For
designers
Your client is the educator
When working as a visual designer you may work for a variety of clients – small or big business, other creative individuals or people that work in completely different sectors. In education you will be mainly working for two types of clients, educators or teachers (sometimes known as subject matter experts or SMEs) and learners or students.
In this section you will learn about what educators or SMEs need from you, and how you can use your design skills to help them.
An online learning designer is a translator
You may be given a document full of text or some PowerPoint slides. You may be given materials that are used in the classroom, or you may be speaking to the SME and creating something together from scratch. It’s your job to catch the important information, make it into a structure that makes sense and work with the SME to create an experience that best communicates the ideas they are wanting to share.
This means you need to have a clear idea of the information that the educator wants to teach, and the skills to transform it into something that helps the learner understand and engage with the original idea.
This may sound confusing, but you don’t need to become an expert in the subject of the course, you just need to make sure what you create clearly explains the original ideas of the educator. Focus your attention on translating the ideas from text, slides and diagrams into a digital learning experience, rather than trying to become an expert yourself. You can always check with the educator or SME that what you’ve created matches the original idea.
“True translation is not a binary affair between two languages but a triangular affair. The third point of the triangle being what lay behind the words of the original text before it was written. True translation demands a return to the pre-verbal. One reads and rereads the words of the original text in order to penetrate through them to reach, to touch, the vision or experience that prompted them. One then gathers up what one has found there and takes this quivering almost wordless “thing” and places it behind the language it needs to be translated into. And now the principal task is to persuade the host language to take in and welcome the “thing” that is waiting to be articulated.”
― John Berger
Think about it
- How can you take the idea that the client has given you, and make it into a learning experience?
- What is the original idea that you need to help the learner understand?
- What tools or technologies do you know that could help translate this idea?
Creating a learning experience together
When you’ve gotten yourself into translator mode, start planning how you can work with the educator or SME to create a learning experience together. Your job is to help the educator take their knowledge and structure it so someone new can understand it.
- Ask questions when something needs to be explained further.
- Make sure ideas are building on each other in a way that makes sense.
- Give them ideas of how your skills could be used to create a learning experience that makes use of the learning taking place online. This could be graphics, web design, animation or video.
- Check with the educator that what you’re creating matches the idea they’re trying to communicate.
Think about it
Think of the whole thing as a design problem. The educator needs help with the problem of teaching learners what they need to know to pass the course.
Think about how you can use your skills to help them.
- How could the educator phrase something so it’s easier to understand?
- How can you use your skills to fix the problem of learners not knowing the information they need to know?
- What tools do you have that academic staff might not have?
Other resources
If you would like to learn more about working with educators, look at our other resources: