Today I’m excited to explore one of my favorite concepts for instructional designers—currency—and how currency can bring your learning experiences to life. First, let’s take a step back and consider what makes any learning design truly effective: participant-driven learning. Clients want lasting behavior change to improve results. Participant-driven designs cause ownership of the insights so performance improves.
When learners get to actively choose and participate in their learning journey, they become more engaged, more invested, and far more likely to retain what they’ve learned. That’s where “currency” and immersive design come into play. Together, they create learning environments where participants are in the driver’s seat, making decisions that have real consequences, providing meaningful feedback loops, and making the experience feel urgent and real.
Let’s explore how currency enhances participant-driven design and why it’s so critical for immersive experiences that stick.
What is Currency in Learning Design?
Currency in learning experiences refers to a unit of measurement that reflects progress, achievement, and outcomes. Currency gives participants ownership of their learning by making every choice, action, or contribution count toward a tangible goal.
Currency can take many forms, depending on your learning context:
- Time invested to achieve a task or outcome which can create engagement, competition, rounds to improve performance.
- Experience points (XP) earned for actions or contributions which can create competition, feedback, comparison and useful to illustrate competence or levels of competence.
- Lives saved in a tangible scenario-based simulation like Save the Titanic or a medical simulation.
- Miles traveled in a journey-based experience like Lead the Endurance or a sales-based program like Climb the Mountain.
- Best practices identified in collaborative environments for teams or for role-based learning such as Share Best Practices.
In essence, currency transforms the learning experience into an active journey where every choice has a direct impact on outcomes, giving participants control over how they navigate their learning path. Currency shifts the outcomes from a learning focus toward a performance focus which our clients prefer.
