Changelog
Pathwright

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Essays from the Pathwright team on learning design, teaching, and building an independent company.

Company Make It Easy Learning is hard, but there’s no reason the software surrounding it should be. Mapping the Next Era of the Internet Everyone agrees we’re entering a new era — but it’s going in a different direction than we might naturally think. Craft of LXD 4 Lessons Mister Rogers Taught Me About Teaching If Mr. Rogers were teaching now, he’d use structure with a dash of surprise, admit when he didn’t know, help learners be honest, and use silence. What’s Wrong with the Internet? A Few Hot Takes on AI An honest opinion of AI after using it for work, learning, and teaching. Craft of LXD How to Know if Your Course Is Well-Designed A quick and dirty guide to making sure learners actually learn. Check if your course has a good beat, pace and connections, and always give it a gut check. What’s Wrong with the Internet? Stop Stealing My Attention You should have a safe place on the internet where no one can steal your attention, especially when it comes to learning. Craft of LXD 4 Ways to Engage Learners in Your Course Introduction 4 ways to set the tone for your course. Craft of LXD How to Grow Your Online Course with Word of Mouth Unlock the power of word-of-mouth marketing by encouraging your learners to share achievements, asking directly and adding extra steps. Craft of LXD How to Design for Community Through Online Cohorts Content has never been enough to help people learn. Sparking curiosity, lighting a motivational fire to pursue it, and supporting people as they put in the hard work is the essential and more difficult part to learning. Craft of LXD How to Host a Virtual Event on Pathwright A complete walk-through of the before, during and after of a Virtual Event based on The Makers Summit's experience using Pathwright. Company Why We Threw out our Roadmap and Started a Lab Reduce the stress and misaligned expectations of roadmap debt and replace it with a "Lab" designed for opportunistic creative exploration. Proudly Indie Don’t Sell Your Company Before You’ve Built It There are excellent and lousy versions of venture-backed and independent software companies. But differing priorities trend towards divergent paths in the long run. Ed for Good Building Relationships and Opportunities Sean made sure 354 people didn't lose their shot when everyone else was cancelling their internships. Ed for Good Deeper Learning at a Distance Ben helped create a way for students to share what they were learning when connecting was tough. Ed for Good Doctors Read Children’s Stories on Social Media Teandra Ramos-Hardy put years worth of expertise into online courses to make certification accessible for anyone. Ed for Good One Voice: A Black History Narrative Jeremiah Dew moved his one-man show online to share Black History from the perspectives and voices of those who lived it. Ed for Good Teachers Helping Teachers Help Students When it counted, math teachers Luke and Lindsey lowered the price of a resources that cost them a lot to make. Ed for Good A Fresh Outlook on Teaching Media After hosting the University of Rhode Island's Summer Institute in Digital Literacy in-person for eight years, Renee moved the program online with Pathwright in 2020. She discovered a few unexpected positive side effects. Big Picture The Secret to Creative Work Even the lightest creative task really takes hours, weeks, maybe your whole life. Creativity is the tip of the iceberg. Big Picture The 3 Phases Every Design Project Encounters Design your way to any outcome with short-term and long-term design. Ignore the middle distance until you get to it. Proudly Indie We’re Not Here to Change the World Once we stopped navel-gazing at our product and put ourselves in our proper place, we had the clarity to formulate our true purpose. Company 5 Reasons Why We Work in 6-Week Cycles How we escaped running on a treadmill of endless projects by recovering a natural rhythm of work and rest. Working in six-week cycles makes planning smarter, gives us a reset button, allows time for reflection, helps us say “later,” and gives us room to share more. Big Picture Blocks, not Pages, Are the Future of the Web The web is in an awkward phase right now. We’re transitioning from an era where a website was simply a collection of linked pages to one where even using the term “page” to describe a particular screen is a giant oversimplification. Big Picture LMS Forums Are Broken The moment a lecture turns to asking questions, exploring answers, critiquing, expanding, etc. is usually when the most engaged learning happens. Big Picture Content Marketing Is Not Teaching Many online “courses” are slickly marketed content dumps — real teaching requires more. Craft of LXD Why Teachers Should Give Questions, Not Answers At a time when questions are answered so easily, we often need help asking the right questions. Help your learners craft the questions that guide them to their own answers. Company Why We Design for the Learner First Why it's important to design for your customer's customer first Craft of LXD Learning Should Be Beautiful Exploring London’s universities showed me four things beauty can do for learning: Captivate, Innervate, Empower and Transport Proudly Indie How I Accidentally Launched a Business / Startup A lot of people set out to start a business, aka "startup". The perception of flexibility, independence, respect, and potential wealth are big draws. Big Picture The Shape of Learning The shape of learning is a path that's connected, active, progressive, meandering and communal. Great teachers design accordingly. Craft of LXD Sidebars are a learning ”dark pattern“ plaguing online courses everywhere Why It’s Time for Course Designers to Break Up with 😈 Sidebars Company Why Is Your School’s LMS so Bad? Pick teaching & learning software by writing down what you really need because tech is just a tool. Remember a high price tag doesn't mean better software. Craft of LXD How to Write Discussion Questions Online courses should be more than just an attractive way to convey information, because learning is more than just relaying facts. It’s about relationships that build frameworks for information. Craft of LXD 4 Things David Foster Wallace Taught Me About Teaching Every so often a person is gifted with both wonderful skill and the skill to teach. David Foster Wallace was such a person.