Learning Design Philosophy

Upside Learning’s approach to the design of learning

Our learning design philosophy straddles both cognitivism and constructivism, all our design thought derives from there. The instructional designers at Upside Learning are skilled craftsmen with their own unique ideas, beliefs, and values aligned to those philosophies. Every solution we provide relies on this understanding of philosophy and the values of craftsmanship.

Upside Learning's Instructional philosophy is heavily influenced by three instructional design theoreticians. While other research and findings do influence our philosophy our methodology directly translates the work of these three: Benjamin Bloom, David Merrill, and Robert Mager.

Bloom is the father of the learning verb taxonomy, defined at six levels of learning. He also defined the domains of learning. Our work mostly focuses on the Cognitive and Affective domains.

The component display theory dominates the influence David Merrill has on our learning design. The CDT classifies learning along two axes, as content and performance. The CDT also allows us to individualize training to a large extent, letting learners make learning choices based on their preferences and learning styles.

Robert Mager's Criterion Referenced Instruction model influences our design, especially in the way we write learning objectives. There is a subtle influence on goal/task analysis as well; performance objectives are typically a resultant from this process.