Short paper delivered at ALT conference 08 Sep 2016, using the concept of care to reflect on why aesthetics and visual design matter in online spaces.

1. SONJA GRUSSENDORF – ALT CONFERENCE 2016 1
INNOVATING FROM THE INSIDE OUT – ALTC2016
INTRODUCTION
SLIDE 1: INNOVATING FROM THE INSIDE OUT
Hello,I am Sonja Grussendorf,I am a Senior Learning Technologistat the London School of Economics.
SLIDE 2: CONNECT COLLABORATE CREATE
I want to begin with our conference theme.
Themes are useful frameworks: they give structure and purpose, order, form and substance. They are
constraints againstwhich our thinkingcan grow and prosper, likea clematis againsta garden wall.
Themes are frameworks, and they work by keeping things in as well as keeping things out. Which means we can
ask: at the exclusion of what do we focus on this year’s clearly connected concepts “connect, collaborate,
create”?
I would add the notion of care – but not because ithas been excluded, but rather becauseit is implicitly already
there, and it deserves to be made explicit.
Careis thename for the realmwithin which connections, collaboration and creativity can unfold in thefirstplace.
In care, we can more properly examine the question “why”, for example:
 Why, at this year’s conference, we should careabout connections,collaborationsand creativity.
 Why I careabout the visual,
 Why anyone cares aboutanything at all.
So today I take care of my work through the lens of connect-collaborate-create.
SLIDE 3: SESSION ABSTRACT PROMISES
This is what I promised in my abstract:
That I would reflect on a rather loosely defined design project.
SLIDE 4: SESSION ABSTRACT PROMISES KEY ELEMENTS
A promiseI intend to keep, if not exactly to the letter, or rather: not to all theletters, perhaps only to these,
 That I will usemy project as a springboard to consider the visual
 That I will wonder why and how aesthetics,the beautiful,and good design matter to us
 And consider how, if at all, it matters that Learning Technologists bring their attention, their care, to
the visual,also.

2. SONJA GRUSSENDORF – ALT CONFERENCE 2016 2
SLIDE 5: DESIGN MATTERS
Clearly,the why is more meaningful than the what and the how. Why does good design matter?
Equally clearly,withoutcontent (the what, the how), the why would simply sitthere,annoyingand intrusivelike
a child that wants answers but doesn’t tell us what it wants its answer to be about.
So I hope you will appreciatethat firstI will offer some mundane presentation context, also known as “this is
what I did”. I will try to keep it as shortas possible.
SLIDE 6: DESIGN PROJECT
In March 2015,Peter Bryant, the head of our department, came to me and said I wantyou to lead on the Design
Project.
- Get some graphic designers to make us some visuals.
- Choose some filmmakers to work with and celebrate our eLearning innovators.
- Put together a pool of young student artists.
I was to create a creative hub that LSE academics could draw on for al l aspectof their teaching (note that the
teaching dimension is essential –of coursethe LSE has its own design unit, but their remit is not pedagogical.)
That was virtually all hesaid and there is nothing more brilliant than to be given a remit that is entirely vague,
because it means you can fill it with meaning as you see fit. In any cas e, I did understand the remit to be
meaningful:
The intention was to elevate the visual, to recogniseits rhetorical power, its ubiquitous presence and cultural,
social importance,in short to bring it back to its proper place which it had somehow lost at the overtly, overly
textual LSE.
As part of this, we created a series of video celebrations and articles of academics who properly innovate their
teaching practice with us. This was a small nod to understanding that although research, teaching and
administrativeburdens on academic staff have increased exponentially over the last30 years, recognition and
reward are given exclusively to research output. Studies have shown that “thank you” does a lot to increase
academic job satisfaction. With the LSE Innovators series,we say thank you to those who care about teaching.
More importantly, this focus on visual creativity allowed me to re-examine the use of our VLE, Moodle. Here
was a chanceto inviteacademics to re-examine their relationship to usingMoodlein their teaching (if they ever
had one). A chance to persuade them to view it as a spacein which learningcan happen,as opposed to a space
into which we shovel inordinate amounts of text, badly arranged, obtrusively placed as if to constantly shout:
ALL LEARNING IS READING.
We opened a call for academics to “Ignite My Moodle”.
Unsurprisingly, almost no one answered. Unsurprisingly, because Moodle is boring; and its boringness is
entrenched.
I find itboring.
When I see our LSE Moodle, I want to die.
I blame this on Moodle having been misunderstood and then systematically abused over the years. It has
become an administrativetool atworst, and a glorified over-specced dropboxPLUS at best. Some blameMoodle
itself, pointing to it being cluttered by default. I blame me. I blame me for not having tried harder to make its

3. SONJA GRUSSENDORF – ALT CONFERENCE 2016 3
potential understood. My excuse is that when I look at our Moodle I want to die. Through the Design Project I
have rediscovered my will to live.
Luckily,one academic DID answer our call,and we arecurrently re-designingher Moodle coursein tandem with
re-designingher teaching approach.
SLIDE 7: IGNITE MY MOODLE
Here is a screenshotof her Moodle as is.
It is a beautiful example of how VLEs are almost never known for what they are: spaces. Online they may be,
but they arespaces into which we send our students, and where we ask them to be.
My academic knows exactly how she wants to be with her students physically, what she expects of them: to
make content with each other, to self-select into research groups. To communicate, collaborate, connect and
create. And she knows how to facilitate this in a physical classroom. Naturally resources are essential to her
course, reading lists too. And if she didn’t have the web, she would put all this essential information into a
courseguide, carry those guides into the room in a box and allowthe students to consultthem whenever they
need.
But, as you can see, online, that box is as big as the classroom and it’s loud and shouty. In week 2 we discuss
migration policy!Itshouts this in week 3 and 4 and 5 and 6, also.Every time someone comes into the classroom,
that box shouts about week 2. Uncomfortable. Useless.Ugly.
SLIDE 8: IGNITE MY MOODLE
Here is a screenshotof her Moodle after I thought about itfor a bit.
- I eliminated clutter.
- I arranged the spacethematically.
- I put all the resources into one box and put a lid on it.
- I listened to Jennifer telling me her students need to communicate, collaborate and make stuff. So
there’s a dedicated spacein which the students can do that.
- The space reflects Jennifer’s teaching approach. It is cleaner, easier to navigate, and visually more
appealing becauseof it.
SLIDE 9: WHY CARE?
But how and why has itbecome visually appealing? Moreimportantly,consideringwhat Moodle is – a learning
technology, a suiteof onlineteaching tools: why does it matter that it is also visually appealing?
Why do we care aboutthe aesthetic,the visual?
SLIDE 10: SURFACE REASONS
Well,firstthere are universal design principles.Easier navigation and visual clarity increases usability.
Usability ensures accessibility.
Clarity of design means that design elements aren’t obtrusive, that means they recede into the background and
allowusers to focus on what really matters: their work, their learning.
The Japanese word for simplicity or elimination of clutter is Kanso and as a design principleitis to

4. SONJA GRUSSENDORF – ALT CONFERENCE 2016 4
“remind us to think not in terms of decoration but in terms of clarity, a kind of clarity that may be achieved
through omission or exclusion of the non-essential.” (Garr Reynolds)
But these are surface reasons for a focus on design, they are at heart pragmatic and utilitarian, which to my
mind is reductive. This is not to say that these reasons aren’t fundamentally important, but they are not
exhaustive.
SLIDE 11: UNDERLYING PEDAGOGICAL REASONS
There are proper pedagogical arguments to be made, and we can bundle these up under the term of visual
literacy. Visual literacy is necessary so that we may recognise the visual’s rhetorical power, its ubiquitous
presence and cultural, social importance. The world is suffused with images (it always has been, we are
essentially visual creatures),butas Peter Felten points out:
“Living in an image-rich world, […] does not mean students naturally possess sophisticated visual literacy skills,
just as continually listening to an iPod does not teach a person to critically analyze or create music.”
Like any literacy, visual literacy is an intellectual, reflective ability that must be learnt, so that we, and our
students, do not stand defenceless and uncritical against images that impart messages, ideas, ideologies,
meaning.
“That composition studies, and indeed most academic disciplines, are only now beginning to take visual
representation seriously, reflects a failure of many academics to understand human learning rather than a
radical change sparked by technology and culture. To train students to see critically and to create in multiple
modes should be an essential component of a liberal education.”
The firststep towards this is to recogniseourselves as visual creatures,to reinstate the visual properly vis-à-vis
its counterpart, the textual.
And yet, I suggest that even with these reasons we remain in the realm of pragmatismand utilitarianism.And in
any case, visual literacy does not explain why online learning spaces should be visually appealing, that is, it
doesn't explain why we should care.
SLIDE 12: DEEPER REASONS
Which means I am now coming back to the notion of care, and I want to approach itvia,two further stepping
stones, namely
- aesthetics
- and the visceral.
SLIDE 13: AESTHETICS
The aesthetic matters to us,becausethe visual matters,becausewe arevisual creatures.Weareartful,creative,
homo faber. We care about art, design, beauty. This caring for the visual constitutes a particular way of being
that we are.
Some say we aloneamong the animalsare aesthetic,but if we consider the Satin bowerbird and his beautifully
decorated structures, we might want to lay such reductive categorisations to rest. Attracting mates, securing
reproduction are not the soleevolutionary drives all behaviourcan be reduced to (for if they they were, then so
would be this talk). Moreover, decoratingtheir bowers is a learntskill,oneitis possiblefor a littlebowerbird to
excel at! It is quiteunlikethe accidental plumageof s peacock.

5. SONJA GRUSSENDORF – ALT CONFERENCE 2016 5
The aesthetic however speaks to us on the reflective level, or we engage with it on that level. But the visual
affects us also on a more primordial level,thevisceral.
SLIDE 13: THE VISCERAL
Our natures arenot merely composed of the intellect,but also of feelings,instinct,the body, the gut. Appealing
designs make us feel good. On this level, we can combine the utilitarian with the hedonistic: if well -designed
spaces makeour learners feel good, then we have a duty of care to design their learningspaces well, online and
offline. Not only because it will measurably make them learn better, but because pleasure,happiness,‘feeling
good’ are goods in and for themselves. And if you agree with me that this is a valid motivation for caringabout
the visual,then it is becauseyou careat a fundamental level.
SLIDE 14: CARE
We care, because as humans we operate in the realm of care. In Being and Time, Martin Heidegger explained
that, “the being of humans reveals itself as care.”SZ182/ BT227 and
“The phenomenon of care in its totality is essentially something that cannot be torn asunder; so any attempts to
trace it back to special acts or drives like willing and wishing or urge and addiction, or to construct it outof these,
will be unsuccessful.” (BT238)
Put less carefully but more accessibly: Care is at the heart of what and who we are.
This extends to the realmof education of course, and this sortof appeal to remember care(and love!), is notso
very uncommon at all. In The Revenge of The Monsters of Education Technology, Audrey Watters reminds us
that:
“Education technology requires our love and our care so as to not become even more monstrous, so that it can
become marvelous instead.”
And bell hooks wrote that
“The heart of education as a practice of freedom is to promote growth. It’s very much an act of love in that sense
of love as something that promotes our spiritual and mental growth [ … ] The academy is not paradise. But
learning is a place where paradise can be created.”
SLIDE 15: PEDAGOGICAL SKETCHBOOK
Here’s a final segue,which might illustratewhatI am tryingto get at: Paul Klee’s Pedagogical sketchbook. It’s an
odd “text” that explains theprinciples of art,design,form and function with sparsesketches and sparser text. It
is an extraordinary littlebook and I have no time to describeit here, so I want to only mention why he created
it.Klee became a teacher atBauhaus and asa teacher, he reflected on his own workingmethods and techniques.
And he wrote:
“When I came to be teacher I had to account explicitly for what I had been used to doing unconsciously.”
Care in the face of the other means to be accountable to them. We care not because of extrinsic factors, not
because itis written into our contracts or our job descriptions,and not becausewe arebeing held accountable
by others. Paul Kleewas not told by his employers to accountfor his methods – he came to be a teacher, which
meant he became accountableto his students,from within himself.

6. SONJA GRUSSENDORF – ALT CONFERENCE 2016 6
That is what it means to take care.
SLIDE 16: BEING A LEARNING TECHNOLOGIST
Paul Klee, very special artist that he was, did not display any special care that would be ali en to any of us. I
suggest that his response was really rather ordinary, which is why I feel no compunction in saying that in our
practice, this is what we do too. We care. We know about connecting, we connect academics to each other,
their students. We know about collaboration, its usefulness to learning. We embrace creativity, both as a
concept for students and as an approach in our practice.Because, fundamentally,we care.
If we don't act out of love, we don't really act meaningfully at all. This is no truer of a learning technologist
than it is of a zookeeper. But it is no less true either.