---
title: "The Last Mile of Learning: A Thought Paper on the Future of Digital Learning"
description: The integration of technology and human design hold the keys to unlocking the almost unlimited human and digital potential that lies within the present and future of learning.
---

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![The Last Mile photo by Tony Webster, Unsplash.com](https://info.advantageperformance.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Assets/last-mile-unsplash-tony-webster.jpg?width=1500&name=last-mile-unsplash-tony-webster.jpg "The Last Mile photo by Tony Webster, Unsplash.com")

# The last mile of learning: A thought paper on the future of digital learning

Technology itself is no longer the barrier to deep, meaningful, emotionally rich, intellectually challenging learning experiences. It's design.

**By Don Jones**  
*Founder and Chief Experience Designer at **exper!ence it inc.**,*   
*an Advantage thought leader partner*

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This paper examines the challenges and opportunities for digital learning. It identifies and focuses on the most significant hurdle – the last mile of the digital learning journey.

- It considers the radical difference between the last nuanced rich mile and the thousands of mass transit miles that have preceded it, and the different skill sets and perspectives that are needed for the effective design of both.
- It breaks apart the journey as seen by the different actors within it.
- It lays out the principles that can be applied to target limited resources to specific areas of the digital learning journey for most positive impact.
- Finally, it makes the case that **technology itself is no longer the barrier** to deep, meaningful, emotionally rich, intellectually challenging learning experiences. **It’s design.**

The costs and capacities of technology are such that we have enough, and we will soon have access to even more. But now the solution is in our hands to build the human nuances of a learner’s digital ‘acceptance’ and ‘application’ in consort with the technology architecture, rather than on top of it.

*The Last Mile of Learning* makes the case that the integration of technology and human design across the three stages of the last mile: delivery, acceptance and application, facilitated through the initial act of creation, hold the keys to unlocking the almost unlimited human and digital potential that lies within the present and future of learning.

A lot has to happen in that last mile, and we need a set of principles to guide the design.

![MILE.jpg](https://info.advantageperformance.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Assets/MILE.jpg?width=567&height=248&name=MILE.jpg)

*Photo at top:*

[Tony Webster](https://unsplash.com/@tonywebster?utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=photographer-credit&utm_content=creditBadge)

 

### Download the full paper

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