Outcomes from the Design for Learning Programme

1. Outcomes from the Design for Learning Programme Sarah Knight, JISC e-Learning Programme Joint Information Systems Committee Supporting education and research

2. The aim of the JISC e-learning programme is to enable UK further and higher education to create a better learning environment for all learners, wherever and however they study, in order to realise the vision… …The vision is of a world where learners, teachers, researchers and wider institutional stakeholders use technology to enhance the overall educational experience by improving flexibility and creativity and by encouraging comprehensive and diverse personal, high quality learning, teaching and research. e-Learning Programme 2008-2012

3. The context • ‘While the students expect to be able to set themselves up, technologically… they will not expect … the technology to encroach on what they see as the key benefits from university – interaction and learning.’ • ‘I prefer to learn face to face with a teacher helping me understand any problems that I have.’ • ‘Traditional teacher/pupil learning methods are preferred as the backbone for everyday learning. Technology needs to be used as a tool to complement this way of learning.’ (JISC Student Expectations study, November 2007) • Consultations carried out with children, parents and other citizen juries to determine preferred scenarios for education in 2025 and beyond (‘Beyond Current Horizons’) find a strong preference for ‘relationships with teachers’ to remain at the heart of the learning experience. (FutureLab, February 2008)

4. Design for Learning 2005-06 • ‘a set of practices carried out by learning professionals… defined as designing, planning and orchestrating learning activities which involve the use of technology, as part of a learning session or programme’ • The idea of ‘design’ embraced: • New educational roles • New ways of guiding others to learn • The need to represent and share educational ideas more explicitly • Design-type professional practices: innovation, (re)interpretation in new contexts, iterative approach to solutions, continuous evaluation • Design-based systems to support practice

5. Lessons learned: phase 1 • Existing design practice is very varied, depending on departmental and personal preferences and historical precedents • Educational design tools are rarely experienced by practitioners as pedagogically neutral or as flexible enough to accommodate their existing practice • There is a need for tools that support collaborative design, contingent/responsive design, and effective sharing of design processes and outcomes • Practitioners want rich (e.g. graphical, narrative) expressions of their pedagogical intentions, but also bite-sized curriculum elements (e.g. LOs) that can easily be re-purposed and re-used • Design processes need to be integrated with other processes and resources (e.g. VLEs, learner-related data) if design practice is to be transformed

6. Exposing conceptual challenges Diversity of existing approaches to design

7. design Design for Learning 2006-08 learning professionals • a set of practices carried out by learning professionals… defined as designing, planning and orchestrating learning activities which involve the use of technology, as part of a learning session or programme designing, planning and orchestrating technology activities • with the progressive involvement of learners • and structuring coursessessionsactivitiesobjects with the use of realisation

8. Design for Learning programme aims • Ensure the process of designing, planning and orchestrating learning activities (‘design for learning’) in UK post-16 and higher education is based on sound pedagogic principles, is evidence-based and learner-centred; • Promote the development and implementation of tools and technical standards to support the process of design for learning • Promote the sharing of expertise in design for learning, for example through sharing and re-use of effective pedagogic learning designs, use models or exemplars; and • Support the establishment of communities, services and resources to promote and sustain effective practice in design for learning. • 11 Projects started by May 2006 and the majority finished by May 2008. • www.jisc.ac.uk/elp_designlearn and http://dfl.cetis.ac.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

9. course design session planning activity design realisation design LO development Design for Learning 2006-08 • Exploring the use of existing tools (LAMS, Moodle) in different contexts • Adding functionality to existing tools (LAMS, ReLoad) • Building shareable outcomes of the design process (‘designs’, GLOs) • Developing shareable representations of the design process (DialogPlus toolkit, Phoebe wiki) • Building an integrated planning tool to support design at the course and session level (LPP, Phoebe planning component)

10. LEARNING DESIGN MODULE 1 MODULE 1 MODULE 1 Allocate The Pedagogy Planning tools • proof of concept(s) • testable prototypes • evaluation data from pilots • gather requirements • expose technical and conceptual challenges • explore with partnersthe feasibility of future development and usage (build on previous work?)

11. Two planners

12. Customisability for different users and contexts Flexibility to take different starting points and to iterate between different levels of the design process Planning/design at the levels of course, module, session, activity, learning object, with coherence and effective information flow between each of these levels Alternative forms of output according to the nature of the task and users’ personal preferences. Visual representations should complement text-based representations. One output type may be a runnable instantiation of a design as a sequence of learning activities in a virtual learning environment Planning tools should make explicit the underlying educational rationale for design decisions, and the consequences of decisions in terms of how the design will be experienced by learners. Support for constructive alignment among the components of the curriculum such as topics, outcomes, methods, tools, staff resource, and student workload. Such tools need to support conformance to quality standards, either general (FE) or institutional (HE) Planning tools are most valuable to users when they make it possible to work collaboratively Capacity to represent the context for a learning design in a way that is easily understood, interpreted, evaluated and shared. Facility to link with repositories of e.g. exemplary designs, curriculum resources, and learner-related information, as well as context-relevant help and guidance Functional requirements for pedagogy planning tools

13. ALED, Swansea College • This project evaluated the use of LAMS (1.02 & 2.02) and Moodle and produced 18 learning design exemplars and 5 case studies within the following further education curriculum areas: • Learning Resources Centre Student Induction, • Holistic Therapies • Initial Assessment • Modern Languages • Art / Design / Media • http://aled.swancoll.ac.uk/mediawiki/

14. Exemplar designs Your Amazing Brain Learning Design Description This learning design introduces students to the workings or the brain and the things students can do to improve their own learning. The learning designs incorporate two Flash interactive games as well as a SCORM compliant learning object. The aim of the learning object is to make students aware of the steps they can take to improve their own learning and concentration.

15. Key findings • ‘actively encouraged students to exhibit a record of their thinking by sharing with their peers, as well as to prompt reflection about their learning. The feedback from students was very positive… Generally, the practitioners were surprised at how well students engaged with the learning designs and plan to use this approach in the future.’

16. DeSila,University of Sheffield • To what extent does a tool such as LAMS add value to the practice and impact of designing for IBL, and to the dissemination of IBL pedagogy? • LAMS was useful in bringing the concept of design for learning to the fore at institutional and individual levels and in supporting the practice of process-aware design for IBL. • Practitioners often wanted to use LAMS in conjunction with the institution’s VLE, but there was limited opportunity to do this during the project because of interoperability constraints. • LAMS was experienced as relatively easy to use. Institutional commitment to supporting the system was identified as critical to practitioner willingness to invest time in developing LAMS-based designs. • Practitioners’ attitudes to reuse suggested that they might be more open to reusing whole-sequence LAMS-based activity designs when the content is perceived as generic and therefore also directly transferable. • Designing for staff development (using LAMS for inquiry-based learning) • http://www.shef.ac.uk/desila/

17. Key findings • [LAMS] was seen to provide well for the design of linear forms of inquiry and relatively tightly-structured, teacher-controlled pedagogy. It appeared considerably less well-suited to the design of more flexible and open-ended forms of inquiry and despite its orientation towards activity it did not tend to direct pedagogical thinking and practice towards student-led pedagogy… Students’ responses to using LAMS were mixed but there were clear indications of positive engagement and beneficial impact on learning experiences. Negative responses often related to limitations on the ability to independently move freely back and forward through a sequence.’

18. eLIDA CAMEL Project • The eLIDA CAMEL collected a series of individual and collaborative case studies on the implementation and evaluation of tools and systems to support design for learning in a range of post-16/HE contexts. • Produced learning sequences, 14 comprehensive individual case studies and 7 collaborative case studies to illustrate effective pedagogic use of LAMS V1.1-V2, Moodle and related tools, investigating re-use of learning designs and sharing effective practice in D4L via a community of users. Limited uses of ReLOAD were considered. • eLIDA team members collaborated in evaluating practitioner DfL pedagogic practices in visits carried out in the programme. • http://elidacamel.cms.gre.ac.uk/ • Business Studies Case Study – LAMS 2.0

19. eLida Camel • Practitioners benefit from structured social networking processes developed in a long-term community of practice. A communities of practice approach is valuable in fostering mutual supportive critique that can support practitioners development of their practice • Valuable lessons in the pedagogic processes involved in design for learning can be achieved if sufficient resources are allocated to practitioners and institutions with an interest in participating in these e-learning developments. • As practitioners become more confident in their practices with one another, and in the experience of sharing and critiquing one another’s designs, the trend towards re-usability of designs appears to increase markedly. • A D4L system (in this context LAMS, Moodle or Moodle integrating LAMS) can improve practitioners’ thinking and planning skills and will be adopted if it: • fits the way practitioners normally plan for learning and • enables a variety of appropriate activities within a logical sequence for students to perform to meet identified outcomes and • can integrate with existing resources

20. Conclusions • Challenges to the development and integration of design for learning tools[1] include: • The complexity and non-linearity of design processes • The diversity of existing approaches to design • Diversity and rapid change in the educational tools that may be deployed in the curriculum • The range of institutional (and extra-institutional) systems, standards and processes that are potentially involved in design • The need to support collaborative, contingent and flexible design practices, giving teachers and learners scope to adapt the curriculum as they engage with it. • [1] Largely drawn from Phoebe Evaluation Report (M. Manton and L.Masterman, 2008); Issues Arising (H.Beetham, 2008)

21. Further challenges • Staff time and motivation to engage, and the lack of specialised expertise • Institutional support tends to be focused on VLE use and other centrally mandated technologies • Cultural resistance to sharing learning designs and resources, unhelpful QA processes, and perceptions of design tools as controlling quality rather than enabling innovation[1] • Curriculum documentation – where this is dictated by institutional requirements and traditional practices it may not be best suited to sharing or expressing educational rationales • Technology can radically change roles in the curriculum process: this may in itself present obstacles to change • The rise of learner-owned technologies, along with learners’ use of web 2.0 technologies and participation in their own social networks and content-sharing communities • A large gap remains between standards and practice in this area, and this needs to be addressed for large-scale uptake to be viable. • [1] Additional points from Edit4L Project Completion Report (P. Riddy et al, 2008)

22. http://dfl.cetis.ac.uk/wiki/index.php/Main_Page