Extension Engine
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If you spend any time in tech or online learning spaces, you’ve probably heard the words “learning experience” (LX) and “user experience” (UX). Here at Extension Engine, we often talk about these terms in relation to design, because that’s what we do: We offer LX design and UX design to our clients for their learning experience platforms. And while these two things can go hand in hand, they don’t always have to.

Unless you work in higher ed, you may not have heard the term critical consciousness. Developed by Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, it first appeared in his book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, published in 1968. Freire saw education as being inextricably linked with social justice and “described critical consciousness as a powerful tool for societal transformation by motivating individuals to combat oppression, violence, and dehumanization within their communities” (Seider & Graves, 2020, p. 3). 

Say you’re a math student in a basic mathematics course online, and you take a test on addition. Whether you’re ready to move on to the next lesson studying subtraction should be based on how well you do on your test, right? If you get nine out of 10 questions correct, you’ve shown enough knowledge of the subject of addition to start learning how to subtract. If you only get three questions correct, you have more studying to do and will be returned to an earlier point in the course to practice.

It’s an unfortunate fact of life that bias is everywhere: in the people with whom we interact, in the technology we use, and even in ourselves. Whether it's conscious or unconscious, bias can and does affect the behaviors and outcomes all around us.

If you’ve ever used Duolingo or Airbnb, you may have noticed the small, cheery animations scattered throughout each site and their apps. These animations may move when you scroll by or when you complete a task, like the flickering cartoon flame Duolingo displays when you’ve had a multiday streak of successful progress in your new language.