Short Course

Social-Emotional Learning for Learning Designers

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Beginner level

No prior experience required

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 role of course design in supporting social-emotional learning.
Identify design choices that strengthen connection, empathy, self-awareness, and learner support.
Integrate SEL considerations into activities, communication, and instructional structures.
Evaluate whether a course design supports social-emotional growth in meaningful ways.

Course description

Social-emotional learning is often treated as separate from academic or professional learning, yet course design can strongly influence whether learners feel supported, connected, and able to develop important social-emotional capacities. Designers play a key role in creating those conditions.

In this course, you will learn how to design courses that support social-emotional learning through activities, interactions, and instructional choices. The course focuses on building environments that promote connection, self-awareness, empathy, and learner growth without treating SEL as an afterthought.

Syllabus

Module 1: Social Emotional Learning (SEL)

Explain social-emotional learning and its benefits.
Identify and describe the five CASEL social-emotional learning competencies.
Analyze evidence on the effectiveness of social-emotional learning and its criticisms.
Design strategies to promote social-emotional learning competencies in educational contexts.

Meet the instructor

Yue Wang

Learning Engineer
Open Learning Initiative

Yue Wang is a Learning Engineer at the Open Learning Initiative. She runs workshops for the Learning Engineering Fellowship Program for instructional designers, librarians, faculty, and researchers. Her expertise lies in course design and improvement, learning data analysis, and AI in teaching and learning.

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Gautam Yadav

Senior Learning Engineer
Carnegie Mellon University

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.