Informing designs for learning when shifting to digital

This paper is a response and considers practical and design implications of the article, The process of designing for learning: understanding university teachers’ design work by Bennett et al. (Educ Technol Res Dev 65:125–145, 2017). Bennett et al. guide us in better understanding teachers’ design practices and in discussions on how such practices could be improved. A key contribution of the article is presenting a descriptive model of the design process. As such, the article is focused on teachers’ current design work, while giving more limited attention to how teachers’ design practice could be improved. When looking forward, this response emphasizes that teachers should be encouraged to inform their designs for learning and iteratively improve their designs based on reflection and evaluation. If teachers take time to look into what is known and deliberately learn more along the way through reflection and evaluation, they will improve their understanding of how to design for learning.