Bringing Educational Neuroscience to Distance Learning with Design Thinking : The Design and Development of a Hybrid E-learning Platform for Skillful Training

Abstract

Continuing, life-long education for flexible upskilling and reskilling has been a systemic challenge, a ruthless race against time, accelerated technological change and unforeseen adversities. Especially in the post-pandemic fourth industrial revolution era, higher education learners need systems that can facilitate durable, reliable knowledge construction and retention. Many e-learning platforms and methods have emerged and tried to solve this problem, however not all with the desired success. This kind of deeper learning is a lot trickier to implement effectively; it requires multifaceted thoughtful instructional and interaction design to operate as it should and keep learners engaged. In this paper, the design and development of a dual, hybrid, neuroscience-informed online learning platform is presented based on the design thinking methodology. This platform was used to facilitate an innovative didactic course based on neuroscience to higher education faculty members.