JISC

Start date: 1 May 2006

End date: 28 February 2007

Funding programme: e-Learning Pedagogy programme

Project website: http://www.wle.org.uk/d4l

JISC theme(s): e-Learning

Practitioners wishing to develop innovative learning and teaching using new technology are often working in an under-supported environment. They need practical assistance in understanding how best to design activities for their learners, given the intended outcomes defined in terms of the curriculum skills, knowledge, and expected progression; the student body defined in terms of learners’ needs, prior experience, expectations, skills and competences; and the learning environment, defined in terms of human, physical and digital resources, tools and services.

With this practitioner focus, it is important that we begin with their personal planning context. This will usually be at course level, and/or ‘session’ level - which may be defined in terms of a contribution to someone else’s course, a timetabled slot, or one of the learning objectives, i.e. it may be topic-related, time-related, or outcome-related. Planning learning design in practice happens at both course and session level, and each impacts on the other, so the pedagogy planning tool developed must incorporate both.

This development of the pedagogy planner begins, therefore, with lecturer’s needs, in order to bridge the current gap between the technical origins of the ‘learning design specification’ and the reality of the teaching context. This means it must make use of an existing learning activity design environment, populated with existing support tools, so that collaborating lecturers have the opportunity to test it against their current practice, and engage in further specification of their requirements. Engaging lecturers at the start should help to secure their longer-term involvement and a sustainable product. This iterative approach to user-oriented design should then produce a working model, as well as clear requirements for further development of the learning design specification and its implementation in support tools for lecturers.

Aims and Objectives

Aims: To help lecturers:

• identify learner needs
• design learning activities
• asess learning outcomes

Objectives:

• provide tools for lecturers to plan courses and sessions
• provide a framework for lecturers to think explicitly about pedagogical approaches
• place lecturers in a community of practice where they can discuss and share learning designs

Project Methodology

The project will use existing pedagogic design frameworks, and a learning activity management system (LAMS), to develop and test two linked planning tools for course level and session level learning design. Following the JISC LAMS evaluation, LAMS is chosen for its acceptability to teachers, enhancement of the learning experience and outcomes, and the opportunities that it provides for teachers to reflect on, and share, their practice.

The main output will be a prototype for a learning design environment that the e-learning community can own and develop itself. It is intended to be transparent, enabling users to adapt it through the experience of using it, and shareable, to enable the community to build a collective understanding of learning design.

Deliverables

• Report on lecturer requirements
• Pedagogical planning tools for course level and session level
• Interim and final reports

Stakeholders

Lecturers in HE and FE; researchers; JISC; HEA; Becta