LAMS: The Learning Activity Management System James Dalziel Professor of Learning Technology & Director, Macquarie E-Learning Centre Of Excellence (MELCOE) Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia Presentation for Huazhong Normal University, Wuhan, China, July 10 th, 2006

Overview Introduction to LAMS Demonstration of LAMS MQ and the LAMS Community From e-learning to learning LAMS in China Questions and Discussion

LAMS World’s leading software for digital lesson plans –1000s of users across 80+ countries Visual “drag and drop” approach to designing activities Teacher designs activities, then “runs” them with students, and monitors student progress Freely available as open source software

LAMS LAMS is successful in all areas of education –Higher education –Schools –Vocational training –Corporate e-learning Easy to use – can build a lesson in less than 10 minutes **Lessons can be stored, re-used, adapted and shared

LAMS LAMS has many uses, eg, it can be used for: –live collaborative activities in a computer lab –online homework activities completed at home or in the library –individual instruction or small group work in classrooms with few computers –dynamic presentations in conjunction with an interactive whiteboard or projector –personalised learning and presenting content (Learning Objects) –collaboration across several educational institutions, even in different countries

LAMS There is no licence cost for LAMS – it is freely available as open source software –LAMS is freely provided by the non-profit LAMS Foundation Fee-based services and support for LAMS are provided by a commercial company – LAMS International Both LAMS Foundation and LAMS International are supported by Macquarie University

LAMS LAMS trials include: –UK Department for Education and Skills together with the UK Specialist Schools Trust – supporting over 40 UK schools –New Zealand Ministry of Education – supporting over 30 NZ schools, together with polytechnics and universities –UK Joint Information Systems Committee (“JISC”) supporting 15 Further Education and 16 Higher Education institutions in the UK, and development work –Oxford University –Cambridge University –Australian National University & University of Canberra –Nanyang Technological University, Singapore –University of Sussex –National Library of New Zealand –Tasmanian, NSW and South Australian Departments of Education

LAMS LAMS V2 Beta released last week, full version due in October 2006 –Many new features –Much greater scalability –“Pluggable” activity tools –Support for languages other than English

LAMS Authoring – Main Page

LAMS Authoring – Forum Setup

LAMS Learner – Forum Summary Page

LAMS Learner – Forum Details Page

LAMS Demonstration 1 Using LAMS authoring to create activities for individual student study and self-test “About LAMS”

LAMS Demonstration 2 Using LAMS authoring to create question activities for students before attending a lecture “Statistics and Statistical Reasoning”

LAMS Demonstration 3 Using LAMS for post-lecture followup – resources, questions and discussion “Statistics and Statistical Reasoning - Followup”

LAMS Demonstration 4 Using LAMS for online group discussion and debate “What are the qualities of an effective teacher?”

Questions about Demonstration

Macquarie Macquarie is rolling out LAMS across the university Project includes: –Integration with WebCT (LMS) –Educational Support –Training –Case Studies and Dissemination Used across many areas: –Eg, Statistics, Management, Education, Innovation, Languages –Student authoring in teacher training courses –Further adoption planned for the future

Sharing Lesson Plans: The LAMS Community The “LAMS Community” is global website for communities of LAMS users. –Discuss the use of LAMS, new features, technical issues –**Share sequences, search for sequences, comment on and rate sequences, and get statistics on downloads –Find colleagues with similar interests, form sub-communities We use Creative Commons “open content” licensing of LAMS sequences Approximately 1300 members, 80 countries, 100 shared sequences, 600 discussion postings

LAMS Community – View of various communities & forums

LAMS Community – Repository Summary

LAMS Community – Public Sequence Repository

LAMS Community – Detailed view of individual sequence

From “e-learning” to “learning” Next version of LAMS will allow any activity to be run in online or face to face mode –If you select online, LAMS will configure the relevant environment, link to other activities, etc –If you select face to face, LAMS will be able to print off a set of instructions about how to run the activity without technology, including potential for student worksheets LAMS becomes a general lesson planning tool, with technology-based delivery of activities as an option

The potential of LAMS in China LAMS provides a way of describing and sharing “good practice” lessons China’s education system is growing so rapidly that LAMS could provide a way of disseminating good practice very widely – quickly and inexpensively LAMS provides potential for better quality assurance of teaching methods across rapidly growing system Potential benefits not just for universities, but also for schools Potential integration with LMS, eg, Sakai

Questions & Discussion Followup Question - Evaluations of LAMS Schools - BECTA Interim Report BECTA Full Report Higher Education - JISC Report LAMS%20Final%20Report.pdf