to establish a clear picture of who our learner is, what they need, what their issues are and what they would value in a course like this. Knowing all of this, and with the added benefit of actually being ECT students, we were able to place the ECT student at the heart of our design by constantly asking ourselves: "Would this work/make sense/ be useful for them?" For example:

• Knowing that ECT many ECT students are international students that need answers quickly when registering, we knew we had to incorporate an element/component into our design that would not take students longer than 20-30 mins. 

• We also know that despite many online resources (mainly text and some video) students still end up struggling to use Albert to register, meaning having video instruction would be ideal. 

• We knew that ideally most of our learning design would have to online and asynchronous (with multiple optional synchronous contact sessions) so that students could complete it from anywhere at any time (ideally as soon as they are accepted into NYU or when they need to register).
  
  

Our design, specifically the multimedia components, is guided by the 12 essential multimedia design principles that Richard Mayer has derived from his cognitive theory of multimedia learning. Mayer's principles are based on four theoretical assumptions, namely the dual-channel assumption, active-processing assumption, limited capacity assumption and cognitive load theory assumptions (Mayer, 2009). The principles (Walsh, 2017) are: 

1. Coherency: Wherever possible we will make sure that a piece of information contains no unnecessary text, image or sound. 

2. Signalling: Wherever possible we will provide visual or audio cues that highlight the organisation of important information. 

3. Redundancy: We will make sure that the  visual side  of our multimedia is mainly graphics accompanied by narration. (Not text heavy graphics accompanied by narration). 

4. Spatial Contiguity: We will make sure that corresponding words and visuals are positioned as close as possible to one another. 

5. Temporal Contiguity: We will make sure that corresponding audio (or text) and visuals occur at the same time. 

6. Segmenting: We will make sure that our Rise course is segmented into manageable learning units or segments. This will be the case within modules and within lessons. Module 4 has been segmented into 9 manageable video lessons instead of one long video. 

7. Pre-training: In our introduction module we aim to provide students with a list of key concepts and processes/steps that they will to encounter in the learning journey and what the learning outcomes are. This could take the form of an advance organiser. 

8. Modality: When it comes to choosing between text and audio for slide shows or videos, we aim to go with audio as far as possible. 

9. Multimedia: We aim to never rely too heavily or exclusively on text to impart information, but visual and text (preferably audio). 

10. Personalisation: The way we address the student is friendly, optimistic and conversational. We always use words like you and your when addressing the student. 

11. Voice: All our narration will be natural human voice over and note robotic computer generated voice over. 

12. Image: None of our videos will include a talking head or full body visual of the narrator. 

Technology:

• Rise (all of its amazing features/tools!) 

• Edpuzzle

• Email

• ECT Website

• Slack instant messaging  

• Zoom

• Google Forms 

• Albert (Student Information System)

 Media: 

• Video 

• Face-to-face 

• Text 

• Graphics 

Given our need, task and learner analysis, we believe a learning design that  makes use of a combination of all the technologies and media listed above will be the best ideal.