Trauma-Informed Learning Experience Design
The brain is the most complex organ in the human body. Despite this, people who develop disorders or illnesses that originate in the brain are often not taken seriously. They are frequently told “it’s all in your head,” and physical symptoms are regularly dismissed as figments of the imagination. Disorders, such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), not only alter peoples’ emotional and mental wellbeing, but change the physical chemistry of their brains. Trauma occurs when people experience or witness a severely distressing and/or harmful event or repeated events, such as a car crash or having an abusive parent or partner (TEDx Talks, 2023). Because trauma changes how the brain functions, it changes the way people think, perceive, process, and learn information. Learners who have endured trauma need additional care and empathy from the educator or learning experience designer to engage with learning and not further experience harm or retraumatization (Charr-Chellman & Bogard, 2023).
Prior to trauma, the prefrontal cortex, or the personality center that plays a critical role in complex thinking, self-control, and initiation of behavior, has top-down control over other regions of the brain (TEDx Talks, 2023). This includes the amygdala, which is crucial in processing emotions, linking emotions to memory, and sensing and communicating a threat (TEDx Talks, 2023). The prefrontal cortex ultimately decides if the threat is harmless and then inhibits the amygdala or the threat is a danger and commands the amygdala to release stress hormones and enact the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn behavioral response (TEDx Talks, 2023). The hippocampus processes, organizes, and encodes the information, and the body will return to a resting state (TEDx Talks, 2023).
This process changes when the brain endures traumatic events. The amygdala regularly floods the brain with stress hormones and weakens the prefrontal cortex (TEDx Talks, 2023). The prefrontal cortex becomes smaller and hypoactive, while the amygdala becomes hyperactive and remains in an activated sympathetic state (Therapy in a Nutshell, 2022). When the amygdala becomes dominant over the prefrontal cortex, this is called amygdala hijack (TEDx Talks, 2023). The hippocampus works on overdrive to process all memories associated with the traumatic event, while also being constantly flooded with stress hormones (TEDx Talks, 2023). This results in volume change and remodeling, and causes the shortening of dendritic branches, loss in dendritic spines, and impairment of neurogenesis (TEDx Talks, 2023). Neural functioning, connectivity, and the ability to grow new neurons is compromised. The connection between the amygdala and hippocampus becomes stronger, maintaining the fear response over time (Therapy in a Nutshell, 2022). As problematic as this process can be, it is reversible. Through practices and treatments such as cognitive therapy, medication, Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR), and caring for oneself, a person who endured a single or recurring traumatic event can heal (TEDx Talks, 2023). This is because the brain has neuroplasticity, or the ability to grow and reorganize neural networks and pathways (TEDx Talks, 2023).
While neuro-healing after trauma is possible, learning after trauma is also possible and careful considerations of designing spaces will support learning. Since learning occurs in a safe and comfortable environment, educators and learning experience designers should consider the experience, environment, and content. Trauma-informed instructional design and trauma-informed teaching are pathways utilized by educators to support learners who have experienced trauma (MALXD, 2025). The Trauma-Informed Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation (TI-ADDIE ) model (Charr-Chellman & Bogard, 2023) is a strategy that centers care, communication, community, and conversation to support learning.
Analysis is required to understand specific populations and their emotional needs, sense of belongingness, and the handling of anticipated trauma barriers within learning environments (Charr-Chellman & Bogard, 2023).
Trauma informed instructional design requires the foundational principles of learning experience design, but changes logic, and requires additional guiding principles such as attending to resilience, empowerment, agency, decreasing stressors, and increasing cognitive support (Charr-Chellman & Bogard, 2023).
Implementation relies on tools embedded within the learning environment that reduce barriers to learning and requires mindfulness of barriers to learning. It references Sociocultural theory (Vygotsky, 1979) and recognizes the primacy of relationships, values in-person contact, and encourages relationship-building in learners within the Zone of Proximal Development (Charr-Chellman & Bogard, 2023).
Trauma-informed evaluation encourages stress-reducing approaches for determining student achievement and should accommodate the learning moment and emotions that emotions learners are experiencing (Charr-Chellman & Bogard, 2023).
The revised ADDIE model incorporates recursion into its model because trauma-informed learning does not happen in a vacuum and encourages learning designers to revisit earlier decisions and builds a closer approximation to an ideal final design through small steps (Charr-Chellman & Bogard, 2023).
References
Charr-Chellman, A. & Bogard, T. (2023, May 25). TI-ADDIE: A trauma-informed model of instructional design. Educause Review. https://er.educause.edu/articles/2023/5/ti-addie-a-trauma-informed-model-of-instructional-design
Master of Arts in Learning Experience Design Program. (2025.) Explore trauma-informed learning. CEP 800 Psychology of Learning in School and Other Settings. D2L.
Therapy in a Nutshell. (2022, April 14). How trauma and PTSD change the brain [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdUR69J2u6c
TEDx Talks. (2023, December 15). Trauma on the brain: The neurobiological effects of PTSD. Daisy Payton. TEDxMeritAcademy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BThqIwhqxA
L. S. Vygotsky (1979). Consciousness as a problem in the psychology of behavior, 47-79. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2753/RSS1061-1428200447
