Learning Design CompassGUY HARRISON · EDUCATION STUDIO
A framework for purposeful human learning

Designing Better Learning —
One Experience at a Time.

The Learning Design Compass™ helps educators hold the essential decisions of learning design together: why it matters, who it trusts, what it asks, who it reaches, and how it improves.

Every teacher is a Learning Designer.

Explore the Five Bearings Get the Books
Interactive compass showing the five bearings of the Learning Design Compass

Reading: Set your course

Before the bearings
Begin with discovery

Discovery comes before design.

Although the Compass holds five bearings, the workbook begins one step earlier. Before making design decisions, you examine the learners, the context, the curriculum and the evidence in front of you. Discovery protects the process from premature solutions and builds a more credible foundation for everything that follows — a rhythm of pause, notice, record, discuss, decide and revisit, returned to whenever new evidence changes the picture.

The five bearings

Interconnected, not sequential.

Purpose provides direction. Agency shapes participation. Better Questions deepen the work. Authentic Impact gives learning consequence. Reflection turns experience into improvement.

  • 000° Purpose Establish why the learning matters and what meaningful change it should enable — a credible, shared purpose the whole design can be tested against.
  • 072° Agency Enable learners to exercise genuine voice, choice, ownership and responsibility, rather than compliance with someone else's plan.
  • 144° Better Questions Use questions that deepen inquiry, evidence, perspective, judgement and responsible action, rather than settling for the first answer.
  • 216° Authentic Impact Connect learning with genuine audiences, useful contribution and real evidence of value beyond the classroom walls.
  • 288° Reflect & Improve Use feedback and evidence to strengthen both the current experience and the next design decision you make.
Better learning does not come from adding more. It comes from designing with greater clarity, care and intention.
Guy Harrison — Learning Design Compass™ Workbook
The library

Two ways to work with the Compass.

A framework book that sets out the thinking, and a workbook that turns it into practice — independently, with a colleague, or across a whole design team.

Volume One · The Series
Designing Human Learning
THE LEARNING DESIGN COMPASS — TEACHING WITH PURPOSE IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Framework book

Designing Human Learning

The book behind the Compass. It makes the case for why learning design must change, then builds the five bearings from first principles — Purpose, Agency, Better Questions, Authentic Impact, and Reflect & Improve — for educators teaching in the age of artificial intelligence.

Author: Guy Harrison Publisher: Education Studio, Australia ISBN: 9798188794576 · First Edition
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Companion Workbook
LDC Workbook
DESIGNING BETTER LEARNING — ONE EXPERIENCE AT A TIME
Workbook

Learning Design Compass™ Workbook

Seven connected sections — Discover, Design with Purpose, Design for Learner Agency, Design Better Questions, Create Authentic Impact, Reflect and Improve, and Your Learning Design Compass — with prompts, planning tools and reflection space to put the framework into practice.

Author: Guy Harrison Publisher: Education Studio, Australia Edition: LDC-Workbook v1.0
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About the author

Guy Harrison

Guy Harrison is an Australian educator, curriculum designer and educational leader with more than thirty years of experience across primary and secondary education — spanning classroom teaching, curriculum leadership, Digital Technologies, Design and Technologies, STEM education, educational publishing and professional learning.

His work translates curriculum, research and emerging technologies into practical classroom design, guided by a consistent belief: technology should enhance human creativity, inquiry and responsibility — not diminish the role of educators or the human purpose of learning. These ideas led to the Learning Design Compass™.

Every teacher is a Learning Designer — and every thoughtful design decision has the potential to change a life.

Work with the compass

Bring the Compass to your school or system.

For professional learning, bulk workbook orders, speaking engagements or partnership enquiries, send a note directly — a real person reads every message.

Based in Australia · Education Studio