Interface Design for Learning: Toolkit

This Toolkit is a collection of tools, books, videos, courses and resources from various disciplines for those involved in design for learning experiences.

Latest research

Follow or join the Educational Multimedia Design group at Mendeley for a list of books and research papers from conferences like CHI and journals like Instructional Science with insights on Interface Design for Learning.

News & Blogs

The ELearning Coach - An eLearning Interface Designer's hero, Connie Malamed specializes in both visual design and elearning.
Hack Education - Audry Waters is an Education writer with an expert and down-to-earth grasp of the trends and issues in educational technology.
Usable Learning - Author and Instructional Designer Julie Dirksen shares insights on learning design and usability for learning.

Articles

UX for Learning: Design Guidelines for the Learner Experience at UX Matters by Dorian Peters at UX Matters
Say hello to Learning Interface Design at UX Magazine by Dorian Peters at UX Magazine
The UX of Learning at A List Apart by Tyler Tate

Magazines

UX Magazine is an enjoyable, well designed, quality read on all issues relevant to designers of the User Experience
UX Matters is a reliable source of insights and trends in user experience.
Elearn Magazine is a highly accessible publication of the ACM, rich in views on online learning research and practice in higher education and beyond.
Learning Solutions is a window into eLearning in practice with special focus on industry.
Interactions Magazine is a top notch fresh and scholarly look at the cutting edge in ideas and innovation in HCI. It is a publication of the ACM and their Special Interest Group SIGCHI.

Talks

ELearning Guild ThoughLeaders Seminars are a great free resource. I gave one on Interface Design for Learning that you can download for free if you're a guild member (also free and worth it). Or view the slides.
ELearning Coach Podcast - Connie Malamed talks to experts in all areas of eLearning. You might want to check out her interview with me: Strategies that Improve the Interface to Learning.
TED is fecund with insightful, informative and inspirational talks on most things at the intersection of technology-Entertainment-Design and often where they overlap with education. For example, see David Kelley on Human-centered Design, Salman Kahn on video for Education, or Daphne Koller on MOOCs.
IxDA - The Interaction Designers Association makes a wide range of talks by experts on UX and Interaction Design available for free.
iTunes U hosts a number of free lecture series such as the Stanford HCI seminars, and seminars from the School of Visual Art in New York.

Online Courses

Learn by example as well as by expert by taking these excellent and free courses online.

Stanford HCI course with Scott Klemmer on Coursera is a fabulous course with well-designed lectures and engaging hands-on projects.
Learning Creative Learning - Get down and dirty among the pioneers of constructionism in this MIT Media lab course for "designers, technologists and educators interested in creative learning".
Virtual Crash Course in Design Thinking - Created by Stanford's d.school, I did this course with a friend and was astonished to make some deep realizations I never expected.
Introduction to the Design of Everyday Things - Design psychology hero, Don Norman has a MOOC!

Web goodies

The Web Style Guide is a book on the fundamentals of web design. Authors Sarah Horton and Patrick Lynch have generously made a version of the book available for free online.
Konigi "Tools for ideation" makes a host of wonderful resources available from superb Wireframe stencils to design inspiration.
Visual Vocabulary by Jessie James Garrett's is a standardized set of shapes and connectors you can use for creating professional design artefacts and deliverables.
Design Thinking for Educators Toolkit is Stanford's d.school's initiative to apply Design Thinking to Education.

Handy Tools

Mental Notes, created by Stephen Anderson, is a beautiful set of cards, each describing and depicting a basic principle of web-relevant human psychology.
IDEO Method cards is a 51 card deck of Design Thinking methods and a great way to stimulate and organize ideas in a workshop, in a group, or or on your own. Note: the Design Thinking Bootcamp Bootleg has a lot of this content in a free (if less fun and versatile) format.
Instructional Design Guru is your cheat sheet, quick look-up app, for all those learning terms that get bandied about with abandon.

Books

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As designers of digital learning environments we must be well versed in everything web design in addition to the aspects of learning theory that relate to the user experience.

I wouldn't claim to have a definitive book list here, but these are at least, a few of the books I have found incredibly useful on my journey towards best practice in Interface Design for Learning.

A good place to start...
Interface Design for Learning - Dorian Peters

Education, Multimedia Learning & eLearning design