Beginner level
No prior experience required
Scaffolding and Fading in Course Design
Flexible schedule
1 week, 6 to 8 hours per week
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*Proof of full-time student enrollment required. Acceptable forms of ID include a letter from your university’s registrar office or an unofficial transcript. Email your documents to learnlab-help@lists.andrew.cmu.edu.
What you will learn
- Explain the purpose of scaffolding and fading in learning design.
- Choose appropriate supports for learners at different stages of progress.
- Design prompts, hints, and worked support that guide learners without creating dependence.
- Plan how and when instructional supports should be reduced over time.
Course description
Support is most useful when it helps learners make progress without becoming a crutch. Scaffolding and fading are key instructional design strategies for deciding when to guide, when to model, and when to step back so learners can build independence.
In this course, you will learn how to design instructional supports that guide learners effectively and then fade over time. The course helps you make better decisions about prompts, worked support, hints, and release of responsibility so learners are challenged productively rather than overwhelmed.
Syllabus
Module 1: Scaffolding Theory
- Explain how learning occurs by specifying a model that references zones of student ability.
- Categorize learning tasks into student-specific zones of ability.
- Distinguish between the processes of scaffolding and fading.
- Distinguish between the different mechanisms of scaffolding.
- Distinguish between freeing and fuzzing as mechanisms of fading, and identify furthering as an outcome of successful fading.
Meet the instructor
Nicholas Lewis
Nick Lewis is a learning engineer with extensive experience conducting, analyzing, and applying both lab- and field-based research to design and develop creative, evidence-based solutions to problems in education. He previously worked for more than five years as a cognitive scientist, using innovative behavioral experiments to validate and advance models of human learning and memory and communicating findings to scientific and lay audiences.
Gautam Yadav
Gautam Yadav is a Senior Learning Engineer with experience partnering with academic leaders to design and operate data-driven talent development programs. He has led learning initiatives that improved performance, mastery, and engagement at scale, and has led the end-to-end design and delivery of instructional content across LearnLab certificate programs.
Where to go next
Designing Guided Discovery Experiences
Create guided discovery activities that help learners explore, reason, and learn with well-designed structure and feedback.
Active Learning: Practice and Feedback
Create evidence-based active learning activities by choosing the right types of practice and feedback for different learning goals.
Designing for Help-Seeking in Online Learning
Design learning environments that encourage productive help-seeking and support learners in finding and using help effectively.