Learning design

Draft

Definitions

A Learning Design describes the educational process, not just courseware but the whole teaching/learning experience. It's a more or less formal description of a pedagogical scenario (also called educational script or storyboard) and that may or may not follow an instructional design model.

The process of learning design refers to the activity of designing units of learning, learning activities or learning environment.

Learning Designs are “pedagogically informed learning activities which make effective use of appropriate tools and resources” (Gráinne Conole and Karen Fill, creators of the DialogPlus Toolkit.)

“The basic idea of EML and LD [Learning Design] is in essence simple. It represents a vocabulary which users of any pedagogical approach understand, and into which existing designs can be translated. The core of LD can be summarised as the view that, when learning, people in specific groups and roles engage in activities using an environment with appropriate resources and services.” (Rob Koper and Colin Tattersall, creators of EML/IMS Learning Design).

“The field of Learning Design seeks to describe the "process" of education - the sequences of activities facilitated by an educator that are often at the heart of small group teaching.”(James Dalziel, creator of LAMS, retrieved 18:53, 4 June 2007 (MEST)).

See also: IMS Learning Design which is a related educational modeling language.

Learning Design and educational technology

Much of the work on Learning Design focuses on technology to automatically "run" the sequence of student activities (facilitated by the educator via computers), but an activity in a Learning Design could be conducted without technology. Hence, a particular Learning Design may be a mixture of online and face-to-face tasks ("blended learning") or it could be conducted entirely face-to-face with no computers (in this case, the particular Learning Design acts as a standardised written description of the educational process - like a K-12 lesson plan). One way to think of a Learning Design system is as a workflow engine for collaborative activities. A particular Learning Design is like an educational recipe for a teacher - it describes ingredients (content) and instructions (process).

(James Dalziel, retrieved 18:53, 4 June 2007 (MEST)).

Major initiatives (follow up these links to find references)

• IMS Learning Design (An educational modeling language)
• LAMS (Learning activity management software)
• MISA (An instructional design method, includes the MOTD+ editor)
• DialogPlus Toolkit (An online scenario builder).

Links

• Dalziel, James (2007). Learning Design and Open Source Teaching, retrieved 18:53, 4 June 2007 (MEST).

• Dalziel, James (2006). ED-MEDIA 2006 Learning Design Keynote

• Conole, Gráinne and Karen Fill (2005). A learning design toolkit to create pedagogically effective learning activities. Journal of Interactive Media in Education (Portable Learning. Special Issue, eds. Colin Tattersall, Rob Koper), 2005/08. ISSN 1365-893X [1].

• Koper, Rob and Colin Tattersall (2005). Preface to Learning Design: A Handbook on Modelling and Delivering Networked Education and Training[2]

• Kraan, Wilbert (2003). Learning Design and reuseability, CETIS.