Journalism Through Learning Design

At its core, journalism is a civic enterprise with a mission to help citizens better understand their world and communities. Fulfilling this lofty mission in today’s digital media landscape poses new and evolving challenges, but it also presents a unique opportunity to reexamine the relationship between storytellers and their consumers.

Journalism Through Learning Design is a framework the compels newsrooms, independent journalists, and writers to consider how they can promote learning in their news construction and storytelling. Modeled on effective teaching and learning practices, our audiences are, first and foremost, learners.

In my first article about this project, How Can Journalists Become Better Teachers?, I highlighted some specific practices and examples of journalism that align with evidence-based teaching practices. You can view a video tutorial version of this article here:

Video Tutorial: Journalism Through Learning Design

In my second article, The Teaching Role of Journalism, I ruminated a bit more conceptually on models like explainer journalism and service journalism. I also considered how aspects of learning design such as learning outcomes and assessment could work in journalism.

In this post, I want to present the core principles around which the JTLD framework is organized.

Want to learn more?

Join other journalists and educators for a virtual event on this topic on January 14 at 2:00 p.m. I’ll be co-hosting this webinar with Jeremy Caplan, CUNY Newmark School of Journalism’s Director of Teaching and Learning. Register here.

Want to meet?

As always, I’m always interested in hearing from other people to talk about this. Schedule a 30-minute remote meeting: https://calendly.com/geoffdecker/30min