The evolution of Learning Design: From pedagogic neutrality to good teaching ideas James Dalziel Professor of Learning Technology and Director, Macquarie E-Learning Centre Of Excellence (MELCOE) Macquarie University james@melcoe.mq.edu.au www.melcoe.mq.edu.au Keynote Presentation for 2009 European LAMS and Learning Design Conference, Open University, UK, July 7th, 2009 This presentations is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License

Overview Why did we need Learning Design? LD Goal 1: Pedagogic neutrality LD Goal 2: Sharing good teaching ideas LAMS V2.3 The LAMS Activity Planner Conclusion

Why did we need Learning Design? It was only 5-10 years ago when many experts saw e-learning as only single-learner, self-paced content Collaborative learning just wasn’t discussed Education technical standards reflected this blind spot “SCORM is not for everyone” was vigorously rejected by some Most uses of collaboration in e-learning were marginal How many people used “Chat” in their LMS? (But Forums did achieve some significance)

Why did we need Learning Design? The deeper problem wasn’t simply that we needed to “tack on” a bit more collaboration We needed a “larger” theory of e-learning that provided a framework for many different educational approaches Including single learner and collaborative methods Learning Design was a significant theoretical advance by providing a “meta-model” for many approaches EML and IMS LD were key technical standards contributions LAMS, JISC Design 4 Learning, etc, illustrated the wider LD idea without needing to adhere to IMS LD specifics

Goal 1: Pedagogical Neutrality The aspiration of Learning Design theory to “pedagogic neutrality” is widely misunderstood But worth defending once properly stated LD attempts to provide a notational framework for educational activity structures that is rich enough to model many different pedagogical approaches It is not a pedagogical theory like constructivism, or a teaching approach like Problem-Based-Learning It is more like the notation system used to write down music

Goal 1: Pedagogical Neutrality There is further work to be done on Goal 1: Revise the technical standards and underlying ontologies Develop Learning Design tools integration Address less linear approaches like “spiral” pedagogies Further develop the representation of time etc However, I think the field of Learning Design has made remarkable progress on a challenging idea For some, Goal 1 is legitimate end on its own

Goal 2: Sharing Good Teaching Ideas For many, the “real” reason for their interest in LD is to foster wider sharing of good teaching ideas But we needed Goal 1 so we had a common language Goal 2 means explicit discussion of different pedagogical approaches (both theories & instantiations) (But hopefully using the common language)

Goal 2: Sharing Good Teaching Ideas Goal 2 raises a different set of challenges: How do we identify good teaching ideas? How do we describe them (both metadata & activity structures)? How do we best share good ideas? What factors enable/inhibit adoption of good ideas? What is the balance between generic & content-specific ideas? etc For me, I think we now need more effort on Goal 2 While still progressing on Goal 1

LAMS V2.3 Released in May 2009: Major speed and stability improvements (375% faster on a quarter of the memory!) New tools: Assessment, Image Gallery, MindMap, Video Recording and Pixlr (image editing) New editing options for all tools: LaTeX, Video Recording, Drawing New Authoring option: “Support” activities Other features: Instant messaging; Gradebook; Time Graphs Many others – see: http://wiki.lamsfoundation.org/display/lams/Roadmap

LAMS 2.3 Assessment Tool (Learner View)

LAMS 2.3 Instant Messaging (Learner View)

LAMS 2.3 Image Gallery (Learner View)

LAMS 2.3 Mindmap (Learner View)

LAMS 2.3 Video Recording (Learner View)

LAMS 2.3 Support Activity (Learner View)

LAMS 2.3 Time Graph (Line Graph)

LAMS 2.3 Time Graph (Pie Chart)

The LAMS Activity Planner LAMS itself provides a platform for creating, implementing and sharing content & collaboration But does not provide advice on choosing appropriate methods, or provide templates for specific methods The LAMS Activity Planner is a new layer above LAMS to provide advice on choosing pedagogical methods, and simplified editing of pre-built templates Initial release will be as a hosted website with free access for individual teachers; future plans yet to be finalised

Top Level of Activity Planner – choose a template category

Selecting from among different pedagogical approaches

Overview of an approach (role play), with links to example & templates

Specific Role Play example, with links to student Preview & simple editor

Specific Role Play example, showing student Preview in pop-up window

Specific Role Play example - Simple one page editor for content in the template

One page editor of generic template with highlighted text for suggested editing

One page editor showing contextual help via “Editing Advice”

One page editor showing Full Author, Export, Save & Preview options

The LAMS Activity Planner Going further, expert designers can create their own activity planners, based on their own categories and advice And incorporate their own Learning Design templates built in the normal LAMS Authoring environment, but written to suit the layout of the Activity Planner simple one page editor Goes beyond sharing single Learning Designs to sharing whole activity planners and sets of templates

Creating an Activity Planner – editing a “node” + adding a sequence template

Conclusion We needed Learning Design, and the aspiration of pedagogic neutrality, to take e-learning forward But the greatest benefit of Learning Design would be mass sharing and adoption of good teaching ideas So we need research on enabling and inhibiting factors LAMS V2.3 & the LAMS Activity Planner are the latest iteration of our work towards these goals