Field Of Learning Design Research Articles

What kind of learning designs do practitioners create for mobile learning? Lessons learnt from two in‐the‐wild case studies

AbstractBackgroundIn the field of Learning Design, it is common that researchers analyse manually design artefacts created by practitioners, using pedagogically‐grounded approaches (e.g., Bloom's Taxonomy), both to understand and later to support practitioners' design practices. Automatizing these high‐level pedagogically‐grounded analyses would enable large‐scale studies on practitioners' design practices. Such an approach would be especially useful in the context of mobile learning, where practitioners' design practices are under‐explored and complex (e.g., involving both formal and informal learning activities, happening between physical and digital spaces).ObjectivesWe inquire about the kind of designs that practitioners create in mobile learning by analysing the entire databases of two m‐learning tools, Avastusrada and Smartzoos, which promote inquiry learning outdoors.MethodsWe use supervised machine learning to classify the textual content of the designs based on the cognitive level required from learners, the inquiry‐based learning phases they cover, and their connection with the learning context (e.g., the role played by the situated environment).Results and ConclusionsResults from the in‐the‐wild studies emphasize practitioners' tendency to design contextualized activities, but that include few higher‐order thinking tasks and elements of inquiry learning. This raises questions about the real‐life pedagogical value of similar mobile learning tools and highlights the need for providing pedagogical guidelines and technical solutions that would promote the adoption of good learning design practices.Major takeaways from the studyWhile we show that machine learning techniques (informed by learning design elements) can enable large‐scale studies and provide useful insights, to best understand and support practitioners' design practices it would be necessary to combine them with other quantitative and quantitative analyses (e.g., a qualitative understanding on why practitioners take specific design decisions). Future research could use similar machine learning approaches to explore other design settings, as well as explore scenarios where similar algorithms can be embedded in design tools, to guide practitioners' design practices.

Defining Learning Experience Design: Voices from the Field of Learning Design & Technology

Defining Learning Experience Design: Voices from the Field of Learning Design & Technology

Learning Design and Learning Analytics: Snapshot 2020

“Learning design” belongs to that interesting class of concepts that appear on the surface to be simple and self-explanatory, but which are actually definitionally vague and contested in practice. Like “learning analytics,” the field of learning design aspires to improve teaching practice, the learning experience, and learning outcomes. And like learning analytics, this interdisciplinary field also lacks a shared language, common vocabulary, or agreement over its definition and purpose, resulting in uncertainty even about who its practitioners are — Educators? Designers? Researchers? All of these? (Law, Li, Farias Herrera, Chan & Pong, 2017). Almost a decade ago, however, learning analytics researchers pointed to the rich potential for synergies between learning analytics and learning design (Lockyer & Dawson, 2011). These authors (and others since, as cited below) argued that effective alignment of learning analytics and learning design would benefit both fields, and would offer educators and investigators the evidence they need that their efforts and innovations in learning design are “worth it” in terms of improving teaching practice and learning: "The integration of research related to both learning design and learning analytics provides the necessary contextual overlay to better understand observed student behavior and provide the necessary pedagogical recommendations where learning behavior deviates from pedagogical intention" (Lockyer & Dawson, 2011, p. 155).

Critical Literacy Approach in the teaching of literary appreciation using Indonesian short stories

This paper presents experimental results about the use of the Critical Literacy Approach (CLA) in literary appreciation using Indonesian short stories. The purpose of the study is to find better teaching strategies to improve students’ critical thinking skills and critical awareness to comprehend the conditions of the world, including social relationships involving disproportionate power relations. This study uses the randomized pretest-posttest control group design (RPPCGD), which is a randomized design by giving pretest and posttest to the experimental group (CLA) and control group (expository). The effect of both teaching strategies is calculated through the difference between the pretest and posttest of both groups. This research involved 170 students in the Department of Indonesian Language and Literature Education of an education university in Indonesia. The results are presented in the form of analytical descriptions of paired samples test and paired samples correlations of each group. The results show that students who did a short story analysis with CLA had significantly increased critical thinking skills and critical awareness compared to students of expository strategy. The average posttest of the experimental group is 80.33, which is considerably higher than the control group, with an average of 76.13. The average increase in skills (posttest-pretest) of the experimental group is 38.71 points, and the control groups have an average increase of 31.19 points. Therefore, it is clear that the teaching of literary appreciation using Indonesian short stories with CLA is effective. The use of CLA strategies in increasing students’ critical thinking skills and critical awareness through literary appreciation of Indonesian short stories shows positive results. The results of this study can contribute to the field of learning design with new ideas to improve critical thinking skills and critical awareness of Indonesian students through effective short story analysis or fictional prose analysis.

Supporting and representing Learning Design with digital tools: in between guidance and flexibility

ABSTRACTThe research field of Learning Design (LD) has been active for some time now, but several questions remain open for the scientific community. In particular, the article tackles issues that have been core concerns in LD over the years: (1) how to support the different phases of the LD process; (2) what representations should be used in the various steps; and (3) to what extent should digital LD tools be structured or flexible, either guiding the teacher/designer or leaving them free to pursue their own design path and style. The authors investigated these open questions through an LD tool called the Pedagogical Planner. This tool has been evaluated in authentic contexts with the goal of providing input for the ongoing debate. Evaluation has focused on the perceptions and actual usage by teachers, generating significant evaluative data to be used as a spur for further reflection on LD.

Identifying the characteristics of support Australian university teachers use in their design work: Implications for the learning design field

Quality teaching is a strategic objective for universities; thus, there is an expectation that university teachers design high quality learning experience for their students. The field of learning design has developed over the past 15 years as a way to support teachers in their design work. There has been significant research and development work that has focused on creating support tools to help teachers plan, develop and deliver learning experiences. However, little is known about what supports teachers access and use when they design and overall how teachers undertake their design work. This paper presents the findings from a qualitative study that investigated the types of supports 30 teachers from 16 Australian universities reported using in their design work. Data was collected from semi-structured interviews, and the results show that participants accessed a variety of supports depending on their design need. The kind of support participants accessed in their design work were colleagues, literature, workshops and seminars, conferences, institutional support services, and enrolment in postgraduate study. How participants explained using these supports can be characterised as varied, personalised, dynamic and networked. Based on these results, implications for the learning design field are discussed with recommendations for future research.

Supporting awareness in communities of learning design practice

The field of learning design has extensively studied the use of technology for the authoring of learning activities. However, the social dimension of the learning design process is still underexplored. In this paper, we investigate communities of teachers who used a social learning design platform (ILDE). We seek to understand how community awareness facilitates the learning design activity of teachers in different educational contexts. Following a design-based research methodology, we developed a community awareness dashboard (inILDE) based on the Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) framework. The dashboard displays the activity of teachers in ILDE, such as their interactions with learning designs, other members, and with supporting learning design tools. Evaluations of the inILDE dashboard were carried out in four educational communities – two secondary schools, a master programme for pre-service teachers, and in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) for teachers. The dashboard was perceived to be useful in summarizing the activity of the community and in identifying content and members' roles. Further, the use of the dashboard increased participants' interactions such as profile views and teachers showed a willingness to build on the contributions of others. As conclusions of the study, we propose five design principles for supporting awareness in learning design communities, namely community context, practice-related insights, visualizations and representations, tasks and community interests.

Learning Design Research in Action

The new field of Learning Design is gaining traction in higher education, aiming to address a number of challenges in technology enhanced learning and teaching. This symposium seeks to build on the national Learning Design Research strengths and help highlight Australian Learning Design theory and practice expertise. It also aims to further consolidate the Australian and international Learning Design community. The content of this submission directly addresses the following topics: An introduction of the Learning Design Framework, Generic Templates, Teacher Design Thinking in Higher Education, Connecting Connectivism and Learning Design, and Translating Learning Outcomes into Learning Designs. The symposium will be divided into five topic-based presentations. The topic discussions will be led by members of the Australian Learning Design network. Discussion will be open and audience interaction will be encouraged.

The Larnaca Declaration on Learning Design

The Larnaca Declaration on Learning Design arose from a 2012 meeting of experts in Larnaca, Cyprus who sought to provide a new theoretical foundation for the field of Learning Design, based on a synthesis of research and practice in the field to date. It begins by acknowledging the vast benefits that would arise from wider sharing of effective teaching practices, and it uses an analogy from the history of music notation to identify the need for a representational framework for describing teaching and learning ideas. It provides a range of examples of learning designs and different representational systems to illustrate the need for a “Learning Design Framework” (LD-F). It then acknowledges the wider educational context and its impact on design decisions by educators, and provides a “Learning Design Conceptual Map” (LD-CM) to identify contextual components and their interactions in design decisions. It concludes by discussing the philosophical and practical challenges of identifying and sharing effective teaching and learning ideas under the heading “Learning Design Practice” (LD-P).

Evaluating The Acceptance Of An Innovative Learning Design Environment Within Communities Of Practitioners

The METIS project intends to foster innovation in the educational systems by providing educators with an innovative environment, called Integrated Learning Design Environment (ILDE), and a workshop ‘format’ for training educators in using the ILDE to support effective learning design practices. A crucial project activity is the evaluation of whether and to what extent both the ILDE and the workshops actually meet the real needs of their users. This paper provides an extensive overview of the literature in the field and illustrates the evaluation model developed by METIS to assess both the workshops and the ILDE, to evaluate the degree of acceptance of this innovative environment within a number of communities of practice of prospective target users in the field of learning design.

Exploring teachers' perceptions on different CSCL script editing tools

Despite the apparent maturity of the learning design field, and the variety of tooling available to support it, adoption among the teacher community (one of its alleged main targets) is still low. There is a lack of research on teachers' perception and use of different technological learning design tools, as existing evaluations are often restricted to a single tool. In order to explore whether there are common factors hampering teacher adoption, and which tool features might appeal to different teachers, more studies involving multiple authoring tools are needed. This paper provides a first step in this direction, describing a mixed methods study performed around a professional development workshop with 18 university teachers from multiple disciplines. This workshop exposed teachers to two different authoring tools (WebCollage and EDIT2), as they learned to create computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) designs and implement them. The findings of our interpretive study (which included questionnaires, observations, or group discussion recordings) support the idea that there is no single tool or set of features that are globally perceived as better, although our evidence also highlights certain factors as important for participant teachers – amongst others, the integration of learning designs with the ICT platforms for enactment, as well as with other tools that they already use in their everyday practice.

Teachers’ perspectives on digital tools for pedagogic planning and design

The authors introduce the concept of design support tools and situate them in the pedagogic context of professional development for technology-enhanced learning (TEL) and the research field of learning design. Through focusing on the development and evaluation of one such tool, Phoebe, they discuss their value to lecturers in post-compulsory education as tools for planning and designing TEL. Their approach combined the agenda of learning design with requirements elicited from potential users. Findings suggest that design support tools that give priority to pedagogy over technology have a role both in everyday practice and in professional development programmes. Intrinsic motivation and a sense of ownership are key factors in their uptake; nevertheless, institutional support is crucial to success. Challenges to effective use include establishing meaningful representations of learning design, and supporting both guided and flexible paths through the design process. The authors conclude by outlining a successor project: the Learning Design Support Environment.

Learning Design, Lams, and Christian Education

E-learning has considerable potential for Christian education, but there is a need to move beyond individual, self-paced views of e-learning in order to appreciate its full potential. This paper explores how collaborative learning, scaffolding and generic skills provide a foundation for a broader view of e-learning as envisaged by the new field of Learning Design, and its application to Christian education. Learning Design provides a framework for describing and freely sharing effective teaching ideas, building on other Internet-based sharing approaches such as open source software and open content. The Learning Activity Management System (LAMS) is a Learning Design system that allows educators to author and share learning designs, as well as run them with students and track their progress. Two examples of LAMS learning designs are provided: a compare and contrast template and an example on Christian ethics. The paper concludes by describing a vision of Christian educators working together to share effective teaching ideas.

Researching design practices and design cognition: contexts, experiences and pedagogical knowledge‐in‐pieces

If research and development in the field of learning design is to have a serious and sustained impact on education, then technological innovation needs to be accompanied – and probably guided – by good empirical studies of the design practices and design thinking of those who develop these innovations. This article synthesises two related lines of research into teachers’ design thinking. We draw attention to the importance of context in working on the solution of design problems and introduce the idea that some pedagogical knowledge can best be understood as ‘knowledge in pieces’, rather than as a coherent system of pedagogical beliefs.

Competencies for learning design: A review of the literature and a proposed framework

The term ‘learning design’ is used in this paper to refer to the process of designing effective learning experiences for a variety of contexts: in the classroom or laboratory, in the field, online and via standalone packages using a range of media. Learning design involves a wide set of knowledge, skills and competencies, including: learning theory and its applications, course design principles and procedures, use of media, use of different technologies, relevant business processes and so on. This paper briefly introduces a research project that investigated the field of learning design in the UK and elsewhere, and describes the production of a competency framework derived from the results of that research.

Symposium 7: Recurrent routines in the classroom madness: pushing patterns past the design phase

The notion of pedagogical patterns has proved very useful in the field of learning design, especially with regard to activities for complex educational scenarios, such as computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). However, CSCL designs (pattern-based or not) also have to be enacted by teachers, and very often ambiguities, difficulties and deviations arise in this enactment. This paper reports recent experiences in an authentic primary school setting, aimed to study teachers who are not technology experts, designing, enacting and even improvising with a CSCL tool. This study uncovered a set of recurrent routines in the design of activity scripts (which we could see as implicit design patterns), as well as a limited set of routines in the enactment of these activities. The comparison of the designs and their enacted counterparts revealed that the designed routines were completed with additional sets of unexpected routines, bridging the gap between high-level designs and the concrete classroom performance. This paper discusses the idea of eliciting an extensible set of enactment patterns/routines and the level of formalization needed, especially regarding its potential usefulness as a tool (mediating artifact) to support practitioners in enacting CSCL activities in a more flexible and effective way.

A Transversal Analysis of Different Learning Design Approaches

The goal of the ICALT workshop Comparing Educational Modelling* Languages on a Case was to compare different Learning Design approaches. Various teams were asked to design and implement a common case study and to answer common given challenges. Then, a special issue on Comparing Educational Modelling Languages on the Planet Game Case Study was proposed to give the workshop challengers the opportunity to describe their solution in more detail. It is now time to make the comparison. Based on an in-depth analysis and many exchanges with the teams involved, this paper introduces the approaches and highlights current challenges in the Learning Design field in connection with the pitfalls included in the case study and the given challenges. Editors: Laurence Vignollet (Universit e de Savoie, France).

Using the Learning Design Language to model activities supported by services

The main objective of the field of Learning Design (LD) is to provide teachers and instructional designers with the conceptual and technological means to create and manage e-learning activities. This paper addresses a paradox in existing approaches to LD: the activity mediated by services is neither prescribed nor observed. Our proposition is to use LD languages to model an activity supported by a service. This paper describes how to use a specific LD language, also called Learning Design Language (LDL), to model such activities and how Learning Design Infrastructure (LDI), the associated infrastructure, has been extended to allow the operationalisation and execution of these improved scenarios. Thus, the approach attempts to improve service support in the LD field.

Imagining and developing a system for reusable learning designs: lessons from LAMS

This paper reviews current problems with e-learning content, and introduces the new field of learning design, which focuses on sequences of collaborative activities that can be captured, stored, reused and adapted. It discusses a range of case studies from the implementation of LAMS (Learning Activity Management System), an open source system, which is inspired by the learning design approach. The paper concludes with reflections on how the combination of content and learning designs may herald a new era of large-scale reuse within e-learning.