Learning experience design (LXD) is the elegant integration of learning science and engagement. Too often, however, we see tarted-up content dump and lots of superficial attempts to remedy the problem: quiz-show templates, click-to-see-more, scores, and the like. We can, and should, go deeper. There are two problems here—one on the learning science side and one on the engagement side. Further, while good guidance exists on the learning science side, there's less guidance on the engagement side. While there are robust principles and very useful tips and tricks, they're not well pulled together. What's needed is a systematic approach aligning elements to create meaningful motivation, creating a safe space to remove anxiety, and steadily building confidence.

In this workshop you're going to learn the principles behind making experiences engaging, and then put them into practice. The principles break down into two parts: the initial hook to get learners to engage, and then the process of maintaining them through the experience to success. We'll cover elements like motivation (going deep), anxiety (making it safe), and building confidence (with challenge and feedback). We'll also look at tips and tricks like story, exaggeration, humor, social, and more. As we go, we'll practice what these mean in design exercises. Then we'll turn the experience around and workshop the implications of these theories for each element of the learning experience. We'll see what we need to ensure we address when we create introductions, examples, practice, and more. Finally, and importantly, we'll work through a systematic process that systematically gathers the necessary information to pull this off and iterates around trialing and testing to end up with a viable outcome that's engaging without compromising the educational effectiveness. We'll do this collaboratively, applying the principles we're talking about to develop practical, take-home tools. You'll leave with a process structure that talks about what you need when, and a checklist that helps ensure you've considered engagement for each learning element. Come see how learning can and should be 'hard fun'.

In this session, you will learn:

• The key to motivation and how to build it
• The importance of safety and how to create it
• The necessity of challenge and how to generate it
• When to fantasy and when not to
• The right level of exaggeration
• How to do humor right
• How to get the information you need and when and how to use it

Technology discussed:

Authoring tools, LXPs, AR, VR

Prerequisite audience knowledge:

The audience should have previous experience designing learning experiences, and the basics of good instructional design