Instructional Design for Funzi

• Company: FUNZILIFE LTD

• Time Period: 06.2018 - 12.2018

• Role: Instructional designer

• Responsibility: Design a guidebook for learning content development / Build a framework for Funzi social learning

Background

Funzi is a leading Ed-teach company in Finland, which specializes in mobile learning and has acquired over 6 million users around the world. Funzi aims to help the youth learn new skills by providing free and high-quality courses (Figure 1). The courses are from livelihood to well-being related themes. I was fascinated by its mission and applied for a summer internship. Luckily, I got this opportunity to work in Funzi. When my internship ended, my supervisor extended my contract as part-time employee.

I have completed two projects in Funzi and those projects have improved the overall learning experience of Funzi courses.

Project 1: Design a guidebook for learning content development

Project 2: Building a framework for Funzi social learning

(Funzi social learning is a concept that aims to promote social interactions among Funzi's users, in order to produce better learning outcomes)

Challenge

As an instructional designer, I was responsible for improving the users' learning experience. For different projects, there were different challenges:

1. For Project 1, researching how to create engaging and effective learning content.

2. For Project 2, building the framework from scratch, as there was no similar framework to refer to.

NB: The documents of the projects above are confidential, therefore, I can not display them in the solution section.

Solution

Challenge 1 was solved by developing 9 pedagogical tools.

By searching and studying related materials, e.g., Design for How People Learn and its references, i.e., website of Cathy Moore, I summarized 9 aspects that need to improved in the guidebook. Based on these 9 aspects, I collaborated with my supervisor and content lead to developed 9 pedagogical tools for copywriters. In addition, for each pedagogical tool, I explained with vivid examples and scientific grounds about why & when & how to utilize this tool. Therefore, those tools can effectively support copywriters to create more engaging and effective learning materials for Funzi.

Challenge 2 was solved by developing a needs-based framework.

After conducting some research, I realized that social interaction is driven by both social and learning needs, which enabled me to come up with an idea: How about using needs to categorize social learning activities? Based on this idea, I continued researching the related topics and found out Nigels Fenwick' article of The Secret Of Successful Social Communities: 4 Social Needs has identify four needs that online social communities satisfy. Also one of our founder Aape provided me with an article named Multifaceted Nature of Intrinsic Motivation:The Theory of 16 Basic Desires. By collaborating with my supervisor Miemo, we successfully integrated those three frameworks into a comprehensive and scientifically-based framework. It clearly categorizes various social learning activities according to different needs. In Funzi, this framework is used to guide the design of social learning feature

Results

"Lei was really efficient and skilled during her months with us, both as a summer trainee and a part-time employee after that. Her input on our new pedagogic features, both regarding feature design and content design, was very much appreciated. What she didn’t already know, she was quick to study on her own and then give an educated opinion based on the newly learned insights. "

- Miemo Penttinen, CXO and Co-founder of Funzi

Figure 1. Product of Funzi

Wall of Gratitude

I would like to express my gratitude for the people involved in this project.

• My supervisor Miemo, who always gave valuable input and push me to be the best that I can be. I have learnt a lot from his wealth of experience. Your support and advice have helped shape my professional career.

• All the members in Funzi, who were very supportive and caring to me. I enjoyed my time working with you.There is no other greater source of motivation than to walk into work every morning, and be greeted by friendly and supportive team members like you.

Thanks very much for this great experience and I look forward to working with you again.