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How to create a learning design

expressed in Learning Design

Colin Tattersall, The Open University of the Netherlands

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Learning Design and learning design

‘Learning Design’ (LD) refers to the IMS Learning Design Specification

'learning design‘ refers the human activity of designing units of learning,

learning activities, …

‘a learning design' or 'the learning design‘ refers to the result of the learning design activity;

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IMS Global Learning Consortium, Inc.

www.imsglobal.org Formed in 1997, two goals

“Defining the technical specifications for interoperability of applications and services in distributed learning”

“Supporting the incorporation of the IMS specifications into products and services worldwide”

OUNL is contributing member (voting rights) Also Apple, Blackboard, Microsoft, WebCT, Cisco, Sun,

Texas Instruments, …+/- 60 members

The IMS Learning Design specification is at http://www.imsglobal.org/learningdesign/index.cfm

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What is LD ? A learning technology specification Learning Design is used to model units of

learning A unit of learning (UoL) is any delimited piece of education or

training, such as a course, a module, a lesson, etc. more than just a collection of ordered resources to learn activities, assessments, services and support facilities provided

by teachers, trainers and other staff members.

Who does what, when, with whom and using which learning objects and services?

A model of the activities, content, tools and workflow for learners and staff to accomplish one or more learning objectives

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What’s a model?

A description of a learning process (who does what, when, etc) using the concepts in the IMS LD language (a meta-model); For example, we can create a model of problem based

learning

These models can be ‘played’ in an IMS-LD-aware player; Analogous to marking-up learning materials in HTML

and having a browser interpret them

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The Learning Design meta-model

Stage-play metaphor

People act in different roles working towards certain objectives by performing learning and/or support activities within an environment, consisting of learning objects

and services used in the performance of the activities.

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What LD is not ….

Not a programming language … although some characteristics are shared

Not an instructional method … can be used to describe many methods

Not pedagogically neutral in the sense of not caring about pedagogy … indeed, it requires the designer to be explicit about

his/her pedagogical choices in the learning process Not a guarantee of good education

… can use it to describe poor learning processes

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What does LD give you?

1. Exchange of (multi-role, multi-learner) learning processes:

2. Re-use of learning flow and/or learning content;

3. A language for describing learning processes;

4. Comparison of approaches to learning; “Gold standard for Problem Based Learning is as

follows …”

My VLE Your VLEUoLs

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Requirements met by Learning Design

R1. Completeness: … fully describe the teaching-learning process in a unit of learning …

R2. Pedagogical Flexibility: … express pedagogical meaning … flexible in the description of all different kinds of pedagogies …

R3. Personalization: … describe personalization aspects … R4. Formalization: … describe … in a formal way, so that

automatic processing is possible. R5. Reproducibility: .. abstracted so that repeated

execution ... R6. Interoperability: … interoperability of learning designs. R7. Compatibility: … use available standards R8. Reusability: … identify, isolate, de-contextualize and

exchange …

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Requirements met by IMS Learning Design

R1. Completeness: … fully describe the teaching-learning process in a unit of learning …

R2. Pedagogical Flexibility: … express pedagogical meaning … flexible in the description of all different kinds of pedagogies …

R3. Personalization: … describe personalization aspects … R4. Formalization: … describe … in a formal way, so that

automatic processing is possible. R5. Reproducibility: .. abstracted so that repeated

execution ... R6. Interoperability: … interoperability of learning designs. R7. Compatibility: … use available standards R8. Reusability: … identify, isolate, de-contextualize and

exchange …

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When to formalise?

Highly designed/planned Create once, deliver many Significant investment Lengthy lifespan Author team

Single teacher/lecturer One-off To be revised following

delivery

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The learning design with LD process

Starting point is a narrative description of some educational process “Students are presented with some information on Italian Wines.

The tutor is available to take questions …” “The lecturer posts a problem on the bulletin board. Each group

of learners elects a spokesperson who summarises the problem and clarifies ….”

“Think about your experiences as a school child, creating three statements which should be typed into a document and stored on the shared space. Once this is done, ….”

Roles Activities

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The learning design with LD process

What’s the end point? Say it with XML

LD has, in common with all IMS specs, a so-called XML binding

If you represent your UoL in the data format indicated by the binding, a conforming application will be able to do the right thing

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More on the end point

An IMS Content Package Used for exchange of content

IMS Learning Design is integrated with an IMS Content Package as another kind of organization within the <organizations> element.

An IMS content package is called a 'Unit of learning' if and only if it includes a valid IMS learning-design element in the organizations part of the package's manifest.

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The wider context

Unit ofLearning

Design time Run time

Designers create

Units of Learning

containing IMS LD, XHTML content, IMS QTI, ….

Learners (and staff) use anLD-aware software application in(a part of) their learning process

A content package

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The formalisation process

Start

Finish

Tools will help, especially in avoiding raw XML,

but will not remove the need for a relatively

Formal approach to learning design (cf software

engineering world)

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But how to get from start to finish?

Helpful to have stepping stones (intermediary stages) between informal narrative and formal XML code; Again lessons to be drawn from the Software Engineering

world; (Instructional) Systems Development

Iterative process OUNL found (some of the concepts of) Unified

Modelling Language (UML) activity diagrams to be helpful but their use is not mandated and other approaches are equally valid

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UML Activity Diagrams

Revolve around activities; Include notion of roles, serial and parallel activities,

conditionality Not all LD concepts covered (eg where to describe how

activities are completed; conditions, property setting etc); But help when giving an overview of a learning design UML Activity Diagram notation could also be

extended/specialised (eg to include ways of showing selection (and number-to-select)/sequence)

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Simple Example

The student critiques a poem; The tutor grades the critique;

TutorStudent

Critique poem

Grade critique

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UML Activity Diagram

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Practical

In order to reinforce the idea of formalising learning design with Learning Design, we’ll take an example and try to see how it would look as a UML activity diagram With thanks to James Dalziel (Macquarie ELearning

Centre of Excellence) and the Alfanet project

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What is Greatness

Try to create a UML activity diagram for the following: Learners individually consider “what is

greatness?”; They enter a few sentences of initial thoughts; This process is monitored by the tutor and

ended at the tutors discretion; All learners then view others’ thoughts and

respond to them; The tutor in turn responds to these reflections

and finishes the learning process.

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What is Greatness – suggested approach

See next slide

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Summary

Doing learning design with Learning Design implies formalisation (ultimately to XML);

This formalisation has its advantages; Tools are certainly needed (and are arriving) but

it’s not just about tools; process also needed