Our final episode of season 1 of Humans of Learning Sciences is with Dr. Matt Brown. Matt is a co-director at Inquirium, a design company that works collaboratively with clients to identify learning goals, and then develop custom learning environments and solutions to meet those goals.
Inquirium has taken on vastly different projects, from designing exhibits at museums to developing data visualizations to help teachers track student growth. As you’ll find out in today’s conversation, Inquirium’s approach to tackling these TRANSdisciplinary, MUTIimodal problems is grounded in part, grounded in Matt’s experience as a learner, as a teacher, as well as in his training as a learning scientist. He talks about how products that are built through grant funded projects are often fantastic, but typically lack that final 10% of refinement and polish that can really make 90% of the difference in terms of long-term teacher uptake. We also talk about the scariness of starting a company with other burgeoning learning scientist at a time when the field was new – and how they distinguish themselves from other design firms with their focus on learning, and yet, also adopted existing practices and workflows from disciplines like architecture, to streamline their work. You won’t want to miss this one – especially if you love the design aspect of the field and are looking for non-academic positions in which to use your skill set and perspective as a learning scientist.
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