Gráinne Conole, Stewart Nixon, Martin Wellerg.c.conole@open.ac.uk

VLE LD Workshop24th April 2007

Harnessing learning design…to create more effective learning activities

OutlineWhat is learning design and why is it important?

Activity: What you do currently

Supporting the design process, summary of OU learning design work

Activity: Applying to your own context: Using Compendium

Case studies and tools for constructing learning activities

Affordances Activity: looking at affordances

Next steps

The crucial issue…How can we design learning activities which make effective use of tools and pedagogy?

How can we capture practice?scaffold design?

What is learning design?

Formally representing (and thus reusing) learning sequences

Shift of focus from content to activity

LD is a means of describing learning activities

Provides a way of representing learning activities so that they can be shared between tutors

and designers and a scaffold to the process of creating new learning activities

Why is it useful?

Means of eliciting designs from academics common vocabulary/language and understanding of learning activities

Way in which designs can be reused

Guides individuals throughprocess of creating activities

Creates an audit trail of design decisions

Highlights policy implications Guide learners

through activities

Discussion

What resources or support do you use?

What issues do new technologies raise?

How do you currently design learning activities?

Discussion

• How – • granularity of activity (time driven, workloads), mixed approach learning outcome

driven (x2), copy models from existing courses, team context is important, new people look outside more, contrast copy model with creative approach e.g. wiki, linkage between content and activity. Time in development e.g. if author is pushed for time will revert to known model and writing lots of text is simplest. Editorial time does not allow sufficient time to suggest very different ways of doing things. Activities arise in ad hoc way often e.g. about time I had an activity.

• Resources• Colleagues as resource (formal and informal), resources and support (LTS esp.) determine

direction, 3rd party material, Library building student skills, if there is support for a tech then more likely to use it.

• Technologies• M883 wikis represent real world practice for req, use appropriate technology to deliver learning

outcome.

The best approach?There isn’t one! Everyone is different!

Problem:What specific problem do you want to address?

Learning outcomes: What do you want the students to achieve?

Pedagogy: What pedagogical principles do you want to emphasis?

Activities: What do you want the students to do?

Tools: What tools do you want to use? Resources:

What resources do you want to use?

Assessment: What do you want to assess and how?

Multimedia simulation/ modelling/ case study 9

Wiki group project 3

Wiki based dialogue 1

Online icebreaker 2

Online residential 2

Online tutorials (for global presentation) 1

Interactive assessment 4

Asynchronous discussion based collaborative learning 7

ePortfolio (Journal) 3

Group project 3

Resource based learning 4

Problem based learning 1

Synchronous audio based collaborative learning 1

‘near – synchronous’ collaborative group project 1

Podcasting (by students) 1

Reflective practice for tutors 1

Total 44

OU case studies

ExistingLearning activity

Abstraction

PatternDiagramModel Case studyVocabularyMediating artefacts

Capturing practice

Case study Narrative

Textual description

The Pattern Approach

Problem + Solution

Diagrams

Collaborativegroup workin a wiki

Mindmaps and vocabularies

Models

Rules

Mediating artefacts

Subject Object

Community Division of labour

Outcome

Activity theory

E-moderatingConversational framework

Experiential

Constructivist

Learning

Community

PracticeIdentity

MeaningLearning as

experiences

Learning as

doing

Learning as

becoming

Learning as

belonging

Social theory of learning

Learning as social participation

Legitimate participation

Rarification

Communities of Practice

ExistingLearning activities

Abstraction

PatternIconic

representationModel Case studyVocabularyMediating artefacts

ExistingLearning activities

ExistingLearning activities

ExistingLearning activities

ExistingLearning activities

Construction

NewLearning activity

Toolkits Planners

RepositoriesMeta mediating artefacts

Tips and hintsGuidelinesFAQs

Aggregation

Approaches to Learning Design

From existing practice:OU case studies, AUTC Learning Design Pedagogical PatternsJISC effective practice case studies

By scaffolding the design process:DialogPlus, Phoebe, JISC Pedagogic Planner, LAMS

JISC Effective Practice case studies

AUTC Learning Design Case studies

DialogPlus toolkit

JISC pedagogic planner

JISC Phoebe planner

LAMS Learning Activity Management System

Hands on

Explore using Compendium to design a learning activity

Identify a learning activity of your own to design or use one of the case studies

Demonstration of using Compendium

Affordances

By tagging tools, activities and pedagogical approaches with their affordances for learning we might be able to make better decisions on how these are used in a particular context

“Affordance” refers to the perceived and actual properties of a thing, primarily those functional properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used

Affordances

CreativityDialogue

Collaboration

Reflection

Authenticity

Interaction

Organisation

Inquiry

DiscussionMap on the key affordances for each of these tools

WikiDiscussion forumMSN Chat

Blog E-PortfolioSearch engine

WordInteractive DVDVideo conferencePowerpoint

SpreadsheetE-assessment

Next stepsFeedback please!

Work up of case studies

Develop and testing of prototype tool

Identification of additional support