Student-Centered Design

When I read Norman’s “Design of Everyday Things,” I reflected his ideas into educational setting, especially instructional design area. In the part, “Three conceptual models,” he said “design model,” “user’s model,” and “system image” as mental models. Unfortunately, many instructional designers often make mistakes of creating learning modules without thoroughly analyzing students’ needs, prior knowledge and environment. In this case, instructional designers just satisfy with making learning modules no matter what students learn. In addition, instructional designers often do not consider learning system where learning happens. That is, an instructional designer’s model should be a learner’s model through learning system because an instructional designer and a student can communicate only through learning system itself. All three models are important.
As Norman mentioned in seven principles that both knowledge in the world and knowledge in the head should be used to transform difficult tasks into simple one, an instructional designer should consider situated learning environment and learner’s prior knowledge. In addition, assuming that a learner has limited capacity in STM (Short Term Memory), an instructional designer should try to reduce a learner’s cognitive load by providing mental aids such as worked example, dual coding (visual and verbal), and non-redundant information as Mayer recommended (2003).