Beginner level
No prior experience required
UX Design for Better Learning Experiences
Flexible schedule
3 weeks, 6 to 8 hours per week
Instructor feedback
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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 how multimedia and UX principles influence learning, attention, and cognitive load.
- Identify design choices that improve learning rather than only improving interface usability.
- Apply evidence-based multimedia principles to videos, lessons, and digital course components.
- Redesign learning experiences to improve clarity, focus, and learner understanding.
Course description
Good educational experiences are not just usable. They are designed to support attention, understanding, and retention. Learning-oriented UX requires more than interface polish; it depends on multimedia principles and design choices that help learners process information effectively.
In this course, you will apply evidence-based multimedia and UX principles to digital learning experiences such as videos, lessons, and online course components. You will learn how to improve clarity, reduce unnecessary cognitive load, and make design choices that support learning rather than distraction.
Syllabus
Module 1: Multimedia Principle & Contiguity Principle
- Describe the multimedia principle and why it is effective for learning.
- Recognize when the multimedia principle has been violated and when it has been applied well.
- Describe the contiguity principle and why it is effective for learning.
- Recognize when the contiguity principle has been violated and when it has been applied well.
Module 2: Modality Principle & Redundancy Principle
- Describe the modality principle and why it is effective for learning.
- Recognize when the modality principle has been violated and when it has been applied well.
- Describe the redundancy principle and why it is effective for learning.
- Recognize when the redundancy principle has been violated and when it has been applied well.
Module 3: Coherence Principle & Personalization Principle
- Describe the coherence principle and why it is effective for learning.
- Recognize when the coherence principle has been violated and when it has been applied well.
- Describe the personalization and embodiment principles and why they are effective for learning.
- Recognize when the personalization and embodiment principles have been violated and when they have been applied well.
Module 4: Course Project or Final Exam
At the end of the course, you’ll have an opportunity to do a little project where you will apply multimedia principles to improve UX design of an existing e-learning lecture. That will provide you with a nice experience to apply the fundamentals you will learn in the modules to a larger, more authentic context. It will be graded by the instructor and you will receive personalized feedback along with a sample solution.
You will also have the option to take a final exam with 20 questions. The exam can be taken multiple times, and each attempt draws new questions randomly from a pool of questions.
You may also complete both the course project and the final exam. The higher of the two scores will count toward the certificate.
Meet the instructor
Dr. Ken Koedinger
Ken Koedinger is the Hillman University Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, with appointments in Human-Computer Interaction and Psychology. He holds an M.S. in Computer Science and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology and has experience teaching in an urban high school. He has developed data-sharing and analytics infrastructures that support innovations in learning, including DataShop and LearnSphere, and has used them to improve learning as illustrated in his hundreds of publications. He directs LearnLab and co-founded Carnegie Learning in 1998, the first AI in Education company to bring intelligent tutoring technology into widespread use in schools. His PLUS project provides hybrid human-AI tutoring to middle school math students in schools around the country. He is a fellow of the Cognitive Science Society, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Association for Computing Machinery.
Where to go next
Segmenting and Pretraining for Online Learning
Design online lessons that reduce cognitive overload by using segmenting and pretraining to prepare learners for success.
Active Learning: Practice and Feedback
Create evidence-based active learning activities by choosing the right types of practice and feedback for different learning goals.
Universal Design for Inclusive Course Design
Create more inclusive learning experiences by applying universal design principles to course activities, tools, and assessments.