Project Summary
The pedagogy planning tool is being developed in collaboration with educational practitioners who define their requirements for an online tool to support their current learning design practice.
It focuses on the critical aspects of learning designs, and makes the pedagogical design explicit, capturing it for testing, redesign, reuse and adaptation by the originator, or by others.
In this way the planning tool helps practitioners to be ‘reflective' and become part of the educational community that engages in collaborative exploration of new forms of learning design, enabling them to engaged in their own discovery of how best to use technology-enhanced learning.
Project Goals
The ultimate goal is to support the educational community in effective innovation in Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) that succeeds in improving the quality of the learning experience, learning outcomes and learner support.
The planning tool aims to help lecturers identify learner needs;
- design learning activities; and
- assess learning outcomes.
E-learning is not treated as a separate form of learning, and the pedagogical planner encompasses both online and offline activities, addressing integrated planning on:
- the module level, and
- the session level.
These are not concerned with a particular curriculum area, nor are they course administration tools, rather they are intended to help lecturers plan and monitor learning activities, based on:
- the needs of the curriculum;
- the needs of learners; and
- resource (time and budgetary) constraints.
The project is exploring the extent to which a learning design support environment can
provide enough flexibility to adapt to the needs of educational practitioners in different institutional contexts, while enabling the sharing of expertise across contexts;
enable teaching practitioners to experiment with learning design, learn from each other, and provide a more effective experience for learners;
link to various other resources, including the community-generated wiki (the Phoebe project), online learning object repositories (e.g. JORUM, OpenLearn), case studies (e.g. CDE, TLRP, Becta. JISC, NIACE, HEA), learning designs and distillations of educational research findings (e.g. TLRP briefings, JISC briefings, Becta reports, HEA summaries), and local information about learner needs (e.g. feedback surveys, examiners' reports).
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Project Details
Funded by JISC as part of the Design for Learning programme, the first phase of the project ran from May 2006 to February 2007.
The project is now in its second phase, running from March 2007 to Feburary 2008.
Project Outcomes
The main output is a proof-of-concept system, and specification for a collaborative online planning tool that the e-learning community can own and develop itself. Evaluation of the initial prototypes in response to practitioners' requirements and testing include the following preliminary findings:
The visual representations of learning design decisions and their consequences are welcomed, and workable
The approach of offering default input for design decisions that users can edit or accept is an efficient way of enabling lecturers to work quickly to understand how to use the tool
Practitioners want integration with VLEs, and the means to manage the development and sharing of a large number of learning designs
Definition of terms
| Cognitive activities |
|
| Attention |
Learner is working in more passive than active mode, but in any medium - class, print, online resources, also in attending to other learners' discussion if they are not actively taking part. |
| Inquiry |
Learner is working actively with materials or resources to find out information or explore others' ideas, but not focused on generating their own ideas. Not 'experimenting', therefore, which would come under 'practising'. |
| Discussion |
Learner is taking active part in discussion, not necessarily talking all the time, but expecting to talk. If they are not taking part, but listening, or 'lurking', then that activity would count as 'attending'. |
| Practice |
Learners are practising the activities appropriate to the subject, e.g. doing maths problems, critically examining a text, organising material for an essay, planning data gathering, designing materials or project, etc. |
| Production |
Learners are organising and expressing their own ideas, or versions of what they have learned, e.g. writing an essay, solving a problem, making, producing, performing or building something. Anything that can be assessed would be included here. |
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References
- Laurillard, Diana (2007) ‘Modelling benefits-oriented costs for technology enhanced learning', Higher Education, published online 17 October, 2006.
- Laurillard, D. (2008) ‘The teacher as action researcher: Using technology to capture pedagogic form', Studies in Higher Education, 33 (2), forthcoming.
About Phase I (completed)
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