Following the release of Circular 01/06 in February, a total of 56 bids high-quality bids were received for projects in developing, implementing and evaluating tools and systems that support design for learning. The projects are due to start in May and will run over a period of 10 months to two years until May 2008. A start up meeting for the programme will be held on the 23-24 May in Birmingham. These projects build on the existing projects funded under the Designing for Learning theme of the Pedagogy programme and the aims of the projects are to:
- support practitioners in the process of designing, planning and orchestrating learning activities (‘design for learning’) in a range of learning programmes and contexts across UK FE and HE
- ensure that the process of design for learning is based on sound pedagogic principles, is evidence-based and learner-centred
- promote the development and implementation of tools and 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 designs
- support the establishment of communities, services and resources to promote and sustain effective practice in design for learning
See the recommended Design for Learning reading list
A brief overview of each of the projects is outlined below together with the successful bidders.
A. Models of Practice (Phase 2)
The primary outcome of this project is to develop a practitioner-focused resource describing a range of 16-30 exemplary practice models of learning activities with technology and indicating how these may be applied in practice. This project has been awarded to Glasgow Caledonian University led by Allison Littlejohn and Isabel Falconer in partnership with the SFC e-Learning Transformation project, TESEP, Professor Ron Oliver (Edith Cowan University) and Dr Lori Lockyer (University of Wollongong). This project will run for a period of 10 months.
B. Online Pedagogic Planner
The primary outcome of this project is to develop an online practitioner-focused planning tool for designing effective learning activities with technology, available for piloting and/or further development as recommended by the final report. Two projects have been awarded one to the Technology-Assisted Lifelong Learning Unit (TALL), Oxford University Department for Continuing Education and Learning Technologies Group (LTG), Oxford University Computing Services led by Marian Manton, Liz Masterman, David Balch and David White; and the other to the Institute of Education, University of London and Institute of Education, London Metropolitan University in partnership with LAMS International Pty Ltd led by Diana Laurillard and Tom Boyle. The two projects will be developing the planner from different approaches with the first project taking a wiki approach whilst the second will be developing a tool based around LAMS. The projects will run for a 10 months.
C. Implementing and Evaluating Learning Design tools
These projects will explore the integration, implementation and support in a specific learning and teaching context, of one or more learning design tools. The key deliverables from these projects will be the sharing of exemplar learning designs and case studies detailing how the tools have been used in specific contexts together with recommendations for effective embedding and use of similar tools in design for learning. The projects will run for a period of 18-24 months. The successful projects are listed below together with a short description of their aims:
- eLIDA CAMEL project University of Greenwich - with partners JISC infoNet, Association for Learning Technology (ALT), Staffordshire University, Greenwich Community College, Barnet College, Dartford Grammar School, Leeds College of Technology, Loughborough College, Greenwich Council Education Services/ Aimhigher/ ASPIRE/ Greenwich City Learning Centres led by Dr Jill Jameson.
Project summary
The eLIDA CAMEL (e-learning Independent Design Activities for Collaborative Approaches to the Management of e-Learning) Project is a Design for Learning (DfL) programme building directly on results gained in 2005-06 from two prior e-learning projects: (1) the JISC eLISA DeL lifelong learning project and (2) the HEFCE/LGM-funded JISC infoNet CAMEL communities of practice project. The eLIDA CAMEL will collect a series of (1) individual and (2) 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.
- Evaluation of Design & Implementation Tools for Learning (EDIT4L) Centre for Learning & Teaching, University of Southampton and Centre for Academic Practice, University of Warwick (Paul Riddy)
Project summary
Focussing on the pedagogic design skills of staff in Higher Education (HE), this project takes existing tools and builds their application into Initial Entry and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Programmes, which are well established within both partner institutions. Wider experience of design methodology and use of the tools will be made available through CPD workshops offered nationally. The main tools to be implemented and evaluated are the DialogPlus toolkit (DPT) and the Learning Activity Management System (LAMS), although other instantiation environments may be selected by participants in institutional programmes.
- Sharing the LOAD (Learning Objectives, Activities and Designs) University of Cambridge and University of Nottingham (Dawn Leeder, Centre for Excellence in Teaching & Learning in Reusable Learning Objects (RLO-CETL)
Project summary
“Sharing the LOAD” will synthesise a number of JISC-funded project outputs, tools and other national initiatives in learning content design and reuse to create practitioner-centred templates in order to capture holistic learning designs containing learning activities that support defined learning objectives. Practitioners and students will be facilitated in engaging hands-on workshops to experiment with learning design tools and templates and collaboratively create shareable learning designs. Exemplars of the designs will be evaluated for pedagogical effectiveness across a range of subjects by the RLO-CETL community of students and tutors using the RLO-CETL Evaluation toolkit. RELOAD and the WCKER extension tools will be tested for their effectiveness in packaging and managing the resulting content. The designs and templates created by the project will be uploaded to JORUM.
- Learning design for inquiry-based learning: a situated evaluation of LAMS University of Sheffield (Dr Philippa Levy, Centre for Inquiry-based Learning in the Arts and Social Sciences (CILASS)
Project summary
The proposed project aims to implement and evaluate LAMS in a real-life, case study context of development and innovation in ‘blended’ and fully-online forms of inquiry-based learning (IBL) in higher education, specifically in arts and social sciences disciplines. Project outcomes will include: sharable learning designs, case studies, an evaluation report and a conceptual framework for the sharing and reuse of (LAMS and other) IBL designs within a community of practice context. The project will benefit in a number of ways from alignment with the activities of a Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning.
- ALED project (Authoring using LEarning Design) Swansea College and Gorseinon College led by Kate Pearce.
Project summary
The key aim of the project is to implement and evaluate tools and systems that support Design for Learning within post-16 education. This will be achieved by embedding existing tools – i.e. LAMS and Moodle – within teaching and learning in all partner institutions. The process will involve, for the purposes of this project, practitioner and learner evaluation to establish the quality of the project deliverables. A key outcome of the project will be a bank of exemplars that will illustrate best practice in the use of Learning Design tools.
C. Technical development projects
- Constructing2Learn University of Oxford with partners London Knowledge Lab (Institute of Education, University of London) and Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia led by Howard Noble.
Project summary
The project team proposes to explore designs for learning based upon a constructionist pedagogy, where learners build and share computational models underlying digital simulations and games. The project team will work with subject-matter experts and lecturers at Oxford University to shape the development of a prototype tool that will be integrated into the LAMS activity management engine
- Supporting practitioners in producing IMS Learning Designs Liverpool Hope University with partners Phosphorix Ltd and St Helens College (Mark Barrett-Baxendale)
Project summary
The project will focus on “developing or further developing, innovative or emergent tools to enable their wider uptake and implementation” and will do so by investigating a methodology for the production of IMS Learning Design (IMS LD) by teaching practitioners, in particular those from a non-technical discipline, in a real teaching and learning context. During this process the RELOAD IMS LD editor will be evaluated, and the team will gather user requirements for a “practitioner-friendly” user interface to such an editor. A prototype user interface will be produced and the project will investigate how this may be implemented within a real institutional context. The project will also investigate how such an editor could be linked to an IMS LD repository. The project will investigate how IMS LD may be re-used in other learning situations, and how learning designs created in other situations may be transferred to IMS LD.
- Designs on Learning, designing for learning in a practice-based institution Ravensbourne College (Miles Metcalfe).
Project summary
The Designs on Learning project will investigate the process of instantiation, and evaluate tools such as the RELOAD editor and WCKER for the off-line creation of electronic versions of the project pack. Through user evaluation, the project will seek and document best practice in incorporating a digital project pack, and, by extension, any rich synthetic electronic resource, into a blended environment, including other sequenced e-learning content, using standardised packaging tools and formats. The Designs for Learning project will investigate and evaluate blogging tools and platforms, and examine standardised ways in which blogging can be integrated both into a VLE such as Moodle, and into more general blended learning designs.
- Developing for Learning Design The Open University with partners Liverpool Hope University, Open University of the Netherlands (Dr Patrick McAndrew).
Project summary
This project will focus on the “developing or further developing, innovative or emergent tools to enable their wider uptake and implementation” by enabling the existing SLeD Learning Design player/CopperCore Learning Design Engine to operate in a more robust and usable way to support use of IMS Learning Design in student facing systems and as a validation tool for the potential results of the pedagogical planner.
D. Support project
The support project will underpin the design for learning projects and play a key role in linking together the projects and synthesising and sharing key outcomes. The key deliverable of the support project will be to develop an accessible resource or gateway to learning designs for use by the projects and by users of the project outcomes. The support project has been awarded to Cetis, Bolton University led by Professor Oleg Liber. The project will run for the lifetime of the funded projects i.e. for two years.
Formative evaluation project
The aim of this project is to evaluate the Design for Learning Programme and provide a synthesis and summary of the lessons learned, to aid JISC and the wider community in understanding the emerging lessons and recommend ways of applying and building upon them. The project has been awarded to Glenaffric Ltd led by Veronica Adamson and Jane Plenderleith. The project will run for the lifetime of the funded projects i.e. for two years. The Evaluation Framework and the Interim Evaluation Report are now available.