With the transformation of the teacher’s role from an omniscient authority to a facilitator of new knowledge, student-centered ways of teaching in higher education have become prevalent among teachers. There are several methods for planning and preparing courses that focus on the student’s learning experience. However, educational learning activities and assessment often don’t match the intended learning outcomes which can negatively impact learning.

The introduction of the design thinking approach to the field of education has helped the faculty to focus on the students’ learning experience, and to incorporate technology in a pedagogically meaningful way. Learning design comprises a systematic and collective process for planning and structuring learning experiences. There are several models for learning design, sharing a common focus on the learner journey and integration of digital solutions in a pedagogically meaningful way.

One of the widely used models is the ABC Learning Design method, which aims to produce a pedagogical script in visual form during quick team sessions among course instructors. The method was created by the University College of London in 2015, and it is based on the six learning types, developed by Professor Diana Laurillard. The method starts with knowledge of the course content and teamwork among instructors. Together, the instructors think about the course as a whole in a visual form, for example, on a flipchart paper or on a MIRO platform. The ABC method was introduced at Laurea University of Applied Sciences in 2020, in context of the implementation of a new learning platform. It proved to be a well-functioning method, widely applied across all fields of education for designing and upgrading the courses, not merely transforming them into the new LMS.

A minor limitation of the method is the little attention to the constructive alignment of the objectives. Through our experience we have learned that the ABC method would benefit from a stronger alignment of learning processes with educational objectives and assessment. Therefore, we have combined the ABC approach with the Bloom’s taxonomy as a helpful planning and reflection tool to support the teachers in classifying and aligning learning objectives. Instead of directly aiming to create a visual script within the standard 90-minute session as suggested in the ABC method, we begin by breaking down the course-level learning objectives into smaller learning objectives that are easier to measure, designing content based on these specific objectives, and then logically combining the objectives with related content. During the course design process, we provide visual tools to ensure that it fosters different types of learning as well as different ways of processing and using information, from simple recall to complex problem-solving, in accordance with Bloom's taxonomy. This way, the learning design process comprises two steps: alignment of objectives, and the design of the visual manuscript supported by the ABC cards.

We have piloted this new, modified, version of the learning design process at our university as well as on various projects with good results. Our findings suggest that this modified approach fosters deeper pedagogical reflection and can be adapted across diverse educational contexts. In this article we describe Laurea’s learning design model and share our experiences in applying it.

Keywords: Learning design, higher education, teacher training, digital pedagogy, Bloom's taxonomy.