Abstract
<p class="commentary_div"><strong>Commentary on:</strong> Chapter 9: An Instructional Engineering Method and Tool for the Design of Units of Learning. (Paquette, De la Teja, Léonard, Lundgren-Cayrol & Marino, 2005) <div class="abstract_container"> <strong>Abstract:</strong> Despite the plethora of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) tools and resources available, practitioners are still not making effective use of e-learning to enrich the student experience. This article describes a learning design toolkit which guides practitioners through the process of creating pedagogically informed learning activities which make effective use of appropriate tools and resources. This work is part of a digital libraries project in which teaching staff at two universities in the UK and two in the USA are collaborating to share e-learning resources in the subject domains of Physical, Environmental and Human Geography. Finding, or creating, suitable e-learning resources and embedding them in well designed learning activities can be both challenging and time consuming. Sharing and adapting effective designs and solutions is both a stimulant and a time saver. This article describes the background to the specification of a learning activities design toolkit to support teachers as they create or adapt e-learning activities. This uses a model of pedagogical approaches as a basis for developing effective learning design plans and illustrates its use. The authors share their definition of a learning activity and taxonomies for the constituent elements. Real examples are discussed to illustrate their approach. </div> <div class="editors_container"> <strong>Editors:</strong> Colin Tattersall and Rob Koper. </div> <div class="demo_container"> <strong>Interactive demonstrations:</strong> An online version of the toolkit is available at <a href="http://www.nettle.soton.ac.uk/toolkit/Default.aspx" target="_blank">http://www.nettle.soton.ac.uk/toolkit/Default.aspx</a>. </div>
Highlights
The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to support all forms of learning has expanding exponentially in the last decade
A more theoretically consistent approach to learning design is needed which inter-relates theory with the desired features of learning, and maps relevant tools and resources against these. This approach makes the relationship between practice and underpinning theory more explicit and, we argue, should enable practitioners to make more theoretically informed choices of the tools and resources used to support learning
At the heart of the toolkit is the notion of a learning activity (LA), which we define as consisting of three elements: 1. The context within which the activity occurs, this includes the subject, level of difficulty, the intended learning outcomes and the environment within which the activity takes place
Summary
The use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to support all forms of learning has expanding exponentially in the last decade. There are a plethora of online learning environments and associated tools to support teaching and learning (Conole, 2004). These include communication (email, discussion boards, synchronous chat), authoring and assessment tools, as well as integrated learning environments such as Blackboard and WebCT. Uptake in the use of these technologies within higher education has been fragmented and slow (Conole, 2004; Littlejohn and McGill, 2004). The paper describes a learning design toolkit which aims to support practitioners in the creation of pedagogically informed learning activities
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