Designing Courses Around Mental Models with Josh Kaufman

We can sort of categorize courses and other educational content into two different categories. The first is a targeted instrumental style, where the learner is taught procedures and technical skills. It's important to learn these skills in whatever subject you are learning but this type of course lacks the greater context and can leave you wondering how everything fits together and where you'd actually apply these skills.The second type operates on a higher level of concepts and patterns. It teaches the learner mental models and forms the context surrounding the skills of the domain. It's necessary to learn from both types but you may notice that there are a lot more of the first type. And part of the reason for that is that it's a much more challenging instructional design problem. Both the delivery method and content of the course have to be different. Which for Josh Kaufman this has meant building a custom platform for his Personal MBA course that he's designing. Some of the challenges have included reducing the cognitive overwhelm that comes with very large courses, structuring the course around a 1to1 asynchronous relationship with the instructor, and designing a system that has the learner revisiting content for spaced repetition. All of that fits together to create an experience that is more likely to keep learners engaged through to completion and better reinforces the concepts being taught.