Sankofa Learning Design
Sankofa Learning Design
LDTC 605 · Unit 6 · Interactive simulation
You're a designer at Sankofa Learning Design. A middle-school team needs a short PD module on teaching morphology. Today you'll move it through SAM — and prove you can tell real iteration from scope drift.
🔊 Tap the ▶ to hear Tenneh. Browsers keep sound off until your first click — after that, every screen speaks on its own.
Phase 1 · Preparation
The Savvy Start is SAM's kickoff — a fast, collaborative brainstorm where the team sketches ideas and agrees on the one thing that anchors the whole project: what learners must be able to do.
Pin the outcome. This is the fixed point every later decision answers to.
Phase 2 · Iterative design · Cycle 1
Four candidate moves came out of the design cycle. Some are real iterations — a better path to the same locked outcome. Some are scope drift: changes that quietly widen the target. Keep the iterations. Cut the drift.
Phase 2 · Iterative design · Cycle 2
You put the rough prototype in front of Rosa, one of your test learners. She hit the build-a-word task and stalled: she'd never been told what a morpheme is. A cheap prototype just bought you that information early.
Pick the smallest next iteration — the one that fixes Rosa's problem without touching the locked outcome.
Phase 2 · Iterative design · Cycle 3
Three short cycles in, the module holds up. Learners reach the build-a-word task ready to do it, and the task measures the exact skill you locked at the start.
One confirmation before you move to development:
Phase 3 · Iterative development
Development runs on the same logic as the design loop — build a little, test, adjust — across three tested releases. Match each release to its job.
Debrief
| ADDIE | SAM | |
|---|---|---|
| Shape | One straight line, phase after phase | Short repeating loops |
| Where feedback sits | Formative checks inside each phase, summative review at the end | Continuous — the review loop is the process itself |
| Cost of a wrong turn | Higher — phase gates make a late change expensive | Low — surfaced in the next review |
The synthesis you built the module on: Understanding by Design fixes the outcome; SAM iterates the path to it. UbD answers what must not move; SAM answers how we get there, one cycle at a time.
And the reason both models pair so well: they guard the same door. The failure mode is scope drift by prototype — each new build quietly widening the target until the project is teaching something no one agreed to. A locked outcome and short review cycles catch it early, every time.
Name one design decision in this simulation you first read as an improvement but that was actually scope drift. How did the locked outcome expose it — and where in your own practice does that same trap show up?
Reference. Allen, M. W., & Sites, R. (2012). Leaving ADDIE for SAM: An agile model for developing the best learning experiences. ASTD Press.