Category Archives: curriculum design

Design Bash: moving towards learning design interoperability

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Question: How do you get a group of projects with a common overarching goal, but with disparate outputs to share outputs? Answer: Hold a design bash. . .

Codebashes and CETIS are quite synonymous now and they have proved to be an effective way for our community to feedback into specification bodies and increase our own knowledge of how specs actually need to be implemented to allow interoperability. So, we decided that with a few modifications, the general codebash approach would be a great way for the current JISC Design for Learning Programme projects to share their outputs and start to get to grips with the many levels of interoperability the varied outputs of the programme present.

To prepare for the day the projects were asked to submit resources which fitted into four broad categories (tools, guidelines/resources, inspirational designs and runnable designs). These resources were tagged into the programmes’ del.icio.us site and using the DFL SUM (see Wilbert’s blog for more information on that) we were able to aggregrate resources and use rss feeds to pull them into the programme wiki. Over 60 resources were submitted, offering a great snapshot of the huge level activity within the programme.

One of the main differences between the design bash and the more established codebashes was the fact that there wasn’t really much code to bash. So we outlined three broad areas of interoperability to help begin conversations between projects. These were:
* conceptual interoperability: the two designs or design systems won’t work together because they make very different assumptions about the learning process, or are aimed at different parts of the process;
* semantic interoperability: the two designs or design systems won’t work together because they provide or expect functionality that the other doesn’t have. E.g. a learning design that calls for a shared whiteboard presented to a design system that doesn’t have such a service;
* syntactic interoperability:the two designs or design systems won’t work together because required or expected functionality is expressed in a format that is not understood by the other.

So did it work? Well in a word yes. As the programme was exploring general issues around designing for learning and not just looking at for example the IMS LD specification there wasn’t as much ‘hard’ interoperability evidence as one would expect from a codebash. However there were many levels of discussions between projects. It would be nigh on impossible to convey the depth and range of discussions in this article, but using the three broad categories above, I’ll try and summarize some of the emerging issues.

In terms of conceptual interoperability one of the main discussion points was the role of context in designing for learning. Was the influence coming from bottom up or top down? This has a clear effect on the way projects have been working and the tools they are using and outcomes produced. Also in some cases the tools sometimes didn’t really fit with the pedagogical concepts of some projects which led to a discussion around the need to start facilitating student design tools -what would these tools look like/work?

In terms of semantic interoperability there were wide ranging discussions around the levels of granularity of designs from the self contained learning object level to the issues of extending and embellishing designs created in LAMS by using IMS LD and tools such as Reload and SLeD.

At the syntactic level there were a number of discussions not just around the more obvious interoperability issues between systems such as LAMS and Reload, but also around the use of wikis and how best to access and share resources It was good to hear that some of the projects are now thinking of looking at the programme SUM as a possible way to access and share resources. There was also a lot of discussion around the incorporation of course description specifications such as XCRI into the pedagogic planner tools.

Overall a number of key issues were teased out over the day, with lots of firm commitment shown by all the projects to continue to work together and increase all levels of interoperability. There was also the acknowledgement that these discussions cannot take place in a vacuum and we need to connect with the rest of the learning design community. This is something which the CETIS support project will continue during the coming months.

More information about the Design Bash and the programme in general can be found on the programme support wiki.

The problem with pedagogic planners . . .

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. . .is the fact we can’t decide what we want them to be and who and what they are really for. Although this is said with my tongue firmly in my cheek, I’ve just been at a meeting hosed by Diana Laurillard (IOE) and James Dalziel (LAMS Foundation) where a group of people involved in developing a number of tools which could be collectively described as “pedagogic planners” spent the day grappling with the issues of what exactly is a pedagogic planner and what makes it/them different from any other kind of planning/decision making tool.

Unsurprisingly we didn’t arrive at any firm conclusions – I did have to leave early to catch my (delayed) flight home so I did miss the final discussion. However the range of tools/projects demonstrated clearly illustrated that there is a need for such tools; and the drivers are coming not just from funders such as the JISC (with their Phoebe and London Projects ), but from teachers themselves as demonstrated by Helen Walmsley (University of Staffordshire) with her best practice models for elearning project.

The number of projects represented showed the growing international interest and need for some kind of pre (learning)design process. Yet key questions remain unanswered in terms of the fundamental aims of such tools. Are they really about changing practice by encouraging and supporting teachers to expand their knowledge of pedagogic approaches? Or is this really more about some fundamental research questions for educational technologist and their progression of knowledge around e-learning pedagogies? What should the outputs of such tools be – XML, word documents, a LAMS template? Is there any way to begin to draw some common elements that can then be used in learning systems? Can we do the unthinkable and actually start building schemas of pedagogic elements that are common across all learning systems? Well of course I can’t answer that, but there certainly seems a genuine willingness continue the dialogue started at the meeting and to explore these issues more most importantly a commitment to building tools that are easy to use and useful to teachers.

Joint Pedagogy Forum and EC SIG meeting, 26 April

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Liverpool Hope University hosted the joint meeting of the Pedagogy Forum and EC SIG last Thursday. The meeting focused on design for learning, with presentations from a number of the projects involved in the current JISC Design for Learning Programme.

The team from Liverpool Hope started the meeting with an overview of their experiences of using IMS Learning Design with teachers and students. Mark Barrett- Baxendale, Paul Hazelwood and Amanda Oddie explained the work they are doing in the LD4P (learning design for practitioners) project where they are working on making a more user-friendly interface for the RELOAD LD editor, the DesignShare project (part of the current JISC tools and demonstrators projects) where they are linking a learning design repository into reload, and the the D4LD (developing for learning design) where they are working on improving the presentation of the OU learning design player. The team are working with practitioners in both HE and FE (and are running a number of courses with students) and so far, have received positive feedback about using learning design. The screenshots they showed of the interface they are working on for RELOAD certainly looked much more user friendly and intuitive. The team are also looking at the role of web2.0 in the DesignShare project as it will link RELOAD and the Opendoc repository using widget like technology.

Professor Diana Laurillard then gave us an overview of the the London Pedagogic Planner tool. This system, although still very much in prototype, has been designed to help scaffold the planning process for staff. Taking a process driven approach, the system prompts the user to input all the factors relating to a course/session/lesson design i.e. room availability, number of teaching hours, number of student hours outside the classroom available. It is hoped that this scaffolded approach to planning can help to exploit the pedagogic value of learning technology as it allows the user to ensure that their designs (whatever their pedagogical approach and what technology they exploit) are workable within the instutional constraints they have to sit in. An important focus of the tool is to put control back into the hands of teachers and so in turn help the wider teaching community come to more informed decisions about how to integrate learning technology into their own practice.

After lunch we were joined remoted by James Dalziel – thanks to James for staying up very late due to the audio gremlins having lots of fun in the morning :-) . James gave us an overview of LAMSv2 and some of his thoughts on the need and potential for pedagogic planners. LAMS v2 is based on a new modular architecture which the team hope will stand them in good stead for the foreseeable future. Whilst retaining the core concepts of the original system, this version introduces a number of new and improved features including: improved support for branching; live editing of sequences – no more runtime lock-in and the ability to export sequences as IMS LD Level A. (There’s no support for importing IMS designs as yet, but it’s something on the team’s to do list.) One other interesting feature is the inclusion of a portfolio export. Basically this feature allows a student to keep a record of all their activities. The system creates and exports a zip file which contains html copies of activies. Through work with the New Zealand Ministry of Education, the v2 can now provide joint classes using the Shibboleth federation system. In terms of pedagogic planners, James outlined his thoughts on current needs. He believes that we need lots of different versions of planners and more research on the the decision making process for designers and teachers. This is obviously an area of increasing focus, but hopefully the two JISC planners are making a good start in this area and it’s something that will be discussed at the LAMS UK conference in July.

Marion Manton and David Balch then gave us an overview of the Phoebe planner tool they have been developing at the University of Oxford. In contrast to the London planner tool, Phoebe has taken a wiki based approach with more emphasis being given to providing advice and support on potential pedagogic approaches. Though there is no reason why the two system couldn’t be used together and that is something that both projects are exploring. As with the London planner, Phoebe is now entering phase 2 and is looking at ways to improve the interface for users. David and Marion outlined the approaches they have been considering, which hopefully will provide looser connections between the content in the wiki and the notes that user create when they are using the system. They are hoping to take a more drag and drop, web 2.0 approach so that users can feel more in control of the system.

Dai Griffiths from the University of Bolton rounded up the day by giving an overview of his impressions of the learning design space. Dai has been involved in many projects relating to IMS Learning Design – notably the UNFOLD project. Dai began by questioning if IMS is agile enough to take advantage of the web 2 world. Increasingly specifications such as content packaging and learning design seem to be at odds with developments in social software. He then went on to highlight some of the confusions that exist around the purpose of IMS Learning Design. Being both a modeling language and an interoperability system there is still confusion about the purpose of the specification. Often projects only focus on one area and forget about the other. There is still a need for interoperability, but perhaps now we need to move to thinking about looser couplings between content, activities and infrastructure and not try to do everything by following one complex specification. IMS LD as it currently stands deals with formal education systems but what about informal learning, can it play a role there too? This is something the TenCompetence project is investigating and they are hoping to have a number of extension to RELOAD launched later this year which start to address that space. Dai closed by re-itterating the need for community engagement and sustaining and building of contacts within the learning design space which is one of the aims of the support wiki for the Design for Learning programme.

Thanks to everyone who presented and attended the meeting for making it such a worthwhile meeting. Also a big thank you to everyone at Liverpool Hope for being such generous hosts and having the patience to work through all our technological gremlins. Copies of all the presentations from the day are available @ http://wiki.cetis.org.uk/April_2007_Meeting.

Communities more important than models in developing learning design (thoughts on the Mod4L final report)

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The final report from the Mod4L project is now available online. The project is part of the current JISC Design for Learning Programme.

The aim of Mod4L was to “develop a range of practice models that could be used by practitioners in real life contexts and have a high impact on improving teaching and learning practice.” The project adopted a working definition of practice model as “common but decontextualised, learning designs that are respresented in a way that is usable by practitioners (teachers, managers etc).”

The report is structured into six main categories covering issues of representation (which I talked about in a previous post), granularity, an evaluation of several types of representation, the sharing of learning designs and the role of taxonomies.

The report highlights the difference between design as a product and design as a process. It questions the current metaphor for learning design (particularly IMS learning design) as being too product driven and reliant on stable components and the linkages between them, which often don’t accurately reflect the unstable process that take place in most teaching and learning situations. It goes on to suggest that we may be better off thinking of design for learning as a loosely coupled system, which can provide access to the stable components of a design but also allow for the richer, more adaptive process that take place within a learning context. An analogy to a map of the London underground is given as an example. The map can show you (the learner) the entry points and how to get from point A to point B (even giving one some degree of flexibility of route or personalisation on how to get there) but what the map doesn’t give you is other information which could make your journey much more successful i.e. by letting you know that it might be quicker to get off the train one stop earlier, or (as a teacher) how to drive the train.

A detailed evaluation of a number of practice types are contained within the report, however it does also point out that “providing support for communities may be more important in changing practice, than developing particular representation types which will, inevitably, have limited audiences, and have prescribed forms.” Let’s hope that the current projects within the programme can help to build and sustain these types of communities.

Inspirational -v- runnable designs – some thoughts from d4l meetings last week

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The latest JISC epedagogy experts forum meeting took place in Birmingham last week, 26th October and included sessions from three of the projects in the current design for learning programme. (As you know we are providing the support project for this programme.) The projects involved were Mod4l, Pheobe and User-oriented Planner for Learning Analysis and Design. The former is concerned with developing practice models and the latter two with developing pedagogic planning tools.

The experts meeting was followed the next day with a smaller meeting for the three projects, the CETIS support team, JISC and Glenaffric ( programme evaluators). One interesting articulation from both days and coined by Isobel Falconer (MOD4L) is the difficulty in distinguishing and representing an inspirational design – one that really grabs teachers attention and imagination – and a runnable design – one that is machine (and sometimes human) readable but often lacks any information about the design which would motivate a teacher/course designer.

So when we are trying to produce generic models and tools such as pedagogic planners how do we represent examples of good designs ( if you can ever really know what a ‘good’ design is). How can we represent different types of designs in a conceptual way? Can there be a common abstraction(s), which is decontextualised from a subject specifc area, which still makes sense to all teachers? Patterns are one potential solution, but how are they actually implemented in the tools currently available? It seems that LAMS 2.0 may be able to create patterns but that is only one possible technical solution.

This discussion led onto a debate on what the three projects and indeed the programme as a whole is trying to achieve. Should the planner projects provide tools which help plan their teaching (taking into account institutional drivers such as room availability, class time, staff time etc) or should they be changing practice by providing examples which inspire, encourage self-reflection, and ultimately transform teaching practice. Or is it about providing tools to which help with more effective planning skills taking into account institutional factors such as room availability, staff availability, class size, time contraints, tools available through institution etc. Of course, the programme is trying to do all of these, and serendipitously each of the planners has taken a slightly different approach.

The User Orientated Planner (aka the London Project) is looking far more like a high level whole course planner which takes into account all the institutional issues and forces the user to include them. At the moment it has an excel prototype which the team are using with practitioners and there is a more interactive version (in Director) in development. The Pheobe project is taking a wiki based approach and what looks like (in the initial demo of the early prototype shown ) a softer approach with less of an emphasis on the higher level institutional issues – however they are included. The London project is closely tied into LAMS however Pheobe isn’t tied to any tools and would like to be flexible enough so that if any instituion wanted to use it they could list the tools they provide/support. Another interesting aside brought up by the Pheobe team was in relation to searching and the possibility of using personal recommendations as a search criteria, maybe based FOAF, as many practitioners would look at a design just because they knew who had created/and or recommened it.

The one common difficulty all the projects are having is when they want their tools provide examples of designs similar to those being constructed by users. There is still a dearth of examples and this leads us back to the representation issue.

The support wiki is starting to gather examples of designs and already has a discussion topic on the issues involved. Hopefully we can start to unpack these issues in more detail in the coming months.