Nate's Blog for EDCI 335

    The topic for my pod’s learning design is “Maintaining Mental Health as a University Student”, and the video I chose for this blog post is titled “The Importance of Social Support” from the Stanford Pain Medicine youtube channel. The video focuses on the role that social support can play for people who live with chronic pain. Though it isn’t strictly related to life as a university student, the lecturer, Matthew Hermann, addresses the biopsychosocial model of health, how the role of social support is often neglected, and how social support can enhance a person’s resiliency and self-efficacy. That is, I feel like the broader offers a lot of really interesting information, and has a broader application than its narrow focus.

    The video itself doesn’t prompt interaction from the student. Information is transmitted from the lecturer to the learner (though the delivery was perhaps a little dry, I found the material to be extremely interesting). The material isn’t really spoon-fed to the learner: instead, I hope that they would take in the material, grab on to it, and be able to reflect on it. 

    Our learning design is hoping to encourage interaction/discussion among learners, to encourage them to think about what they’ve covered in the material, and to make it more personally meaningful through interaction with their fellows. To that end, I would provide learners with a set of prompts that they could. Students could then share their thoughts, and provide comments on others’ reflections.

    My hope is that the comment section would give learners space to ask questions, and to respond to their classmate’s thoughts and questions. Considering the subject of our design, I don’t intend to have a rigid grading scheme, but instead learners would be expected to simply participate through an open discussion.

    Delivering the material in this way would create a manageable workload: the discussion is low stakes, without the high expectations of academic writing, and without the forced nature of the online discussion forums we complete for school. The material can be easily scaled for large groups, perhaps even dividing the learners into smaller groups, to allow them to build rapport with one another. 

Prompt: Choose one (or more) of your planned learning activities from your blueprint and identify any barriers for student success. How can you alter or adjust your current plan to reduce those barriers?

Reflecting on the readings for this week, I really liked the idea of the “Myth of the Average Learner” (National #AccessAbility Week 2021). That is, a rigid, structured, standardized approach to education doesn’t really work when taking into account each learner’s uniqueness, preferences, and strengths. As a student at university, the ideas that we are given regarding learning clash with the principles of accessibility outlined in the readings: students are encouraged to measure themselves against other students (with grades, particularly when the professor releases statistics about grade distribution). That is, if the student can’t manage, then that is interpreted as a failure of the student to meet the requirements of the learning design, rather than a failure of the learning design to be flexible, and accessible (Inclusive Learning Design 2021).

My pod is creating a learning design titled Managing Mental Health as a University Student. The material will be delivered through a blog online, using videos and articles. Our intention for the learning activities is to focus on reflection, and with encouraging learners to make connections between their own experience, and the material covered in the learning design. For formative assignments, the learners will annotate the blog using the hypothes.is tool. For the summative assignments, learners will design a self-care journal.

As it is, our learning design offers some flexibility, with a blend of sources, like text, video, and audio. To improve accessibility, we could include a text-to-speech (TTS) plugin above each post.

Taking into account Universal Design’s three pillars (multiple means of representation, expression, and engagement), we could offer the learner some flexibility, and options for how assignments can be completed (Universal Design 2021):

• We could offer prompts for the annotations (i.e., what is one thing that suprised you about what you learned? What is one thing that you would like to learn more about? What is one thing that you would like to start using?)
• For the summative assignment, we could offer options, with either completing something written, or something creative (i.e., a drawing, a poem, anything they can think of), or even recording a short video or audio clip of their reflections.

The learning outcomes for our design aren’t rigid or complex, and are instead focused on improving our learners’ capacity to manage stress, and to improve their self-care. To this end, I think that the delivery of our material would be improved by offering this kind of flexibility, and offering an outlet for learner’s to engage with the material creatively, and to make it more personally meaningful.

Inclusive Learning Design. (2021, May 5). Retrieved from

National #AccessAbility Week (2021, May 5). Retrieved from

Universal Design (2021, May 5). Retrieved from

    Experiential learning is a very broad approach to education, and is characterized by learning through practical activities, ranging from internships, co-ops, and field trips, to classroom group work, open-ended discussions, and other hands-on activities. What makes the experiential approach distinct, is that learners are given the opportunity to apply what they have learned, to make decisions around it, and to reflect on the outcomes of these decisions (Barton 2019). That is, the learner is encouraged to take an active role in their acquisition of knowledge, and to become engaged with the material through reflection, critical analysis, and synthesis. The Association for Experiential Education (2021) state:

    “Throughout the experiential learning process, the learner is actively engaged in posing questions, investigation, experimenting, being curious, solving problems, assuming responsibility, being creative, and constructing meaning” (Association for Experiential Education 2021).

    The experiential approach works from the assumption that learning is a lifelong process, and encourages students to approach situations creatively, and develop skills in critical thinking and reflection . Notably, this approach encourages a growth mindset (Barton 2019).

    Through school, work, and other activities, I’ve had a number of engagements with experiential learning. Those experiences have been the most memorable: I’ve retained more information from them, and that information has been transferable to other situations. These engagements were characterized by creativity, critical thinking, and challenge. Typically, the expectations for assignments were very loose, and learners were free to approach material in (almost) any way that they wished. 

    Based on my investigation, I feel that an experiential learning approach would lend itself well to my pod’s “Mental Health” learning design. Mental health is something which is deeply personal, and can’t be addressed with a one-size-fits-all approach. A degree of openness with how students can approach material could encourage them to put a bit of themselves into their work, and encourage engagement. Experiential learning offers a lot of flexibility in approaches, from group work, discussion, or even games. However, I do think it could be difficult to achieve learning outcomes without rigid structure.

Association for Experiential Education. (2021). What is Experiential Education. https://www.aee.org/what-is-experiential-education

Barton, Tara (2019, August 20). Experiential Learning In And Out Of Classrooms. Serve Learn. 

Experienced-Based Learning Systems (2020, May 15). Youtube.com.